Help me understand my technique!

Technique Critique
#1

Hey everyone!

Been playing guitar since I was a teenager and always loved guys like Paul GIlbert, Malmsteen, EVH etc. My picking, which I was always taught should be from the wrist and sort of evolved, had its ups and downs etc over the years. I’ve never been as furious as a picker as I wanted to be and after returning to the instrument after a 3 year hiatus I decided to give CTC a go because I’ve been grinding to try and improve my picking but hitting walls and feel like I’m going no where except building tense playing with no real speed developing. Years back I would say my playing was around 130-150bpm at its fastest, but very inconsistent. I’ve never utilized any tremolo type of technique really until watching Troy’s videos and testing speed and which technique I’m using. I was pretty surprised because when I do preform the tremolo technique I feel like it looks and feels like the motion is originating from me elbow with some slight wrist motion, but I don’t think the speed of the picking is dependent on the wrist at all. I’ve been doing this over and over and before I start introducing bad habits I wanted to post it up so you guys could tell me what you thought I was doing and hopefully lead me in the right direction of how I should be trying to apply this and I guess “forget” my prior style of picking which was getting me almost nowhere but has become second nature. I was able to get this going at pretty fast speeds (sometimes faster than what I recorded), but am inconsistent at maintaining or just turning on the max.

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#2

Looks awesome! I would start working on introducing fretting hand. First just stay on one string. Once that is synced up work on phrases that change strings after down strokes.

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#3

Yeah you definitely have elbow motion mixed with some wrist motion.
Are you getting tense? Is that why you start and stop often? I’d say instead of trying to go as fast as you can, try slow it down a little and gain more control.
You have a fast elbow/wrist blend, now just need to gain more control and consistency. As you work through the primer, you’ll learn that you have a dsx motion, and from there, learn what sort of phrases will match.

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#4

Yes, I definitely start and stop because I start losing the motion, I assume from starting to tense up. When I first pick up the guitar I can play it the fastest but as I continue to play it I start losing the speed and the motion starts falling apart on me eventually. I also find that when I try to slow it down I also introduce tension to control it. So I definitely have to try and stay loose. I think that’s why I also sort of why sometimes you see me playing a few notes slowly with a wrist motion in between faster attempts as it sort of “unlocks” the rigidity in the motion if that makes sense.

#5

I think that will be the thing to focus on for now, trying to eliminate the unnecessary tension from the motion.

I find that sometimes, especially when learning a new motion or making adjustments to a motion, if I spend too long on it, tension builds and it falls apart. Sometimes ten mins here or there can help, especially if you find it easiest when you first pick up the guitar.

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