With enough practice you will probably get it going but I suspect the attack will be inconsistent. Essentially this will be sort of a different alternate picking (which is again using different muscle groups for consecutive notes). And the reason we want to play such riffs with all downstrokes is (mainly) for the consistent attack.
Interesting! Have you been practicing this method of mixing motions? Does it feel smooth? I guess that will be the determining factor, whether you can get it fast and smooth. I imagine string changes might get a little complicated when mixing motions like this, but, Iāve not practiced this so youād know better than me!
I played around with it for a few days and I think there may be something to it, but I ran into a few issues:
- As BurningAXE mentioned, the attack was hard to keep consistent. The main issue was between the elbow downpick and the wrist downpick. I like the extra hard thwack that the forearm gives and am pretty sure Iāve already been doing that for a while, but it was difficult getting the first two downpicks even.
- I was having difficulty with the timing between doing the forearm motion and going back to the elbow motion. The motions between the two felt dramatic in terms of movement and it felt odd to stay in tempo at higher speeds.
- The elbow downpick was chewing up the skin right below my pinky, likely because it was hitting the string in a spot that had never developed callouses.
I think all three issues above could easily be sorted out with a bit of practice. I will note that I was starting to pick up speed once I could visualize it as one smooth motion, rather than thinking about firing each different muscle group. The difference in fatigue and muscle tension was really dramatic to me; it felt less āathletic.ā It reminded me of when economy picking started to click more for me, like realizing that I had a long path in front of me but the limits would be way less than the path I was on before.
One other observation I had is that this particular muscle splitting would probably only provide benefit for a riff similar to MoP; I couldnāt find a way to use it for downpicks on one string without dropping the forearm motion. Might be best for melodic death metal riffs using multiple strings and a pedal note.
1 Like
Thatās very cool, you could well be on to something here!
Keep us posted if you decide to continue practicing this method. I can imagine, as you say, that doing it on one string only could be very problematicā¦ but pedal style riffs or anything with many string changes could be a good possibility alright!
Hey amigos. Iāve posted quite a bit on this on a related thread. I love this stuff and trust me, you can learn to easily play this at speed. I will say I think we have a tendency to over-complicate how to make this happen. The different approaches are fascinating and I would never discourage its trying many different approaches that allows us to learn. The trick to this riff is just taking a smaller and lighter approach. If you watch all the videos of those effortlessly playing at speed and faster, you will see their hand is not flying around all over the place - James may be an exception - Ha! Even those who think they have small, controlled movements will surprise themselves watching a video and comparing. The trick to this is just simply calming down those large movements and learning to control within a very small range. Itās simple physics. Once you get the iterative movement down and master how the movement feels at speed, you can learn how to āopen it up a bitā within your capability. The reason ramping up a metronome fails us so miserably is because itās a single sided approach. We reach a point where we hit the limits of the motion used and try to use the same limiting motion to go faster than it will physically allow us - and then get fatigued in the process. Because of the single sided approach, we donāt understand the motion has to be changed significantly in order to go faster. That change means learning how to make even smaller movements than the āsmallā ones you think you are already making. Watch the videos and literally look at how far the hands are deviating from the strings as a reference point. You will see not much. Watch your hand and you will see a much different picture. Also, start by using just the very tip of the pick, choke way up on it. You have to learn not to let a lot of the pick get caught up on the string - this also slows you down. I can literally feel and control whether the tip of the pick makes contact mid-way across the diameter of the string or full diameter of the string. You need to learn this level of control to play it effortlessly at speed. Most tend to get too much of the pick on the string and that will slow you down and cause fatigue as well. Playing at speed is a different kind of iterative motion that the single sided metronome approach does not allow us to feel and without that feel, itās difficult to attain. Tom Gilroy said it best on a different thread: āYou cannot move quickly unless you have efficient movement patterns. You cannot know if your movement patterns are efficient or not unless you try to execute those movements quickly.ā
That is exactly why the single-sided metronome approach fails for this.
Trust me - your movements are too big and you are grabbing too much of the string with the pick. Compare your playing with the videos if you donāt believe. Thatās the trick - nothing more complicated than that. Iāve heard on more than one occasion that James actually plays with a very light touch. I donāt know myself, maybe he uses both a light touch and heavy touch depending on the passage. Once you learn the iterative feeling of the movement at speed using a much smaller, lighter approach you will be able to āopen it upā a bit and use larger movements within the range needed to maintain speed and low fatigue. This is a vastly better approach that I call an in-out approach instead of an out-in approach where we play with large, wild movements and then slowly refine to smaller and smaller. Start small, very small instead and then allow the motion to expand from there. Good luck! You all can do it in a short period of time with this approach!
Im no expert on downpicking but I am pretty happy with the progress ive made the past few months (I can get around 200bpm 8th notes for a few bars worth)
Two guitarists that have helped me tremendously with rhythm focus is John Browne & Olly Steele of the band Monuments. John runs a website called riffhard.com that is solely based on rhythm & downpicking. A friend of mine let me use his login for a few days & I can say the exercises are quite good (from total beginner to absolutely bonkers with the complexity in riffs & time signatures) Both of these guys are absolutely nuts with their downpicking speed.
Ive been trying to mimmick Johnās downpicking form & find that the picky anchor has been a huge benefit for me.
I think either of these guys would be an excellent addition for an interview on rhythm & downpicking for CtC.
1 Like
Iāve noticed I can do downstrokes quite fast with a pronated arm setupā¦ but I donāt really use a pronated setup for anything else other than descending sweeps, so, Iām trying to get it going with a lightly supinated setup and for some reason, Iām really struggling with that.
Re āsplit picking,ā Iām reminded of Moller technique on drums. Interesting.