First time post

Technique Critique
#1

Hey! First post here. I’ve watched videos and practiced different forms of slant picking and still stuck around 110bpm for a loooong time.

I’ve played for 20 years or so and past few years I’ve been practicing a lot. I’ve been practicing alternate picking M7, m7, dom and m7b5 in various forms up and down the neck.

I can pick clean at 90 and start struggling at 100 and start falling apart around 105-110. I just can’t seem to speed. I feel like a slow runner and it’s impossible for me to speed up.

I’m hoping this video shows and helps identify my problem. For some reason YouTube uploads not the best quality and won’t upload the slo mo which is how I captured this. Hopefully it’s good enough.

1 Like
#2

Hi Octopussy,

While I’m quite a newer guitarist, something that helped me find a fluid motion that i am practicing and speeding up with was paying attention to my fingers. it looks like your thumb is flopping a lot when you try to speed up, and for me, i realized i kept “picking with my thumb” and it made me swipe or “air pluck”. Another thing I’ve noticed is that a pattern you’ve practiced poorly for a long time can get you in a rut as well. For instance, i came up with a brand new pattern and quickly learned it with my motion. Try something entirely new, and try to pay attention to whatever joint is preventing you from speeding up. While it was my thumb for me, it could be something else for you!

#3

Hey man! I’m also new here but maybe this can helps, I see you use ur fingers to pick in a not very continued way, they seem to do the movements in different ways every time, something that helps is to have a common kind of technique that is more regular and when you work on it it will not abandon you so easily.

1 Like
#4

Thanks for the reply. I can’t seem to pick as fast or accurate without moving the thumb. I’ve tried to keep my thumb straight and not move it but yeah, struggling with that.

#5

Thanks for the reply. I looked back and didn’t understand exactly what you meant.

#6

Hi @Octopussy! Are these speed problems happening with this particular lick you are showing, or is it a general problem?

This arpeggio you are playing is a quite complicated line to speed up if you haven’t yet found a reliable double-escape motion: it requires both upstroke and downstroke string changes, and it has a couple of one-note-per string passages.

For speed development it’s more common to start simpler, for example by starting on a single string, or by having licks with only one type of string change (e.g., only upstroke string changes).

Are there any simpler licks that you can play faster?

#7

Hey Tommo, thanks for the reply.

All licks I think. But maybe this picking is for certain types of licks?

These licks are basically just practicing arpeggios in maj/min/dim/m7b5. I’ve been doing them as a warm up for a couple of years slowly creeping up speed. Solid at 90 good at 100; over that and completely falls apart.

I can tremolo just fine. Even 3 note per string scales fall apart a bit faster but can’t do them super fast.

I’ve actually looked for licks for this type of picking but can’t finf anything specific.

#8

Thanks for the reply @Octopussy!

Great news! Tremolo picking is a great starting point. When you have time, film a clip of that following our guidelines (attached below). As a first step we’ll try to have a look at what type of motion you do when you do the tremolo. Typically we expect to see either downstroke escape (DSX) or upstroke escape (USX) motion. Once we’ll know that we can suggest some lines that are optimised for that picking motion and that can help you develop speed :slight_smile: