Gabrielthorn progress thread

I think that one is starting to suffer from a timing / overall clean perspective. Not to say you can’t improve on it (I’m sure you can), as my point all along is that you’re not allowing yourself to be sloppy at a given tempo, then clean it up over time.

Maybe try something else that you originally posted at a higher speed. I recognize Universal Mind and Erotomania, so I could comment on those.

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This is the erotomania lick on 130 bpm. The string skipping triggers my entire arm and it doesn’t feel comfortable at all. Also, jumping on the lower strings is a hit or miss. I don’t feel the notes are even and it’s a bit sloppy.

Here’s the Universal mind lick on 130 bpm. I get tired quickly and again, a lot of work for the arm. It literally looks and feels like sweeping the streets. The beginning is also off the beat slighlty.

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Just as an aside: if you paste the YouTube link on its own line in your posts (with an empty line before and after), the video will embed automatically.

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Thank you for this, I couldn’t figure out how to do it.

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Agreed, I think you are doing great @gabrielthorn!

I would not spend any more time doing mega-repetitions of these exercises with a metronome - you did enough :slight_smile:

I would suggest working on actual musical passages like in the last two examples.

The metronome can also be stressful/distracting when you are trying to figure out a technique. It is often better to just work in free time and speed up / slow down between different attempts.

You could try for example to see what happens when you try to play the erotomania or universal mind licks “fast”, but without a metronome.

Alternatively/additionally, you could try to add some convenient pulloffs here and there and see if they allow you to play these licks at the target tempo - that would be an excellent starting point to build upon.

In any case, great playing :slight_smile:

EDIT: one more suggestion.

When you feel completely “stuck” with a passage, no matter how many times you try it, try to change something radical. For example, you could try to grip the pick with 3 fingers like EVH / Steve Morse / Albert Lee.

OR you could try starting on an upstroke. or both!

Anything to give your body more chances to move away from muscle memory and discover something new.

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Thank you for your comment and the encouraging words from all of you. When I try playing something new or something I’m struggling with I usually turn off the metronome to get the feel for the lick, but I can’t deny I enjoy playing on a drumbeat or a click as it never lies and tells you straight if you are off the beat and how slow you are in reality.

Since I’ve made this post I feel a big change in my playing. Not in terms of what I can do but I’ve never tried pushing myself the way Pepepicks66 recommended. I couldn’t imagine playing anything beyond on a speed of 140-150 bpm, and now I’m trying to play literally everything on much higher speeds to get a feel of the whole thing, even if I get tired really quickly.

Today I tried playing the Gilbert lick using my current and imo inefficient technique and I pushed it until 170. I play 16th notes, not sextuplets, so it may sound a bit weird.

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good news: it’s not possible to go 170 with an inefficient technique :slight_smile:

Again I think you are doing great! My hope is that the tension you feel is due to the novelty of playing at these higher speeds. It may decrease as you get more used to it and little random variations in your motions go away - but if not let us know!

Yes and no. In my opinion the only way to check if you are really playing in time is to record yourself and then listen later. When we play “live” we can often think we are in time when we are not.

Not saying this is the case in your 170bpm take - you are probably in time - but I have a really hard time hearing the 6s rhythm against the 16th note subdivision :slight_smile:

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I know we all develop at different rates and satisfaction with our current chops is all VERY relative and that we all have different skill-sets etc etc blahblahblah

BUT if I’d wandered in off the street with the ability to shred at 190 bpm like you’re demonstrating from these videos I would be a happy boy! :smiley:

Nice playing and to echo everyone thus far, yeah it sounds clean AF and your ‘it falls apart’ would be my ‘SWEET I’M NAILING IT!’ just as a comparison heh

You can clearly move your hand at the requisite speeds for long enough periods of time (which indicates it is actually VERY efficient btw :smiley: ) to drop some serious solos, so good job. And yeah, I’d echo everything that @Pepepicks66 and @tommo have said thus far. Nice work!

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I also hope this fatique will go away and I’ll be able to maintain these speeds without getting tired so quickly. I’ll post the Gilbert lick playing 6s then.

Thank you but I’ve just pushed myself way beyond my capabilities and I can’t really play any longer than a few bars on that speed. It feels unreal for me and I don’t know what is happening really since Pepepicks66 asked me to push myself way above my comfort zone.

Here’s the Gilbert lick on 110 bpm, 6s.

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I’ve done the picking motion tests as I was curious and seen it in other posts and got this results:

  1. testing your speed: 260bpm for two bars, but after a few repetitions my hand became really tired
  2. Van Halen style wrist motion: 220 bpm
  3. Di Meola style wrist motion: 220 bpm
  4. elbow motion: 240 bpm but the “hyper speed” muscle is already engaging for me on much lower speeds
  5. forearm motion: 220 bpm

Based on my surreal experience on this forum last week and pushing myself to my limit, I decided to give a try to one of my favourite riffs I never ever dared to play. After memorising the notes I set the metronome to 120 bpm (the song is around 125-128 bpm) which is not that far from the actual tempo and gave it a shot. First, it sounded really bad and I felt like my picking hand will break, but after a few shots I’ve ended up being able to play it on 120 bpm although a bit sloppy and the muting needs to be cleaned up for sure, also, the stamina is enough to play through the riff once and that’s it. I recorder it so I can look back at this in the future.

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First off, I’m in no way good enough to give you playing advice so I will let others do that, but just as an objective reader… Dude, your definition of “disasterous” or even “sloppy” is much different from mine. Your playing is extremely clean, and you’re playing fairly complex licks at 180-190 bpm seemingly with little problem. Maybe your hand gets tired but man… your “sloppy” playing is better and cleaner than a lot of other players here. If this is you after just picking the guitar back up, you are a monster player, so give yourself more credit. Also, I would also encourage you to focus on one issue, and one lick, and upload one video for us to review. The number of videos and different licks you’ve posted is a little overwhelming. It’s hard to know where to start. But, you are definitely doing something right!

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Ditto. His “disastrous” would be my “holy shit I’m killing it!”

Again, really good playing.

Thank you for this. Maybe I just need a little time to really understand what is happening as a week ago I was not anywhere near playing these licks on these speeds.

My real problem is with the Gilbert lick and the pentatonic ones but I already made progress on the Gilbert one in the last few days and nailed it on 110 bpm 6s on this video.

Today I tried it on 120 and it just worked…

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The Universal Mind lick sounded very clean, more controlled than the Erotomania one. Do you feel like as you’re pushing the speed, the elbow is getting more involved and locking up your forearm?

That’s exactly what’s happening.

I’ll have to think about it for a little bit, but I feel like that used to happen to me when (I think) I used to use more elbow motion. Trying to remember what changed, and when / how.

Thanks for that. Elbow kicks in a lot when I try to do any string skipping. I’m trying this lick now on 95 bpm 32th notes. It’s not terrible, but lots of elbow for sure.

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Looking at your forearm angle, I think I was able to develop more wrist effective strength and “spread” by angling my forearm to be more perpendicular to the strings. Just my initial thought, I’ll have to look at old pictures + experiment to see how it feels.

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