Hey guys I know I’m late to this thread! I’m a Hendrix style player and so this topic is completely different from my style of playing. I’m going to start working on this from today.
I just wanted to add a +1 for a request for a video/interview/seminar on this subject. 
I’m curious: what’s your motivation if your style is completely different? Do you need it for a particular song that you like?
My philosophy/fear at the moment is that repeated fast downstrokes are a recipe for tendinitis, so I always try to alternate pick rhythm parts. (Even MoP - blasphemy I know 
)
But are repeated 16th notes at double the speed somehow better? You’ve got the same number of “cycles,” regardless.
Also, Kevin Frasard is a monster. Some of his older stuff (I don’t know where it disappeared to, I had subbed to his old channel) was really intense. Lots of MAB-style trem picking (I.e., anchored fingers, looked like arm motion).
Looking at James Hetfield 30 years into his career - he may have 99 problems but tendonitis ain’t one of them 
A post was split to a new topic: Master of Puppets lick - what strategies would you use to get this up to tempo?
Hi all, I’m new here. I’ve been struggling with fast downstrokes in general and the MoP riff in particular, for so long. Here’s a video showing some great technique, which (in my very limited knowledge 
) appears to not all be coming from the wrist but the elbow as well.
For those of you who do the thrash downpicking thing reasonably well and/or play MOP: do you warm-up? Of yes, how? For how long?
It’s not like I am good at downpicking, I just like it )
It depends. When I come from my second job where I work with my hands I don’t usually do warmups.
I always warm-up and practice with breaks so the hand is completely relaxed at the start of a new cycle. Otherwise other muscles will compensate for the burned out muscles and you train false technique (paraphrasing Miller here).
I start out with doing trem picking on each string with a metronome automator that increases the bpm 5bpm every 10-15 measures. After 8 mins the right hand/ arm is red hot.
If I feel like it I also play the “One” riff starting at 170bpm to 222bpm (original tempo) to 250bpm.
Then I play the MOP-riff. I start out at 150bpm to 212 bpm (original tempo) then try to go to 220.
Try holding the pick with three fingers instead of two, you will find there is less tension then. Then you can translate this feeling to two fingers.
MOP is sort of a benchmark for downpicking although there are also more difficult and faster songs.
I find that it is quite athletic; if I don’t practice downpicking for a while, my max tempo goes down pretty fast.
Best thing is to practice with pauses/breaks sp that you don’t tense up too much.
That’s what I think and experience, too.
A couple of weeks ago i took “only” three days off and my top speed sunk when i resumed playing.
However, It takes me a while to warm up, so I wanted to check with others if it’s just me.
Furthermore, I use a different hand position for “normal” tremolo picking and downpicking so I’m not sure that I can do the same warm-up you do; anyway you gave some useful piece of advice.
I agree with what other members have said about the need to warm up for fast down picking. There’s a big difference (up to 20%) in my down picking top speed once I’m warmed up. I also think the bursting method is very effective with this technique. Kari Hanninen also recommends this method.
Here’s a decent thrash picking lesson by Jamie Humphries I use to warm-up sometimes:
https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/25107-cram-session-thrash-metal-rhythms
A masters in Mechanics with John Browne and Olly Steele from Monuments would be a good place to start on this Troy.
We need someone like Matt Heafy for an interview. He’s in the US so he would be my first choice for practical reasons of having him come and do an interview.
Other than that, Mick Thomson and Josh Middleton would be among my top choices.
I’ll try an make a half decent video and post it.
I learned to play master of puppets many many years ago, I don’t remember how long I had to practice to get it right. One thing I can tell is that the challenge isn’t in playing the riff fast enough, the challenge is playing the whole song without having too much fatigue.
Yes, you can build some endurance over time but with a good technique you are more efficient and play with less effort.
For what it’s worth, I’ve just started playing guitar again 3 days ago after several weeks off. And on the top of my head, it’s been probably over a year since I’ve worked on my “endurance”, and yet, I just took the guitar, no warmup and played along to the whole some start to finish. There as a little burn in my foreram, but nothing more. If it was all about endurance I probably would not have been able to do it.
I never would’ve been able to do that before, because I used to pick the strings way too hard. It’s important to practice WHILE PLUGGED IN, with distortion dialed in, and pay attention from the sound coming from the amp. You really don’t need to pick the strings so hard.
The other big secret to play it with less effort is using “string tracking”. I never knew about that until I saw Troy’s video demonstrating it.
Master of Puppets isn’t such a fast riff and because the 6th string is palm muted and the 5th isn’t, it’s easy to assume that the palm should stay firmly planted on the 6th string during the whole riff, however if you do that the wrist has a do a much bigger movement to pick the 5th string and you will quickly burn yourself out.
I really don’t want to come off as arrogant, I’m really an average player and I don’t think there is anything special with the way James downpicks most riffs. IMHO when you know how to downpick you know the technique and it works with every riff. Alternate picking is much more tricky because some riffs will have different patterns. That’s why 99% of the times I’ve downpicked almost everything because I couldn’t be bothered to figure out the alternated picking pattern. I am genuinely more impressed with guys like Dave Mustaine, who will sometimes downpick everything, sometimes alternate, sometimes lead with an upstroke, all depending on the tone and feel that is supposed to fit with the song. I guess it’s only normal as humans to admire and envy people who can do things we are not able to do ourselves.
And one thing most people don’t notice with Metallica is that they play the songs live differently than on the records, they change some riffs and put in some breaks here and there. It’s also a myth that everything is downpicked… it’s all about the tone that is wanted and there is that riff in Master of Puppets, 2nd riff after Kirk’s solo, you can hear that some notes are downpicked and some are alternate picked. We can never know how it was played in the studio but you can see this on live videos,
Schaffer’s approach is more supinated than Hetfield
Here we go:
My left hand is holding the phone
I can currently hit album speed. As far specific mechanics, there’s not much there for me to share. I’m sorry that I’m unable to provide a video. The way I got there was the old-fashioned way. I’m new here and don’t know all of the terminology, so please excuse me if I don’t explain it well. All of my practice drills for this were time based with less emphasis on speed because that will naturally come (you’ll feel it). I found stamina to be the biggest issue with playing fast downstrokes. My routine was something like this:
As you pickup the tempo, you’ll automatically improve the economy with which you move your picking arm/forearm, etc… It’s a natural progression.
Note: You will feel tension and fatigue(not pain. Stop if you’re feeling it, without any exceptions. There should be no pain) in your picking forearm and that’s what you need to work through. With patient, methodic practice, you will get there
I know this is an older post @Troy, but I thought I’d comment on this because I myself have actually played with James Hetfield’s grip over a period of time, and I’m an early Metallica fanatic. (Let me know if there is a more current thread that would be better for this)
What I’m seeing with the gallops in this video you posted, is that he’s using DWPS/USX with heavy rest strokes on every downstroke (of the gallops). Now look at the path of his upstroke when he hits the second note of the gallop vs. the path of his upstroke after he completes the gallop—the plane for the former is much less vertical. When he completes the gallop and starts the next gallop he is doing back-to-back downstrokes, (because that’s the way to connect the gallops) that upstroke is much more vertical to avoid hitting the string. So it seems between the two-downstrokes (last note of gallop 1, and first note of gallop 2) he is lifting off with a more vertical up-stroke, and with his three finger picking/arm supination this seems to be more of a deviation motion. In contrast I feel an index-finger gripped player (trigger or angle pad), applying the same approach with a light to medium supination/DWPS, would use some extension on the more vertical upstroke between the gallops to avoid hitting the string.
Hetfield DWPS gallops - motion closer to extension and flexion, with some deviation mixed in between downstrokes to avoid string contact.
Index-finger grip DWPS gallops (applying similar approach) - motion closer to deviation, with some extension mixed in between downstrokes to avoid string contact.
So they are in a way reversed for both picking grips mechanically speaking if DWPS is used. Now someone of better knowledge can comment if these are efficient movements, or if I’m possibly seeing all this wrong. You have to get around the string somehow if you’ve got back-to-back downstrokes. I’m not sure if this is a true microcosm for how James does his consecutive downstrokes, that is not certain since this could just be for his gallops, but I think it’s applicable.
You know what? I found that it’s easier for me to play usng upstrokes ))
Though in that case palm muting becomes not so easy