Hard stuck at 130 BPM picking

Technique Critique
#7

I’ve been in the same situation (with the same peak tempo as you, around 120-130 bpm 16th notes) in the beginning of February :slightly_smiling_face: And you have a great tremolo already, I’m sure you’ll get there in no time.

Swiping means you just push through the string and mute the note in some way so it is barely noticable on faster tempos. It means you don’t care if you can’t escape the string and you are just pushing through with the pick.

I’d really focus on the elbow motion for a while as it looks pretty smooth and consistent and it could help you to experience how to play fast sooner.

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#8

It looks to me as if you laid your wrist flat on the bridge and lifted it up each time you were changing strings (string hopping).
Instead, try to place it more at an angle and use pick slanting to escape the strings.

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#9

That’s actually super motivating man!! Gives me a lot of hope, because honestly a lot of times it really feels it’s a plateau i just can’t overcome, i’m gonna start practicing with the six notes per string lines and see if i can get it through just elbow motion, now with that being said i noticed you mentioned the elbow motion is downstroke escapes, so i’m guessing the swipes come into play whenever a line ends on an upstroke?

#10

Exactly. And when you are doing descending stuff, it’s easier to add in a helper motion (I use some kind of rotational movement as you can see on my descending scale playing) as you can’t really swipe with elbow on these descending lines, it works only on ascending parts.

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#11

got it, thanks so much for the help and feedback man! Gonna give it a go and try to beat the tendency to use mainly use wrist motion out of me

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#12

thanks for the feedback! definitely a bad habit of mine, and lifting it off the bridge alone actually does help quite a bit

#13

Check out Rusty Cooley, Jason Richardson. Both are elbow players. No one can convience me after seeing those guys that I can’t use my elbow for guitar playing.

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#14

Bro its funny you mention Jason because he’s exactly who i thought of when everyone mentioned elbow motion ahaha, him and Stephen Taranto are my two heroes when it comes to right hand technique

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#15

Fun fact, Jason says he’s picking only from his wrist and it’s a bad habit to use any elbow motion :smiley: I think many of these great players are not even aware of what they are doing.

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#16

that’s crazy considering that me, someone who’s terrible at diagnosing these things was able to tell with Jason because of how obvious it is ahaha :joy:

#17

Just don’t tell him, he may feel offended :thinking:

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#18

Man, that tremolo is clean a/f! That sounds fantastic. You’re clearly able to sync your hands on a single string, so that’s job 1 and job 2 figured out!

I don’t know how familiar you are with the concepts but, an elbow based motion like your killer tremolo demonstration in the last video is (almost always) a down stroke escaping motion, ie: you’ll want to switch strings after a down stroke.

EDIT - I should’ve kept reading, clearly this has all been covered by @gabrielthorn lol so, yeah what he said.

The tremolo picking is still awesome though. :smiley:

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#19

thank you so much for the kind words! much appreciated! :grin:

the thing is, a lot of the concepts are still a bit foreign and hard to understand for me, i understand pickslanting to a degree and the problem of string hopping but because when learning guitar i thought wrist motion was the only viable method for picking i have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around elbow picking although i seem to be unconsciously doing it in my tremolo

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#20

I hear that. ‘Pickslanting’ is kind of a misnomer for how the motions and the way they relate to playing is explained now. Troy has said on numerous occasions that the slant of the pick actually has very little to do with the player’s ability to clear strings when playing.

That ability is influenced directly by the path of the pick stroke when playing through a string. Some paths escape on an upstroke (think Eric Johnson) some paths escape on a downstroke (think John Mclaughlin or your tremolo motion!) and some paths are gently arced and allow for escapes on an up and a downstroke, at the expense of a bit of absolute top end speed, likely due to the increased complexity of the motion (think Martin Miller) and this type of motion is more often used when playing like, 1 note perstring phrases like Steve Morse’s Tumeni Notes for instance.

There are all sorts of additional variables like ‘single escape helper motions’ and (insert whatever OTHER variables help allow playing like this here) but for now, I’d concentrate on looking at the phrasing other primarily elbow driven players use and pick out something of theirs you like and practice that.

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#21

I’m a lifelong elbow picker, though I’ve worked really hard over the last year to become a wrist picker. Things that I worked on early on and taught my students was to work independently with each hand.

You know that your right hand is fast, you’ve proved it. Your synchronization will come, but get your left hand up to speed. Do this by just drilling simple 3nps patterns with hammer on and pull offs. Set the metronome at 110bpm, and play sextuplets legato. Just play the major scale (or any of the modes of it) and repeat twice on each string the 3np pattern. Down pick the first time, up stroke the second, move to the next string. Really hit the down stroke hard.

The next step is stay on one string and alternate, legato twice, picking twice.

Lastly, play 16th note picked patterns at 180. On the G string (or any), play 11 12 14 11 - 12 rest. The pattern starts and ends on a down stroke on the beat. You can play this fast with your right hand, you’ve proved it. If you can’t get it to work, try it legato, picking the 11 downstroke and the last 12 downstroke. Work on keeping it in time if you play legato.

Once you have these concepts, you can move on to changing strings, using the knowledge that changing after playing a downstroke will be easier.

I want to add, the reason I’m working on wrist picking is that I’ve always struggled with what I call the in-between speeds. Between 115-150bpm 16ths, picking across strings in time with elbow motion was really hard. The tempo just felt like the locked in feeling of elbow was too tight, to move that slow. I’ve watched 100s of hours of video and most elbow pickers play wrist style at medium tempos, then lock it to elbow at higher speeds. Michael Angelo is maybe the one exception. Since I’ve switched to wrist motion, I’ve been able to fill in that in-between with wrist and go back to elbow for high speed (see Vinnie Moore’s instructional, he does this too).

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#22

ahh okay gotcha thanks a bunch, this does clear up a lot for me and helps with my understanding, i will definitely take the advice of looking into the phrasing of other elbow driven players, and also look into the escape helper motions because it does seem quite limiting to only be able to speed through downstroke escape phrases!

#23

hey man thanks for the feedback there’s some really helpful tips here and cool exercises! my left hand is actually quite a bit faster then my right because i’m a left handed player so legato always came easier to me then picking (which has caused a bunch of problems) so right now I’m mostly focused on getting the right hand mechanics down so i can get it up to speed with my left hand.

It’s interesting you mention playing medium speed tempos with the elbow being a difficult aspect because i 100% relate to that, it’s the main reason i think i’m having trouble adjusting to the elbow style because i can go really fast (tremolo) but slowing it down the speeds you mentioned it feels really stiff and awkward (and a lot of the passages i want to play are at those speeds) so perhaps i should take a look at some wrist picking as well

#24

Playing wrist style has really helped. I was in a death metal band for years, where I was the main songwriter, so all of the songs were 180-220bpm, elbow technique for everything. I got older, switched to a rock cover band, and playing simple rhythms like the verse to Crazy Train, was difficult to keep perfectly in time, because it was at that in between speed. Playing a simpler solo like Cum on Feel the Noise, the last ascending 16th pentatonic, I couldn’t do it at that tempo. Switching it to wrist, those parts are so much easier now. A healthy dose of palm muting doesn’t hurt when playing and learning the wrist style.

#25

Wow thanks everyone for the great responses :slight_smile:

I would just reiterate that - currently - @zetps’s best motion is the elbow motion from the last clip. I would recommend using this immediately on DSX (downstroke escape) licks like the one @gabrielthorn kindly tabbed. Don’t waste any more time practicing the inefficient motions in the first handful of videos.

This is the fastest route to immediately experience what “fast & easy” playing feels like. In the future, you can always try to learn new motions (like wrist) through experimentation. But having at least one technique that works gives you a benchmark for what “correct” should feel like.

Troy’s quote (ish): it’s either easy or wrong

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#26

I can also play tremolo picking from the elbow at fast speeds. When skipping or changing strings, not so much and the attempt tends to make the guitar bounce uncontrollably.

For that matter, i can’t play as fast while changing notes on one string, so I’m not sure how to connect tremolo picking to speed picking. I can tremolo pick many notes down one string, but I’m hitting each note more than once and that isn’t acceptable.