Guitarist from Singapore, and I wanna power up my alternate picking technique!

Introduce Yourself
#1

Heya ni hao! :slight_smile:

After a year or so of lurking I decided to join this community to see if I can pick up anything new to help refine my guitar technique further.

I’ve been playing guitar since I picked my first acoustic from the age of 15, starting out with punk rock bands and later on discovering Thrash metal stuff into my early 20s and soon enough, the world of progressive metal and technical guitar playing (Dream Theater, Nevermore, Symphony X, those fellas are crazy). I still remember someone playing Yngwie’s Far Beyond The Sun when I was about 18 I think, that put a crater in my brain for a long period of time and I was instantly hooked. I mean, how the actually hell was playing THAT fast possible? I got my first electric around the same time and tried to imitate his rapid fire speed picking but I failed miserably.

I’m now 30 and have acquired all that I can after trying to find different videos on the internet. Mostly still Malmsteen’s VHS tapes uploaded to YouTube, and after a year or 2 I’m able to get to a certain level of speed. But clicking around I found @Troy 's channel, and I entered into some sort of nirvana where all those questions and doubts about my picking technique had been answered. I checked out the Yngwie videos again and again, and that whole pickslanting thing. It was a whole new playground and it motivated me to improve.

Thanks to Troy, I also aspire to become a guitar teacher, and am already halfway there by attaining a Trinity Rock and Pop Grade 8 certification for guitar :slight_smile: I have a private student who I am teaching and I continuously craft my teaching methods after him. I’m currently studying my music theory for ABRSM Grade 5 so that I can teach and taking up a Jazz Fusion guitar course with my teacher.

I think playing wise, my playing still comes off as average sounding and I dont sound very…uh…big, in my playing. Technique wise I still feel that something is lacking and I wanna find out what the problem is and what I can do about it. Ive been influenced mainly by Malmsteen, Petrucci and Jeff Loomis, and I don’t understand how these 3 can have that nice machine-gun like speed and accuracy while having a relaxed hand (or at least I think it is). Ive studied both from Petrucci’s Rock Discipline and Jeff Loomis’ Rock House DVD but I dont get that effortless feel yet aggressive picking sound.

Maybe you guys can help me see what I can’t? Here’s something for a contest that I participated in a year ago.

From what I know, I use too much of my arm, and that only enables me to do very short bursts of speed. Ive tried movement from the wrist but its very weak sounding and doesnt give me that picking power. Any critique is appreciated! :slight_smile:

Thanks and cheers!

3 Likes
#2

I don’t think we will either, your picking hand is out of shot most of the time! :grinning:

You need to be more specific about what you are looking to improve. Considering the blitz at the end of your video, you picking seems pretty brutal and a lot of people would not see you as having a problem! Maybe give some examples of things that you can’t play and post a video of that. It will give us a better opportunity to give feedback.

Elbow picking may not be the thing that is wrong (plenty of elite players do it), the only way to see is to experiment with different motion mechanics to see what would be best. If you havent already, I suggest checking out the antigravity seminar if you are are looking for machine gun picking and check out posts in the forum.

1 Like
#3

Hey, welcome, thanks for posting! Cool to hear you’re working on your teaching skills as well. We have a good number of teachers here in the Cracking the Code community — if you have questions or want to share thoughts on learning / pedagogy feel free to post to #teachers-lounge

Agree with @PickingApprentice it would be useful to get a better closeup look at your picking hand, maybe you could film some new clips and create a new #technique-critique topic. And further detail on specific stuff you feel you struggle with, or examples of things you want to play but feel like you’re hitting a technical bottleneck, would give us more to go on in terms of getting you helpful feedback.

#4

@Brendan @PickingApprentice thank you so much for the advice :slight_smile: definetly will upload a closeup video soon of my right hand for technique critique.

I guess I hit technical bottleneck while learning the first solo of Metropolis Pt 1 by Dream Theater. I’ve got the speed down but I’m having problems maintaining the accuracy half way throughout the solo. I’ve tried doing the 2 way picking slanting technique that Troy demonstrated where you had to switch pick slanting after an odd number of times you picked, as opposed to the Yngwie method where it’s switching to another string on an upstroke. The solo consists of 3 and 6 notes per string, and maintaining the speed let alone the accuracy is driving me nuts lol.

Sorry if I got any detail wrong about the whole pickslanting thingy.

#5

My face melted! You’re in good company with that elbow movement in the run at the end: Steve Morse does the same thing for those types of runs.