Trying to stop being such a slow hand and up my alternate picking speed with some exercises. Can anyone suggest a few lessons for this? I’ve heard of chugging and actually tried it one day and it seemed to help some. That idea was to focus on one or two notes, like the 1st and last nite of a sextuplet and just let the other notes kinda flow in the middle. Anyway, I’ve been playing for 60 years and am determined to get exponentially faster, so, starting with alternate picking and some limited hammers from nowhere and some legato, but I really want to be able to alternate pick at blazing speed. Any ideas? I’m ready to make a before and after video and see my progress over 1 month. I will post, if y’all think that’s a good idea. It may give me some extra pressure to practice daily and see how far along I get.
Thank you in advance
Dr Brad
Dallas,Tx
when u figure it out, let us know
I think you mean ‘chunking’. It’s a highly regarded technique around here. It worked extremely well for me.
Oops. Chucking. Got it, now how do you do it?
Most of us would recommend simply learning to pick fast on one string first. Get a nice smooth and fast motion grooved. Thats sort of the bedrock formation before moving onto harder stuff where changing strings is required
Chunking? Thats essentially setting up your licks so that you sort of pay attention mainly to the first note only…knowing that if u keep that first note synchronized then the rest of the notes in between are thus also synchronized etc. Obviously it comes into play more on long repeating types of phrases
Hey, welcome to the forum!
We always suggest starting with the Pickslanting Primer, which aims to cover all we know about picking fundamentals. We put together this outline of what it covers:
The question of building speed comes up a lot on the forum. Here’s one good discussion:
See Troy’s comment in that thread for how we think about “speed”, and a sort of checklist for describing what you need to work on (physical speed? hand synchronization? string switching? etc.)
Our basic recommendation is to watch through the Primer material, and experiment with different grips and picking motions. With this sort of “trial and error” learning you can get a sense for what motion feels natural. See this post + linked video for some detail on how this process works:
We’ll get more tutorial videos specifically covering how to practice added to the Primer at some point. We’ve got some more motion tutorials in the works as well. In the meantime check out the links here and let us know if there’s anything we can clarify or help point you to!
Hey, thanks. I’ve watched several vids of pickslanting, single string alternating, chromatic scales with alternate picking,and I guess I’m an advanced intermediate player that can outline the changes on a 1,4,5 with my improvisation, no problem. It’s just, when I try to push my speed, things break down. I’m looking for a shortcut. A few technically advanced exercises, like a six note pattern, that I can really focus on metronome training. I know it’s difficult do deal with players at all different levels. Thank you for your suggestions and I will be exploring the vids.
I would go with @JonJon’s advice on this. Stick to a single-string and maybe do a few variations on it from the seminar. Give it a month at least, preferably 2 or 3. Really focus in and things could drastically change.
yeah the “Yngwie 6 note” pattern is a very standard recommendation and its really cool. Helped me a ton
very simple lick but great for basically learning to play fast (I:E: coordinating the 2 hands and making it automatic)
This is the Yngwie version which would usually be done with the pinky on the high note, or you can reach up with the ring finger like Yngwie does:
E------8–5--7–8--7–5 repeat forever
Then Joe Stump has a version where it starts on the middle note and thus (for me) its a bit easier
E----7–5--7–8--7–5 repeat
obviously its going to be sextuplets or triplets so u can play around with how you might want to accent it. You might just accent the first note which is usually a downstroke. Or you can try to sort of count in triplets and accent the 1st and 4th note.
once u get it going nice and smooth and sort of automatic, its super easy to move it up and down on one string and also go across the string etc
super important building block
I think the question here is what do you mean by “break down”? The biggest problem with the “I can’t play fast” question is that we’re never sure what it means. Do you mean you can’t move your hands faster than a certain point? Does it mean you can move your picking hand fast, but above a certain speed you lose synch with the fretting hand? Does it mean you can go fast on a single string, with good synchronization between both hands, but when you try to switch strings you hear mistakes and you don’t know where they are coming from?
Becauase these are all different problems. The most literal interpretation, where a person says, I can literally not move my hands faster than a certain speed, that’s the way this question is often interpreted. But lots of times that turns out not to be what the individual is actually saying.
Let us know which it is!
I would try something totally different, like possible experimenting with different picking mechanics that you’ve never used in the past. You can check out Troy’s video on the different mechanics if you’d like.