Hey All,
I’d like to share something I’m quite bad at: ascending 7th arpeggios with DWPS! A typical pattern that throws me off is the alternation of 1 and 2 notes per string. For example here I’m attempting and Amaj 7/9 (Amaj7 on the low strings followed by C#min7 on the high ones). My timing gets really bad as I try to speed it up. It gets a bit better after a long practice session with gradual speed increase, but it immediately goes back to bad the day after (or even a few hours after the session). I was wondering if I am missing something, or if you have any tips on how to practice these things. I’m posting two clips that are representative of my average day with this lick
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This looks great. Have you tried Teemu’s hands separate / muted rest stroke practice approach? I personally never practiced the hands separately, but he came up with that approach pretty much exactly for situations like this. And his results are right on.
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I’d also like to point out the cool finger movement you’re using for the string changes. Edit: I don’t know that I’d call this 2wps, it looks like dpws but with an extra lift provided by the index/thumb to get out of the strings. Very neat.
It’s Batio-esque in appearance:
https://troygrady.com/interviews/michael-angelo-batio-2017/clips/call-to-arms-tk2/
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Thanks Troy, very kind as usual 
And thanks for pointing out the finger movement! It may be a heritage of my UPWS past, I think I must have used a similar movement for the occasional dwps changes (but it is hard to remember what exactly I was doing in the pre-CtC era!). Could it be that this extra lift is unnecessary and it’s causing the timing issues?
I will definitely give a go to the separate hands approach, and it’s a good excuse to watch the Teemu interview for the 3rd or 4th time hehe!
I’m posting here my struggles with the 2-string arpeggios that I mentioned in the technique section (have changed the title of this old post of mine to reduce my spamming!). This is probably the biggest obstacle I’m currently facing with DWPS.
The picking pattern I’m trying to work on is down-down-up on repeating things like this (say a Bm triad on the D and G string):
-----------7-------11------
—9------------------------
I struggle when I try to play the B note (9th fret D) on the beat: the pick gets stuck and/or the timing is messed up.
Interestingly, last night I discovered that both timing and smoothness get better if I make the upstroke (F# or 11th fret G) land on the beat. Here I am demonstrating both situations with sextuplets at around 110bpm, not super speedy but fast enough to make the all the major mechanical problems crop up. This discovery has definitely boosted my confidence (I can do the movement), but unfortunately in many practical applications I would like the accent to fall on the B and not the F#!
EDIT: for reference, the playing below is after a bit of warmup, when I first pick up the guitar these things are more clunky. Also I think I made the backing track a bit too quiet, so it may not be so obvious that I’m locking with the drums a bit better in the second attempt.
PS: I may have gone all-out with the Italian accent sorry!
PPS: I took the opportunity to test the BIAS FX thingy I bought today (Black Friday discounted at £38 - could not resist 
), and tried my skills at syncing the phone video + pc audio manually by looking at waveforms.
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For what it’s worth, I find these more consistent when I use a ton of leading-edge edge picking. Not sure if the root cause is in the edge picking itself, or in the subtle grip/hand change that arises from using that much leading edge.
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As usual in your playing I think this sounds and looks great! I can only perceive the differences you’re referring to because you pointed them out. You’re in the polishing stages with all this, which involves small physical adjustments that are hard to spot on camera, or cognitive adjustments, like starting on the upstroke, which simply aren’t visual at all. I think it’s up to you to tell us what eventually works here, after some more experimentation and some more time.
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As we run out of string during those licks we do not have a rest stroke, and it makes it harder (compare to something on G and B for instance). Isn’t there a way to rest on the fingers of the picking hand (those we don’t use to old the pick) ?
The rest stroke is only necessary when there is a sweep, so there is no need to rest notes on the top string. Sometimes you might hit the guitar itself when you play notes on the top string but when I do that, it generally feels wrong / too far.
I’ve been looking for more about this practice method after coming across it on a Tom Hess vid. I’d love to see what Teemu has on it. Can you or someone point me to the CTC vid where he discusses it?