Eric's new and improved Magnet-powered progress thread

Technique Critique
#1

I think this is the first Kickstarter Magnet footage to be posted on the forum. Figured I’d post it just for the cred :smirk: It’s a idea I copped from an Andy Wood video.

This is about what my playing looks like first thing in the morning with only about 5 minutes of warmup and 1/2 of my usual coffee dose.

I don’t have enough light yet for slow-mo footage, but two things jump out at me:

  • There’s still much more forearm rotation in this than it “feels” like. I’m not sure why. It feels very smooth to play. I’m not sure if I should keep trying to exorcise the wiggle, or simply leave it be.

  • I’ve got a pronounced downward pickslant even for this 902-type 1NPS stuff, which surprises me. I’m wondering if it’s an overall supination issue – it does often feel like my thenar eminence/thumb heel is too chonky to get any more pronation without either slamming the bass strings into the bridge pickup or playing solely on the bass strings.

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#2

Does your phone not let you enable the flash for video capture? That’s what I’ve always done for lighting.

#3

It’s an ancient Galaxy S9. I’m not sure if I can, but I’ll have to see. Thanks for the hint! :slight_smile:

Edit: I can! you’re a lifesaver.

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#4

And here’s what the flash does:

This is encouraging, because it looks like the forearm rotation mostly happens on ascending inside changes. That’s a “standard” use of the forearm for 902 lines that I’m okay with.

Edit: one more for posterity.

The inside sixes look okayish, but it seems I’m actually swiping the descending inside string change. Need to figure that out somehow.

#5

I’m sorry Eric, I put this through our super-secret-neural-network-artificial-intellingence algorithm, and it told me you should quit guitar!

Joking! I’m doing some critiques on the platform today but will take a look at this asap :slight_smile:

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#6

Thanks Tommo! I wasn’t really angling for any “official critique,” since I don’t have a subscription currently, but I will gladly accept it if it happens. :slight_smile:

#7

No worries! Actually this is an easy one (I think!).

This setup looks great for scale playing (second example), because I think the forearm “twitch” is still quite pronounced. You can see in slomo how the thumb heel goes quite a bit away from the strings for that ascending downstroke.

For the 1nps playing, I think what you are doing looks and sounds good for that intermediate speed used in the video, but I suspect there may be a speed cap pretty close to that (if not, that’s cool too — problem solved!). As a general rule, usually the closer you can get to “all wrist”, the easier these kinds of banjo rolls tend to feel (and once you can do that, you can apply the same motion to scalar shredding too).

EDIT: listening again, I think that forearm-y downstroke does cause a few little issues in the banjo roll, like making that note pop out louder than the others, and also giving you a pickstroke that has quite a bit of momentum and can easily overshoot and hit 2 strings instead of one.

As an exercise, maybe you can try consciously to keep those 2 contact points fixed (no lifting on thumb side), and see if your wrist finds the way by itself!

PS: anyway you play great :smiley:

PS: for the future, I’d prefer to have a full playthrough of the normal speed and then the slomo in separate vids. The scale example in particular has very little “normal speed” playing. Just enough to suggest you can melt my face :smiley: but not enough to get a good sense of what things really look/sound like.

EDIT: PPS at about 0:26 of the roll video I think I’m seeing a downstroke ascending pickstroke that’s almost all wrist. So I think that you basically already know how to do it :slight_smile:

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#8

I have to dial in a more “wristy” form pretty much daily, and it takes a few 20-minute sessions and some Ritalin to get that to work. But once I remember how to do it, it feels very very very smooth. I’ll try to get some video of that form once I figure it out again some time in the next couple days.

The “proprioceptive mnemonic” to make the form flatter and more wrist-driven seems to be to just plant my wrist and force a higher speed for that particular riff until the forearm gives up, lol

Do you think this is why we see so few (no?) wrist-forearm DBX players in the wild?

Thanks for the kind words and pointers, much appreciated :slight_smile:

#9

You can probably train yourself to “recall the motor program faster”. Interleaved practice comes to mind:

Sounds good to me, beast it :slight_smile:

I have no idea :smiley:

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#10

I’ve already been trying to use those ideas, actually. Forcing myself to practice in short sessions with breaks instead of 8-hour RSI-inducing marathons, not allowing myself to play one line for more than a few repetitions before switching to something else, etc.

It also helps on those days where you wake up and can’t seem to play anything :smiley:

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#11

Funny story: even when I think I’m keeping my thumb heel flat on the strings, it keeps popping up!