Hello, everyone! First time posting to the group here, I was hoping to get some feedback on my alternate picking!
There are days where I feel like it’s smooth and some other days where it just feels off. I also have a little forearm tightness when playing for a while. Any advice would be appreciated!
Cheers!
Looks great, so you’re alternate picking ascending and USX descending a lot?
Yeah! Only problem is my forearm doesn’t really feel all to loose while I’m doing it. It gets tight throughout my forearm. Any thoughts?
I gave up on alternate picking for that exact reason, it’s constant tension, at least for me, I only use it if a line or part of a song needs it. Bare in mind thats three years ago, I’m not a professional by any means but am obsessive about technique. I think you’re much better at alternate than me, what you’re doing is really smooth. Just keep hammering away at it. I’m sure others can give better responses. Though In my personal opinion once you’re at a certain level you are the best teacher for yourself as you can feel everything thats going on, you have everything you need to improve. Tho… I’m not an alternate picker so anything I say could be nonsense lol
Now I just do full usx with various other techniques if it’s necessary. Though I don’t learn a lot of other people’s songs, so I’m free to do full usx without much issue, I think it’s all you really need most the time with a few pull offs to fill out the lack of alternate.
One thing I never see get emphasized is in your practice pick as lightly as you possibly can, thats where all the feeling is, if you train super light it’s stimulating the fine motor movements. The nervous system rather than the muscles. If you’ve ever had a few beers and played great n everything felt great it’s because your nervous system is being stimulated, ofcourse to much drink and it all falls apart.
If you crank up the distortion it will help a lot in being super light in picking. It highlights every mistake
Also I sware there was a video about mouse dpi and learning, if anyone remembers that? on ctc
Basically changing the dpi forced adaptation. So in terms of picking you can do this by using different size picks, or guitars lol
I noticed this massively the first time I got my vr headset, I spent a few hours in half life alex and after picked up my guitar, you could literally feel the plasticity in the nervous system. The guitar felt different as my brain was adapting to vr, then right back to guitar.
One thing I could add tho, is try use your pinky as an anchor, it lets you be much more perpendicular to the strings with some control rather than the gliding nail technique you’re using.
Heres jason using it
Looks and sounds great!
On the forearm tightness, the best test of an efficient motion is often just a tremolo on a single string, can you sustain 170-180bpm 16th notes for around 30 secs?
If you can then you’re good to go and you just need to ingrain the motion/setup you’re using when it feels smooth so you can instantly lock into the correct setup when you pick up the guitar 
Thank you for the kind feedback and all the responses man! I watched the video and am going to start incorporating that pinky anchor into my practice to see how natural that feels.
Thanks again!
Thank you for the response, next time I pick up the guitar I’m trying it!