Do you practice with deadened strings?

This is also my experience.

Not necessarily, I have multiple picking forms and some facilitate greater speed than others. However, I am very wary of any movement which I cannot synchronise to my internal clock.

For example, I can get the elbow hyper-picking thing started sometimes, but I cannot synchronise it to my internal clock at all. It just goes the speed it goes, and if I try to influence it at all it stops. Personally, I have no use for an unmetered tremolo picking movement on a single string.

Can you sync your left hand to it?

No, I can’t synchronise it to anything at all.

This is just my anecdotal experience, don’t let it put you off experimenting with hyper-picking!

Not sure how much of his stuff you’ve seen. He gets his rotational mechanic pretty fast. @qwertygitarr correct me if I’m wrong but I know you posted something where you were doing 6’s in the 150 - 160 bpm range. I don’t know exactly if there’s a definition of where hyper picking begins but these are Rusty Cooley speeds and Troy’s said something about “maybe this is hyper picking” when showing clips of Rusty in these ranges. I hope I’m not conflating or misinterpreting Troy. I’ve been known to ha…

I haven’t seen it, but that is a very solid speed.

By hyper-picking I’m specifically referring to the elbow movement that Rusty Cooley and John Taylor use.

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I frequently do this, at the very least as part of a warm up. I made a thread about my favorite combos!

at this point, my personal benchmark pattern is DUU.

Haha thanks man, I really don’t know what speeds I’ve played but I’m sure it’s not in hyper speed range. Cooley and Taylor is another ball game.

As I learn a new piece that I want to be able to play, I usually start at half speed, and this process progresses in two ways. I try to get the picking motions down the first few times I learn something new, which means I prioritize this over finding the best left hand fingering for the job. I just try to fret as well as I can with my fretting hand so I can concentrate more on the picking hand, which is the area I know counts, the sound maker. After a few playthroughs, I will begin shifting my conscious mind over to my fretting hand, seeing if I can alter or adjust a fingering pathway to something that works best for my fretting hand.

Well, I meant the stuff they do where there’s still hand sync. I don’t follow either of them extremely closely but I know I’ve heard Troy say Rusty plays at 240. That’s the same as 6’s at 160. I swear you posted a video of yourself doing fast 6’s and you estimated your tempo was about 160. I thought that sounded so ridiculous that I grabbed my metronome and tapped along and sure enough, I saw 160-ish on my metronome. I couldn’t have imagined that, could I??? lol

EDIT: I didn’t imagine it haha!

That’s cool and maybe especially good for rhythm playing like that. I didn’t read the whole thread but did you do any progress and if so, what was the key factors?

I thought of doing something similar with rudiments, but maybe more leaning towards the most often used lead patterns for switching strings. I think it’s nothing new but maybe it can highlight some weak points that are masked when playing normally.

Haha I couldn’t believe it either so I had to try to play to a metronome. To be honest the technique is not really holding up to 160, it’s lagging a little. Sorry for the family background noise. But i tried to play as loud as possible and I think the technique is capable of some power if you really dig in. Although I can tell that it’s not as smooth today as it used to be.

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@qwertygitarr Could I get a picture of that guitar? Did you alter the body on it? :stuck_out_tongue:

You look like you should be able to play Hot on your heels intro with that technique. Can you move the fretting hand around while doing that pattern, and do a pretty fluid tremolo with that technique? Do you know this intro section? Do you think you could handle this on a classical or acoustic guitar? And can you accent this kind of lick using a kind of rest stroke on ascended phrasing to get those accents to really shine through on each of these beat groupings? slightly pause after each beat grouping and you could cover this intro with really nice sound! dont pay to much attention to the rhythm i have just split apart the pieces because he kind of accents the phrase this way playing each beat grouping in seperate chunks. i would say it would be best to try to be able to play these kind of 1,3,2 fragments in sextuplets, but here he kind of seperates each piece individually

actually he probably accents the last upstroke on each beat grouping as well from how i feel it.


Yes I did a quite extreme arm cut on this telecaster body. I found that it’s much easier to do rotation if you have a flexed wrist, and having a steep arm angle like this gives that flex while still gives the opportunity to palm mute.

I have heard it before but never played it. But it’s very standard Yngwie stuff so it’s things that are common for Yngwie-fans. I made a fast attempt before my wife told me to shut up and put the kids to bed. Therefore the abrupt ending.

No I don’t think I could to it with the same force as Yng did in the recording. To get that power I would need to flex my wrist gypsy style but I’m not as comfortable with that yet. But with practice to should be possible with this technique.

No, sweeping licks are really hard to accent for me. I don’t know if others think it’s easy but to me it is hard. Here is a fast attempt at that lick as well. But I’m not sure I did your request justice.

Sorry! This thread was not supposed to be about me. Lets get back to the muted stuff :slight_smile:

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You did it right, in this one he kinda splits them apart not with really any rests, but the flow. It is best to think of it like a gap between them. I flubbed up and forgot the tail end accents on each one.

I can PM you off topic stuff if you want.

I don’t really split them apart per say, I always try to at least fret something. If it works for you I would definitely utilize it. But don’t just mind numbingly do it, if you do it be consciously aware that you are doing it. I wouldn’t spend more than 10 minutes doing it. Also if you know it is going to annoy someone in the family, and you have to just go outside. But don’t slip into subconsciously doing it to pass the time thinking that you will get faster and faster. I would let that happen during the noodling of the phrase amongst combinations of phrases, make loops of an array of licks.

This is definitely copper.

I think you’re being hard on yourself, I think most people would call this a make.

I am definitely nitpicking here, but I really don’t hear any variation in dynamic. There really isn’t a clear accent at the beginning of each six. I think this really is at the root of what’s causing you to lose your haptic and rhythmic connection to the movement pattern.

I think this has the potential to go even faster, if you could strengthen your connection to it.

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You hit the nail on the head that is why I was thinking he could cover Hot on your Heels because he has a nice free flowing rhythmical tremolo. He just has to learn how to utilize the same motions, but with some rhythmical finesse to it. This is where the rest stroke really helped me although it cost me speed because they always change strings on downstrokes, ascended phrasing i am likely even faster now because it is a breeze, but descended phrasing using the more traditional approach of half rest stroke can be a nightmare. although some of the newer players sort of divert around this more often these days.

Not saying what you are doing is wrong or anything everybody is unique if it feels good do it your way. Yngwie would use two different approaches to playing a tremolo and that 312321 pattern. The top video is the free floating wrist tremolo, the bottom is the 312321 pattern. Pay close attention to his hand setup.

Ok so upon watching it again you can almost see him try to rev up the tremolo, but he just ditched it right here.

I was able to improve my 2-way economy picking a lot by practicing right hand only (usually with the left hand doing 12th-fret harmonics).

My current routine works through going between strings 2 at a time, then 3, 4, 5, and 6. For example:

E A E A D A D G D G B G B E B E B G B G D G D A D A E A E (2-string)
E A D A E A D A D G D A D G D G B G D G B G B E B G B E B G B G D G B G D G D A D G D A D G D A D A E A D A E (3-string) etc…

I usually start with playing each string 4x then move to 3x, 2x, and 1x, and repeat each set of strings until I feel I’m getting the crossings smooth.

I’ll also second whoever suggested practicing tricky licks with right hand only to improve picking consistency without worrying about synchronization between hands.

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Thanks for chiming in! Well, no I think it’s really hard to maintain clear accents at top speed. I know Petrucci talks about accents while doing his famous chromatic exercise, but as soon as he goes into his real high speed playing, the accents disappear as well. But I am able to play at different dynamics, it’s a matter of exaggerating the motion and digging into the string more or less.

I don’t know what haptic connection means but to be clear there is never any problems with sync between the hands, only to play in perfect time.

I’m not sure this is true. I think the motion is simply shaking my forearm as fast as possible. And it’s more a matter of how my body performs from day to day. There is simply no resistance to work away at this point. And listening to early Yngwie, this is the same top speed he had so I don’t think I will ever surpass that.

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My problem is I have trouble doing the motion just a tiny bit slower so I can understand the motion a bit better. I think this is what is holding me back from utilizing it like you do with the 312321 pattern, the best I could do is probably slide around from note to note. I can do the same kind of rotation mechanic, but this one feels more twitchy almost. And I can mainly do it really articulate on the high e string, any other string it is quite complicated for me to coordinate it in such a tiny space. Do you think that pocket helped you with consistency to comprehend the motion?

Do you think you could do a chromatic run phrase like this with it?

haha warning though i think you and i both know we cant go around trying to perfect this phrase if you practice this go outside! :sweat_smile:

Just so we’re clear, I’m definitely not suggesting that you’re doing anything wrong. I think the form you have in these clips is excellent.

I’m just rewatching that section of Rock Discipline now. Honestly, I don’t think the accents are particularly powerful even in the slower examples.

I don’t mind the accents becoming less pronounced as frequency increases (this is inevitable to some degree), but I don’t feel they should disappear entirely.

By haptic connection, I mean your ability to perceive when you are performing the movement correctly based upon tactile and kinaesthetic feedback. Your background tension is very low (much lower than John Petrucci’s background, for example), which is obvious by the free oscillation of your 3rd and 4th finger of your picking hand during the rotational movement.

As a consequence of your low background tension, your sensitivity to tactile and kinaesthetic feedback is high. Essentially, you have very low “noise” affecting your haptic perception. However, it’s not enough just to increase sensitivity by bringing this “noise” down, we also need to bring the signal up.

A powerful accent doesn’t just test your ability to generate power and your dynamic range. It also creates a huge “spike” in your haptic perception of the movement. This helps to establish your rhythmic connection to the movement. It establishes a landmark or a “flag” which aids in building chunks, and which acts as a reference point to synchronise the movement to your internal clock and to your fretting hand. It also provides a clear point where form “refreshes.” Without the accent, form can tend to “drift” over many repetitions, you simply can’t perceive that you’re not doing what you intend to do.

The fact that you have some difficulty performing this movement in perfect time suggests to me that the temporal positioning of your “flag” isn’t clear enough for you to find it consistently at your highest speeds. Once the connection between your movement and your internal clock is well established, playing to a click is really just a matter of synchronising your internal clock to the external click. It really is that simple.

It’s also been demonstrated scientifically that your ability to keep time is contingent upon movement, and that movement which is not linked to your internal clock actually impedes your ability to keep time.
My father is a drummer who is absolutely rock-steady, and he has always told me “If you want to groove, you have to move. You can’t groove if you don’t move.” Ask yourself why every bassist bobs their head while they play. Ask yourself why guitarists are notorious among musicians for having bad time. You need to make your picking hand a fundamental pendulum, driven by your internal clock and continually reinforcing your internal clock.

Why do guitar players store a pick between the strings and the first fret? They can’t find a pocket.

You are able to synchronise this picking movement to your fretting hand. It is possible that your picking hand is “following” your fretting hand and that difficulty in keeping time is due to some fretting hand limitation. Fretting movements are much less regular than picking movements and they don’t reinforce your internal clock as strongly.

You’ve mentioned in another thread that you’ve been performing this movement for nearly a decade and you still occassionally lose it. That seems very discordant to me. There is something, somewhere which is interrupting your haptic or rhythmic connection to the movement.

Obviously, I can’t feel what you feel when performing this movement, so that has to take precedent over anything I say. However, if this is a matter of shaking your forearm as fast as possible, why can’t it go faster? The movement isn’t breaking down in terms of power or range of motion (which is why I think it can go faster), so the limitation here is neurological speed, that is, how fast you send the message to fire off the opposing muscles. Maybe this really is the limit, or maybe just just haven’t learned how to send those signals faster.

Again, this might be possible, but this could also be a fretting hand limitations in Yngwie’s vocabulary. I’m also not crazy about the idea that because Yngwie never did it, that means you can’t.

I think some training of this movement with drum like rudiments on muted string could potentially take it further, and maybe coupled with some patterns which are optimally fast for the fretting hand could get a little more juice out of it too.

All that said, it’s already excellent.

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