Hand synchronisation problem

Technique Critique
#1

I have been working on my picking technique for a couple of years now and have made a lot of progress largely down to this site. The biggest problem I seem to have is synchronisation between my right and left hand when I try and go above 140bpm 16th notes. I can smoothly and consistently play tremelo at quite high speeds but it falls apart when I’m picking individual notes. How long does it usually take to lock in your hands? I’m starting to think I havent got enough natural rhythm to get the feel of a pattern.
I have trying to chunk a simple pattern and accent the first note but I still can’t keep it going smoothly.
Any help is appreciated

I have filmed myself
This is my attempt at tremelo.

And this is my attempt at a four note pattern. This take is worse than my usual attempts. Might be something to do with playing early in the morning, thats me excuse anyway :slightly_frowning_face:

#2

Look at the two videos yourself. Can you see that you’re clearly using two different techniques? It might well be that the second technique is quite inefficient and can’t go very fast. The last one does look a little suspect, from a stringhopping perspective. :stuck_out_tongue:

Maybe you can try to go between the fast tremolo and the four string pattern without stopping to try to trick your body into using the same technique. This is likely to sound like a trainwreck, but keep at it. See if you can clean up something fast and sloppy instead of speeding up something clean.

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#3

Its true what you say and I am aware of doing it, but am finding it hard to stop. If I start with the tremelo movement then add the pattern I immediately lose sync or go into a string hopping movement. I will keep trying and hopefully it will click.

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#4

I second @lars’s comment! It’s basically two different players in the two videos :slight_smile:

between losing sync and hopping, I think losing sync is a smaller problem to solve. So maybe you can take the tremolo speed down just a little (but keep it above your “hopping speed”) , and start playing some left hand pattern with whatever degree of sync you can manage. As usual you can posy a video and we can all take a look :slight_smile:

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#5

I think your trying to go fast is the cause here. Your left hand knows how to go much faster, but your right hand can’t and so they go out of sync whenever you try to play fast. I’m sure you can play with great sync if you slow down, right?

So I think the job here is to use another motion (e.g. the tremolo motion in this thread) that makes the job of the right hand much easier, so you can keep up with your left hand at greater tempos.

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#6

Oh do I recognise that second video!

I’ve taken to calling it turtling. With your wrist straight out in front of you, it’s still possible to rotate the forearm but it doesn’t seem to produce an efficient technique.

The arm can rotate from the elbow about ninety degrees to the left and ninety degrees to the right. Once you are going from the left side to the right side about the horizontal the turtling starts, you’re on the back of your shell and you can’t get a usable technique.

Aaargh, turtling!

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#7

I have got a bad case of it :slightly_smiling_face:

#8

I think everyone can get stuck in that way. I spent months looking at it in my playing.

From memory, I think Troy has the wrist bent 10 degrees for wrist motion and 25 degrees for forearm motion. So if you do forearm motion at a few degrees the turtling starts.

#9

Following on from @tommo advice regarding slowing the tempo slightly on the tremolo, you might want to try the following:

  • Play the tremolo for a beat or two and then add the lick playing each note 4 times - this will keep the picking going like a motor (hopefully maintaining the efficient motion), but will give you a bigger gap to fret the notes and nail the timing/synch.
  • Once you do that, then only repeat the notes twice.
  • Then play the lick as usual.

Throughout the above, the idea is to keep the tempo even and accent on the beat, so accents will initially fall on every fret change, then every other and then at the first note of the lick only. If you do that then boom, you have successfully chunked it!

Does the above make sense, if not then I’m happy to make a video later to demonstrate. It might not work miracles instantly, but it helps me when I cant get a lick together at all.

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#10

Thanks PickingApprentice. I have tried that and it definitely helps. The 2 note per fret is where I can feel myself slipping into string hopping territory, but if I go into a burst of tremolo notes I can stop myself doing it.
I will work on this for a while and see if my action improves.

#11

Funnily enough, I almost put that in my post above! It is significantly harder doing 2 notes as opposed to the 4!

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#12

Hi @DjangoUntrained,

a good exercise for synchronisation is always to try to play the same phrase with dotted notes (and inverse them - “lombardic rhythm”). So you play a dotted eighth, then a sixteenth note, dotted eighth and so on… (see the picture below)

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You should also enhance the dotted notes, and make them double, tripple, whatsoever… Just make sure to keep a lot of space between the first and second note, and be very fast with the 2nd and third note. (Other way around with lombardic)
Also make sure to pick pretty hard/loud. I noticed it gets a little sloppy, when you try to play phrases with the left hand. I think maybe it is because you give more attention to it?
But with both things you force your brain to be more precise and it gets more feedback to work on.

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All in all, I think you could try to lift your wrist a bit (away from the body, like gypsy players tend to play) and play more “rest strokes” (when your pick rests on the next string after you played the previous, works best with dps and of course only with the upper 5 strings…). Work with the weight of your arm when you pick, not with strength. Try to relax your arm, especially from the shoulder on, into the picking motion.

Cheers

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#13

Hi @StephanP
Thanks for the suggestions. I have been using the exercises and they are very helpful for synchronisation.
I also tried having my wrist at an angle but as I prefer a DSX motion it doesn’t seem to help much.
Also, I realised that I was catching my pinky on the final lift back to the first note. Your exercise helps me to try and rectify this.
Thanks again.

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#14

For me it’s easier if I play all the notes in my left hand instead of keeping my first finger anchored like a capo.

#15

Good tip. A vid on this topic, by Tom Quayle, recently popped up in my youtube feed. He calls this ‘lazy first finger syndrome’ and feels strongly that what you’re advocating makes it much easier to keep good time. Might be of interest to someone else here:

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#16

Thats is interesting. My first finger jumps up automatically when I put my pinky down. I thought this was a hindrance, but it might actually be a good thing.

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#17

I think what’s described in the video is a personal thing - I don’t feel any tension in my first finger when keeping it in place doing that exercise, and it’s certainly not trying to lift off or generate any other unwanted hand movement. But I remember reading that it was good to minimise movement when I was first learning, and worked on it then, rather than having to try to fight those uncommanded movements that our fingers seem to naturally do…

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#18

I was very surprised to find out that this approach solves a problem I was having with some Chet Atkins style licks! I was trying to fix the problem the other way around: by barring two strings with the index finger so I wouldn’t be late for the change.

Concentrating on lifting the finger when it’s not needed and getting it ready for the string change is a much better solution.

EDIT: this is absolutely life-changing for me! My left hand is SO much faster and doesn’t get tired if I lift the finger. Say, when practicing 6-note patterns on one string. I feel like my hand just got an upgrade!

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#19

Premise: I love Tom Quayle and his lessons and I’m definitely trying this approach at some point.

That being said, the problem I have with a lot of these picking & fretting lessons is that they may create the impression that there is only one way to do things.

The guitar is so complicated that I prefer to think in terms of options: I now know that I have the option of lifting the 1st finger in certain legato passages. I may or may not do it depending on the passage, whatever feels best.

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#20

@tommo Without thinking about it: what do you naturally do when playing six-note patterns?

I can see that @Troy doesn’t lift the index here:

That to me would be the logical and most natural way to play that. However, my left hand responds differently when I lift the index, I feel I can get faster and less tired. Definitely something to explore.

And what I mentioned above: this solved a technical problem I was having with some licks where the index finger was always slightly late as a result of staying planted on the adjacent string. This is the best and most efficient solution.

And I agree that this should be another tool in the toolbox, not “the” way to do things.

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