Help me, I just can't do it

Technique Critique
#21

Thanks. I have been grinding the yngwei 6 note chunk, the first 8 notes of the pop tart lick, and a simple four note descending chromatic lick (since I have identified going pinky-ring-middle-index is a problem for me as opposed to the other direction. I am keeping a chart where I track my progress with a metronome. I am up to 95 bpm on the six not yngwei chunk. (6 notes per best). So that’s much slower than my tremolo which means that my sync is certainly a limiting factor. Changing strings is another limiting factor of course but probably irrelevant at this point. I will continue to grind these up and then revisit. Thanks.

Ultimately I am a bluegrass player so I want to actually have a double escape motion but I try to use your advice of trying it fast until it clicks rather
Than working up slowly but can’t seem to click. I have worked up from 95 bpm to 110bpm 16th notes doing that and I’m hoping by properly learning an usx speed, and improving that sync, it may transition over to the bluegrass technique. But I still am having half my practice be bluegrass even if only 110 bpm. That’s my end goal is just to play bluegrass up to 135/140 bpm.

I know Grier uses Down escape SOMETIMES but he doesn’t seem to follow rules i.e only change after down strokes. He changes after upstrokes and skips strings entirely as well without losing speed. Seems when he’s on the lower bass strings he does use down escape but when he’s on the high strings it reverses. So while he does seem to favor down escape in certain cases, usually when moving to a higher string, he doesn’t use it as a rule and he doesn’t let him constrict him to only certain amounts of notes per string or follow rules. He can play whatever note he wants whenever he wants, and he just happens to use down escape when it’s called for, as opposed to people like yngwei who use their system as a rule and configure their licks around those rules. So I consider Grier a 2wps and Double escape player, even though you identify sections of wheel hoss where he favors down escape, I notice sections where he doesn’t and where the transcription doesn’t add up. (I have transcribed literally dozens of his solos from video. He follows no rules I am pretty sure of it ) Do you agree? I Ultimately need a double escape motion I think. But I’m going to train up my one string chunks as discussed above to get sync up and learn what it feels like to be fast.

Sorry for Novel. I want nothing more. I appreciate this site so much.

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#22

Everything you’re saying about David is on point for his faster playing. For his medium speed playing he’s mostly all double escape.

But try not to overthink this. The core requirement for all guitar picking is a speedy, fluid, synchronized alternate picking motion. It doesn’t really matter what kind of motion it is at first. If you don’t have at least one motion, then you have no reference point for what synchronized fluid playing feels like, and that will hold you back in anything you’re trying to do because you won’t really know when you’ve got it and when you don’t.

I’m not really following what you mean by grinding up slowly. If you can already pick fast and it sounds good then you don’t have a picking motion problem. If you’re saying you have hand sync issues that’s fine, but I wouldn’t phrase this like you can’t play fast. If left hand and right hand are both fast, then you have no “speed” issues per se.

Learning hand synchronization, just like picking motion, is about trying lots of different tempos until you can learn to recognize what sync feels like. When a fretting pattern is unfamiliar to you, sometimes it can feel very different when played fast compared to slow. So hanging out at slower speeds isn’t helping you learn why the fast speed feels different and has errors. It is not a linear process where you move up slowly over time. It’s more like a cluster or scatter plot of accuracy that improves at all tempos gradually.

Can you pick fast with smoothness to where the motion feels easy and the attack sounds smooth? Then when you introduce left hand on a simple repeating phrase, can you do the same thing but with a little sloppyness if they’re not locked up? Why is there sloppyness, is the fretting wrong at the faster speed? Are notes missing? Can the video help tell you what is wrong at that speed?

Film that and let’s take a look.

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#23

Here is a video

ok so, you say if i already can pick fast and smooth then i don’t have a picking motion problem. But i do, because my real goal is to play double escape blue grass, and my fast smooth picking motion is a single escape tiny stroke tremolo.

practicing yngwei chunks, i already have my tremolo up to 180bpm, and left hand sync is up to about 140 bpm (16th notes). That theoretically is fast enough to play bluegrass right? But no, because in bluegrass i need to change strings after up strokes and downstrokes and not be counting notes on strings when i improvise common bluegrass vocab,in bluegrass, i use a double escape… and THAT particular motion, even on one note, i can’t do paster than 110 bpm 16th notes.

So i am practicing my yngwei chunks, just to learn what it feels like to play fast, and to improve my had sync, but i still spend half my time playing bluegrass and that speed won’t budge because i can’t find a double escape motion.

#24

Thanks for filming! The Gypsy style form looks pretty good and the attack sounds good too. Not only that, but your synchronization is actually pretty close. The landmark note seems reasonably tight. The problem is your coordination inside the phrase. You leave the ring finger down too long on note 4 of the pattern so sometimes you’re not playing note 5 at all. Watch this in slow motion and take a look.

Think like an engineer. Now that you know what the problem is, what tests can you devise to fix it? What other fingerings or phrases can you use to test to see if and when the problem goes away sometimes and what causes it? I can’t figure this all out for you, but you can - I know it!

No, you use stringhopping. You do not have an efficient double escape motion. There is almost no difference in feel between single escape and efficient double escape, and no feeling of speed limit either. If you feel a difference and a speed limit, then you’re doing it wrong. If you only had a single escape motion and just played a bluegrass tune all the way through completely ignoring any string changes that your brain tells you aren’t supposed to work, this approach would be actually closer in feel to what someone like Molly Tuttle does than what you’re doing here.

So… get any picking motion down, any one, I don’t care what it is. If you feel tension and speed limit, it’s wrong, don’t waste any more time with that approach. Think about what an amazing time saver that is. No more hours “grinding up slowly” as you say, because now you can automatically know when to not bother with that. Awesome.

Have you tried this motion yet? What does this look like when you do it?

Also, when you film test clips, just the playing is enough and no more than 30 seconds with no narration please. It doesn’t take more than that to see the issue and it just makes me hunt around to get past the talking.

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#25

thanks Troy - i will shorten videos and elimnate narration going forward, sorry about that.

So 1) yes when i play bluegrass i am string hopping, i should say that i am TRYING to play a double escape motion, but failing. Althought to me the line between those two does seem to be a bit blurry.

  1. i have tried downstroke escape but my hand can’t seem to figure it out. Upstroke escape seems to be what I can do for the time being, so if the goal is to learn any motion, i’m going to stick with that one since I seem to be able to do it already, and can’t figure out the others.

My goal in doing all this and joining this site is to learn to play a double escape motion in bluegrass up to even just 130 bpm, hopefully 140. But since it currently seems physically impossible for me to figure out a double escape motion, I’m just going to try to nail upstroke escape first, and then maybe try double escape later.

As for the sync issues you pointed out, yes you nailed them and I am crafting drills to adress each of those weaknesses. But there’s one weakness that is even worse than any of the ones you pointed, and that is changing strings. I can’t seem to do that, even if i just mute the strings and forget about the left hand and try to play four notes on high E and four notes on B, switching off, i just can’t do that. So, i am crafting drills to work on that as well.

I guess i will keep working hard at building out my up-escape movement, and the sync that goes along with it. But I also am going to continue to try to figure out a double escape motion. I just don’t seem to feel that i’m physically capable of it, but maybe time will tell.

#26

I personally don’t do double escape on a single note. I would have no way of knowing if I was really escaping or not, since the feel, again, doesn’t really feel like anything I can grab on to. The only way I know of is to work on phrases that require it.

But back up for a second. Your goal isn’t to learn a picking motion. Your goal is to be able to play tunes. If those tunes end up being a mix of different kinds of motions that you can’t feel, depending on the phrase, so what, who cares? It only matters that they sound awesome. That’s why I’m saying a lot of what you’re seeing in David’s tecnique you shouldn’t worry too much about because he can’t even tell he’s doing that. You can actually learn that kind of complex mix of motions while not really having to think about it if you just focus on smoothness and immediately throw away any motion that doesn’t have it.

The USX motion is a great tool and you can do cool ass Gypsy type stuff with that. You can play bluegrass with USX if you like. Tommy Emmanuel does a great job with that. He jams with Jake Workman and Molly while he maybe sounds more country shred or Gypsy than grass he still hangs. I have not heard a single word about him not being good enough to play with those guys. You can play any of Tommy’s lines with your technique here. Maybe give some of those a shot?

In the mean time if you want a more typical form for grass, you know that the arm position usually looks more like what you’re using in your stringhopping form. What happens when you use that form but just try to play fast on a single string, what does that look like? Forget about which motion type it is, just go fast. Can you do that?

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#27

Yes, i can do that, but the pick doesn’t leave the plane of the strings, so doesn’t that mean it’s useless? Anyway, Here it is! I do it a few ways. One with fingers curled in liek Grier/tuttle. one with fingers resting on pickgard but not anchored, like Sutton. One with Pinky anchored loosely, like Miner. But all three are in the “arm position” that i believe to be more correct for bluegrass. The problem is that i can’t change strings with this motion! (sudden epiphany, i can’t change string with any motion anyway, so i’d rather practice this way if it’s better for bluegrass in the long run ) Anyway, thanks so much for interacting with me, this alone is worth the price of membership.

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#28

My ymmv amateur assed assessment of those picking methods: Go with the 2nd resting but not anchored option as it appears to be the most fluid, relaxed and consistent of the four, plus it has the added benefit of sounding crisper and clearer with the pick attack.

  • Edit I watched it again again (x4 now) and think the 2nd and 4th are currently your closest to what you’d want.
#29

Thanks, i will, but the problem is the pick is not escaping the plane of the strings, so what’s the point? i understand the goal is just to find i way that you can play fast, and smooth, and whatever motion it is, it is,… but, shouldn’t i at least be making sure it’s a motion that allows the pick to leave the plane of the strings? This goes back to episode one of the cracking the code web series. If the motion is not leaving the plane of the strings, then regardless of how smooth and fast it is, it will never be usable, right?

#30

The tone here sounds scratchy and more like what you’re want for high gain rock. There’s also a bass component to it, like a low end thump way below the note fundamental. Not sure where that’s coming from. Are you hitting the guitar body somewhere? It could be just the phone camera adding loads of compression, not sure. Are you playing really quietly or at a reasonably audible level?

Bluegrass typically wants less edge picking, i.e. more note and less pick. Can you use a straighter thumb for this and do you get any more note? What about if you lift your pinky slightly off the strings and use a slightly radial wrist bend like Molly does? That’s the pronated form. It usually results in less edge picking.

When things don’t sound right, you have to be aggressive with experimentation to get the sound you want. Getting a good sounding picked note is where this all starts so do some tooling around with these aspects of form until your pick attack / note body sounds like what you want it to sound like.

#31

Ok, tried to improve, i was holding back actually because my wife was napping but she’s gone now.

My question is, isn’t this motion useless being as it doesn’t have any escape from the plane of the strings? I thought the whole point was that you had to find a motion that had an escape route.

#32

Success! Ok that sounds about a hundred times better. It also looks like downstroke escape elbow motion, a lot like @tommo’s form, and similar to what Presley Barker uses:

I would use this and make up some practice tunes that have lots of downstroke escape in them. Of course you could pull out any of the Grier licks in the last interview where you can see he’s doing mostly DSX and play those in between some G chords. You’re already good at spotting when he’s doing that so this should be a piece of cake for you. I wouldn’t worry that it has to be completely DSX, especially if it’s outside picking. Just get a phrase that’s mostly DSX. If you want to modify any of his licks to be completely DSX that’s fine too.

The key is this motion is working and sounds perfect at this speed so this is what perfect feels and sounds like. Now you have a reference. You can slow down a little from here to try to work on accuracy but you’ll always be ping ponging back and forth between this easy speed zone and the slower one where you can work on accuracy more. But never forget the easy zone.

Nice work, and keep us posted.

#33

Thanks Troy. I didn’t know about that kid. Very cool.

i will try to do as you say, but just want to ask one more thing. My whole problem to begin with is that i can’t maintain that smooth motion when i have to change strings. Leaving aside the left hand, just playing the open strings, the motion you see in my video above which you say is good… it doesn’t work if i try to change strings. So, do you have any advice about a drill i can do to learn how to take that motion and apply it to a string change? Because at the end of the day, that was the whole problem for me to begin with, and i still haven’t found a solution.

#34

From what I can see there are no video takes of you using this motion to move across the strings. All these clips show you using stringhopping to move across the strings. So I’m not sure that what you think is the problem is really the problem here. This thread is getting long so maybe I’m forgetting one of the clips but that’s what it looks like to me.

If you can pull apart what David Grier is doing under the magnet and describe it perfectly then you have more than enough know-how to know when you’re using the correct motion on multi-string phrases and when you’re not. So that, plus hand synchronization is the next step here. Get this good-sounding attack and motion you just did and find a phrases or phrases you can use to test whether it’s working, and cobble together some mini songs out of them and starting playing some music that sounds good as you do these little tests.

#35

@jpsychc, I’m not saying I know much, but what Troy and others are saying mirrors a lot of what I feel has happened in my own playing/learning: The better you get at one thing, brings you closer to making improvements at another. Sometimes you get to go straight for what you want because for what ever reason your body can do it, but other times you have to work on something different that offers less resistance, that gets your foot in the door and unlocks 50% of the problem.
For my example - the 2 main contributing factors of my progress with 2WPS/mixed escapes and 1NPS ideas have been… single escape licks and legato!!! :grin:. Doing these gave me something to work from - a bit of success that I could start experimenting, tweaking and build on. Even though I’m close to some of my goals, I’m now exploring single escape systems more like the Eric Johnson one. Even after 1 day of trying, I swear it has helped my usual picking motions.

Don’t lose the faith my friend and give all this a good go for a few weeks, I’m sure you will have some breakthroughs.

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#36

there is no video of me using this motion while changing strings because I cannot for the life of me do it.

I try even with just open strings ignoring left hand but I definitely can’t do it. Not even once.

#37

Then swipe. Do what you need to do. This is where the underthinkers wil beat the overthinkers like you and me. They either don’t know or can’t understand what the “right” way is so they just get their hands synchronized and go for it. And surprise, smooth motions with good sounding attack and synchronized hands tend to sound pretty good! Have you watched our Strunz and Farah interview? Jorge kills.

And that’s if you’re right that this is a trapped motion which as I’ve written, I’m not sure that it is. But that’s academic. You must get the hands together and learn how to move across the strings with a smooth motion. I don’t care if you hit wrong strings. You have awesome ingredients here you need to take the next step and put them together. Or you will never even know what smooth playing feels like.

#38

I will continue improving the hand sync every day on one string and work relentlessly to find a way to transition the smooth motion across strings. The only thing I can guarantee is that I’ll keep trying my ass off everyday. Thank you.

#39

Don’t put tons of time and hours of repetition into this. This is not a problem of drilling what you’re currently doing. It’s a problem of doing something different than what you’re currently doing.

The string switch issue for example is your choice in a sense. You simply choose a worse motion for those lines. No sense in drilling that worse motion. Trick yourself into doing the good motion which you already know how to do and is already perfect. This can be done here and there for a few minutes whenever you have time. You’re not trying to run a marathon, you’re trying to learn to do the moonwalk. And you only need to do it right once to start, to give you a foothold.

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#40

Yea I just mean I’m going to spend a lot of effort and time searching for a way to change strings while maintaining the fast motion.

I also will continue practicing bluegrass improv though and transcribing and I have to play the notes in those cases however I can. But when it’s time to practice technique I understand that I’m still searching and experimenting and have nothing to drill (besides handsync stuff)