General picking irritations

Technique Critique
#1

Hi,

I have been back into practicing my picking in ernest again over the last few weeks ( I dip in and out) and have been observing my picking live as well as using the magnet and have noticed that when my picking locks into one way of picking that feels great, I can shred well, but after a few days it stops feeling great, tension builds in and the accuracy deteriorates. I then lock the pick into another slightly different way of holding the pick which then feels comfortable and again allows me to shred with little tension, the same thing then happens again. Itā€™s almost like Iā€™m going round the houses with a range of pick grips/wrist/forearm picking and for the life of me, I have no idea why. It feels like when I approach high speeds, my wrist picking disappears and I end up in forearm land but with tonnes of tension in my upper arm and shoulder; as though Iā€™'m about to fight off a lion or something. I thought maybe I was holding the pick too tightly, so completely loosen the grip to allow more flop which works for a short time, but then the same old problems creep back in again. I also experience the pick getting stuck on a note when Iā€™m practicing single-string phrases too even with a decent amount of flop (as it were)

For context, Iā€™m naturally a DSX player and love starting each picking phrase using an upstroke for reasons best known to nature.

It feels as though my body canā€™t settle on one pick grip method which works for me. This then affects my ability to consistently pick at high speeds. I have had this issue for many many years and it would be lovely to solve this some time soon.

Many thanks,

Matt

#2

Addendum: I have also noticed from filming my picking technique, that my thumb and forefinger arenā€™t level when holding the pick (if that makes sense), i.e. that my forefingers sits lower down than my thumb does. Should I be aiming for these to be level, or is this normal for the rest of you too? Thanks.

#3

Is it possible you might be over practicing some of those things? Iā€™ve fallen into a similar rut from time to time and I find that itā€™s usually because I get obsessive about one particular lick or pattern and I have to force myself to stop and move to something else.

I find Iā€™m most productive when Iā€™m genuinely having fun and enjoying what Iā€™m working on. Then the gains happen. When I get frustrated and ā€œhung upā€ is when what you described above about ā€œit felt great for a while but now it doesnā€™t.ā€

Also, consistency in motor skill takes time to bake in. I have a book on practice pedagogy written for classical musicians that expressly states what you described can happen when we expect recent gains to just be permanent automatically:

ā€œAs you work from day to day, you will be surprised one day to find everything feels easier. You might try to go fast and exceed your expectations. Beware of your desire to repeat this unexpected success. If you adjust your standard expectations to the level of your unexpected success you are likely to be disappointed Alone in your practice room you may fool yourself into thinking you have greater control than is the case. If you pretend to yourself that your control is greater than it really is, you may even lose some of the control you have gained because your body will tense in its effort to act out the impossible. Control will happen when it happens.

Does that sound like it resonates with you?

#4

Hi,

This is really interesting, I have never thought that maybe Iā€™m obsessing over it all. I mean, I totally obsess over picking and being super-fast, to the point that I neglect to even learn actual tunes or make music in favour of trying to be as fast and as clean as PG (I just canā€™t get over Intense Rock 1, it almost traumatised me). I guess, in my quest to be like the aforementioned in terms of technique, when you catch a glimpse of what youā€™re after by having a good run for a few days, logic dictates that if you maintain everything physically as it is when you are able to burn the guitar up, you should be able to repeat. As you say though, perhaps the undoing of all of this is the over-obsessing about it and causing unconscious tension when trying to execute those lightning fast runs.

Thanks, Matt

#5

No problem, itā€™s a bad habit to fall into and Iā€™ve been guilty of it myself. Really I make my biggest gains when I only do minimal work on ā€œexercisesā€ and do more practice on actual songs or solos or licks.

A friend of mine whoā€™s big in the gypsy jazz community posted this video recently and thereā€™s a ton of truth in it. It goes along with that excerpt I posted in terms of how to have realistic expectations of your growth as a player.

I took lessons from Emil Werstler many years ago and he described technique as a pyramid. The bottom of the pyramid is your baseline ā€œroll out of bed in four hours of sleep with a fever and I can do itā€ level of technique. The top of the pyramid is you in your bedroom after playing for an hour or two and totally in the zone.

The top of your pyramid is not your actual performance level. The bottom is.

Practice so the bottom of your pyramid is performance ready. Not the top. And donā€™t expect the top to be your performance ability.

If you wanna know how patient you should be, Allan Holdsworth said it would take him two years of working on a concept in the practice room until he felt ready to improvise with it on stage.

#6

Totally fair points, and the comment from Holdsowrth is very interesting. I guess when I was younger and watching the terrifying instructional videos out at the time, it was easy to assume that these were superhumans who could roll out of bed and do this stuff with minimal warm up, when it doesnā€™t work that way.

That said, I have heard on some of the material on CtC that to some degree, if your technique is working then you should be able to get pretty fast with a given lick without spending hours warming up or being knackered after playing it. For me, trying to figure out over-practise v poor technique v best pick grip v picking motion is proving a bit tricky.

Thanks, Matt

#7

[quote=ā€œMattyherbert4, post:6, topic:84395, full:trueā€]
That said, I have heard on some of the material on CtC that to some degree, if your technique is working then you should be able to get pretty fast with a given lick without spending hours warming up or being knackered after playing it. For me, trying to figure out over-practise v poor technique v best pick grip v picking motion is proving a bit tricky. [/quote]

While that is true, when I watch Troyā€™s tutorials, I think the idea is that the core fundamentals of the technique, if theyā€™re working, should be there, but that doesnā€™t mean youā€™re then able to instantly bust out any lick at any insane tempo that fits your escape motions with zero effort or practice. Thereā€™s so many more factors that go into playing, both mechanical and musical, that youā€™re still going to need to put the time in and be patient with yourself.

Anecdotally, I can confirm that my biggest technique breakthroughs came randomly for no good reason. Just one day I felt something feel like way smoother and then I tried to replicate it, sometimes it stuck sometimes it was fleeting. But then like a week later I could do it again with better control. Over time, it just becomes baked in.

#8

Being patient with myself is the really hard part! I think mental and physical tension has been a constant companion over the years; caring too much about it all I think.

Itā€™s just frustrating when you get fomenting youā€™ve been striving for, ripping up and down the fretboard effortlessly, and then the next dat itā€™s gone again.

#9

I went back through the relevant section of the picking primer today, trying out the speed on each of the most common picking motions. I struggled with some of the things Troy outlined, but I noticed that if I were to pretend to pick fast while playing air guitar then my arist and pick grip took on a completely different form. I could seem to pick air guitar really fast.

When I got home, I tried this out in a guitar and noticed that I had better control of the pick on the strings if I adopted more of an EVH arm position. I tried this out and after a bit of awkwardness, I could pick reasonably quickly quite comfortably and in control, but had loads of strong noise owing to the lack of dampening, so moved the arched arm/hand position down so my wrist made contact with the strings lightly, held my pick in a loose grip and for a few seconds at a time I think I experienced relaxed and controlled fast picking, that is before I tensed up again in my shoulder; I noticed that in this new position, my elbow doesnā€™t really make contact with the guitar like it did when playing my ā€˜usualā€™ way. This elbow contact (I think) impeded my ability to string track effortlessly. Either way, I think I may have had the wrong and hand position all along, it seems to be somewhere between gypsy jazz, Paul Gilbert and EVH hand/arm position, and classical guitar forearm/wrist position too.

#10

Regarding the pyramid concept. Thatā€™s accurate and a good way to picture it.

I describe it as:

  1. What I can play at home
  2. What I can play at rehearsal
  3. What I can play at the gig

The quantity decreases as I go down the list, and that fact is as frustrating as anything.

I donā€™t care HOW easy it feels at homeā€¦you do not really know what you can actually play when it matters until youā€™ve done it in front of people, or (to a lesser degree) recording live.

You get one shot. I fall on my face as much as I donā€™tā€¦but you keep trying until itā€™s like breathing.

You can wipe up the blood laterā€¦ :wink: Besides - 99% of the time the audience has no clue.

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#11

For those of us that do music as either a hobby or side thing, one huge disadvantage we have against our heroes is how many more gigs they have played and continue to play.

I used to gig a lot and the flipside to this list is, once I would REALLY nail something at a gig it was often cemented as something I could just ā€œdoā€ at will in any situations from that point. Like the equivalent of 100 good sessions of #1 or #2 on your list.

It being their full time job, think how many more of those opportunities our heroes have. Plus, they only have to worry about sounding like themselves while we are trying to imitate them all :upside_down_face:

CtC has amazingly leveled the playing field but Iā€™m often reminded of realities like the above. The deck is not equally stacked.

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#12

100%

I fully recognize that a lot of us donā€™t gig (any more, never didā€¦etc), or donā€™t have a band or buddies to jam with.

In that case - and you really do want to nail certain things as easily as grabbing an open G chord - find ways to test yourself. One-shot recording. Make the dog (or cat) listenā€¦your spouse, friend, whatever. Find a way to have more at stake than just ā€˜getting itā€™. Even slight added tension will highlight things you never hear/saw.

As painful as it may be (I despise listening back to myself), youā€™ll hear things, learn things and just get better.

#13

One of my new yearā€™s resolutions (kidding, those are silly but the timing worked out in this case) was to review my playing MUCH more. Itā€™s so easy to make excuses so I setup a web cam and fed my ampā€™s output jack to my audio interface. I use OBS for screen/vid recording so I set the audio interface as the input device. I always practice right at my desk anyway, so now this is within reach anytime I pick up a guitar. Now I can see and hear exactly what just happened. Itā€™s always fascinating how that differs from what I perceived during the take. But, it steadily improves.

The recipe is of course to have a goal in what was played, listen (and look, since we care about motions) and see what went well and what didnā€™t. Next take, try to do more of the good and fix the bad, until there is no more bad :slight_smile:

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#14

When I do thatā€¦it feels like Iā€™m looking at my face in a restroom mirror under the most intense set of fluorescent lights.

Every cut, scrape, scratch, scar, scab, bruise, boil, bump, pimple, zit, wart, welt, and abscess youā€™ve had since birth all seem to show up at once.

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#15

That was another thing Emil told me when I asked him how to improve my right hand. He said ā€œforce yourself to do it live in front of people and suck at until you stop sucking at it.ā€

Super blunt statement, but can confirm, forcing myself to play certain things live, especially on a tour night after night, did more for me in 2 weeks than 2 months practicing at home.

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#16

The only thing Iā€™m capable of doing in that scenario is tripping my way to the toilet, if I even bother to make it.

#17

Yes itā€™s depressingly true. For me, I am playing at my best when I have f**ked up my way through what Iā€™m trying to master, then found my groove again after about 10 mins of really bad playing, congratulate myself, take a break, go back and find I canā€™t do it again. Atm, the only thing I seem to be able to do effortlessly on anything even vaguely technical, is economy picking 3nps scales down and up across 3 strings, straight down and straight back up. Oh, and also sextuplets descending across two strings in a cycling manner using double up strokes Ala Joe Stump(for reasons best known to my brain). Anything else appears to be taking a lot of time, but I plod on regardless!

#18

Iā€™m not sure Iā€™ve got the balls to do that yet! lol. Seriously though, sounds like a good idea. I also hate hearing or weatching myself play; the truth hurts :wink:

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