Greeting from the sunny (and snowing!) UK

Introduce Yourself
#1

Hi all, thought I’d say hello - been lurking here for a few days and decided to take the plunge and register. I’ve been through a fair bit of the picking primer already (have seen all of the CtC series on youtube over the last few weeks so a lot of it a refresher rather than anything…).

I’ve been playing guitar for a lot longer than I care to remember - had a couple of group lessons on classical guitar when I was very young (7ish I seem to remember) but nothing after than until my sixth form years and electric guitar lessons at school. Got back into guitar playing at uni and I’ve noodled around since then and improved slowly to the point where I can play most things rhythm but my lead playing is still pretty ropey. I’m a big Dream Theater fan and can hack my way through some of their easier stuff and bits of solos but get stuck when he starts going wild.

Anyway, I’m in my mid 40s now and found an old Paul Gilbert video (Intense Rock I) in the loft and it’s inspired me to make a concerted effort to improve my picking. I’ve dabbled in economy picking in the past after seeing Frank Gambale play and have a fair bit of his material but never got really good at it. I’m also old enough to have some of the instructional material Troy references in CtC including Speed Mechanics by Troy Stetina which I did make a decent effort to get through many years ago.

As of today, I am trem picking comfortably at 195 but pushing to 200 I can feel my right hand tensing up pretty quickly. I can do bursts of a couple of bars at 210 but I think that’s about the limit right now. I can play the six note pattern from the downward pickslanting section of the primer at 110 which is my max right now as the left hand pattern falls apart (ie. I can feel my wrist tensing very quickly). The “pop tarts lick” I can play accurately at 140 but it is pretty sloppy at 150 for the same reason - tension.

One thing - I realize already that I’m a fair bit faster, or at least more comfortable playing those single string patterns starting with an upstroke. I find it much easier to synchronize than if I start with a downstroke. Is that normal??

I’m feeling like the limitation here is actually my left hand rather than the picking one. Especially with playing stuff that moves around like the pop tarts lick. I guess it could be synchronization issue but I do have slightly restricted joint mobility (especially in my left wrist / hand) due to an arthritic condition. What are you guys working on at the same time to improve left hand technique or is practicing these picking licks sufficient?

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#2

Welcome! Some thoughts:

  1. Dream Theater! Getting into John Petrucci’s playing really forced me to improve my technique.
  2. Watching videos of Paul Gilbert made me modify my technique yet again.
  3. Never got into Gambale or economy picking, but the people that do it smoothly are insane! Satisfying to watch and listen to.
  4. I have that Stetina book!
  5. Picking hand tension I found to be a “personal discovery” hurdle. I think everyone has to find the right combination of relaxing and tensing muscles to overcome the feeling of “welp, my picking hand has bricked.”
  6. Just because I’ve recently been about his playing, Shawn Lane used to play certain riffs starting only on an upstroke, saying that it would “just fall apart” if he didn’t. Obviously it worked for him, and I’ve yet to hear anyone say “yeah he’s a great player, but I just wish he started on a downstroke…” My takeaway is that “normal” is subjective, and if it sounds good and works for you, it is good.
  7. I’ve found that left hand stretches are just not what I like to do, or too many position shifts. I climb a fair amount and my fingers tend to be some degree of sore all the time, so stretching just doesn’t feel the best. Position shifts I tend to suck at “aiming” and don’t feel my playing is as reliable when I jump around so much. I tend to arrange things to be more “one finger per fret”, and would rather string skip than stretch or position shift. Try to change fingerings to work for you!
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#3

Hello from a fellow Brit!

Looks like we are in a similar place - I’m a few years older, early 50s, so my targets are Yngwie and Vinnie Moore rather than Petrucci. :smiley: But it seems a pretty common affliction, I’ve take to calling it Middle-Aged-Shred. :rofl:

Sixes at 110 is pretty quick, that’s around 180 for 16ths. I’ve just had to work quite hard on these to get them approaching 100.

I posted in another thread that I feel I have to be in the ballpark of the tempo doing the pattern legato first, but once I’m in that area, I just start trying to get the picking going and see how it goes.

On your point about moving around the neck, Troy touches on this in Volcano somewhere I think. If you actually break it down, the left hand doesn’t really move that fast, string to string. Once I got into that, I found it helped. Find a JP solo on Youtube, watch his first finger. :grinning:

Plus chunking can make a difference: if you treat each string as a unit, it’s like you get to take a breath every time you change strings (mentally at least). That works for me with Yngwie’s stuff. A lot of his descending runs break down into 3NPS-4NPS groupings: once you internalise that you start to see a run of 20 plus notes as 3 chunks plus a few pickups or end notes.

Oh, and I have a bunch of the Gambale stuff too!