[Hopeless player here] How to develop some picking speed (no hands synchronization here, just the pure picking motion on one note)?

[Acecrusher]

There is a third option - you could be overtrained. I suspected this to be the case because there is no reason you should not be progressing more. I can pick 4 notes per click at 110 bpm using only downstrokes. The muscles you use when picking your fastest need time to rest after an intense speed session. I suspect you aren’t getting enough time for your hand to recover and grow stronger and faster.

I suggest trying something different. I suggest you try the following for a month. It sounds like your speed hasn’t been increasing recently so I don’t think you have much to lose and you may make some very good progress.

Work on your tremolo picking for 30 minutes but only every other day. You can still play guitar on the days you don’t work on tremolo picking but don’t play anything physically stressful.

Don’t use the metronome. You might be tempted to to clock your speed but wait until you’ve done this for a month and then go back to the metronome if you want.

As part of your tremolo picking practice pick a note on one string as fast as you can until you feel the muscles in your forearm start to burn ( that’s an accumulation of lactic acid). Keep going until you feel the burn so much that you’re actually starting to play significantly slower. Rest 30 seconds or so, no more than 60 seconds and repeat. Keep doing this repeatedly until 30 minutes have gone by. I suggest spending some time on each of the 6 strings so you get used to the feel of the different sized strings.

If at any time you feel a sharp pain, which is very different from the slow burn of lactic acid buildup, stop playing immediately, ice the area that started to hurt for 15 minutes and take the next day completely off. Then on the next day you can resume your practice.

People vary according to how much exercise stress they can endure and how much time they need to recover before they can exercise again. Some can endure a tremendous amount of stress and still make progress. Others need a longer period of time to recover between intense sessions (I think this is you). Think of this just like some people can lay outing the sun a long time before getting a sunburn while others get burned very quickly. If a person who burns easily tries to lay out in the sun a long time, he will burn, his skin will peel off, and he won’t get a tan; he’ll get blisters. This kind of person needs less exposure to the sun to make progress on his suntan.

It’s hard for me to tell if your motion is wrong since I can’t see you play. Can you video record yourself tremolo picking? There may be something wrong with your mechanics that is holding you back. One obvious one I can think is if you are just moving the pick back and forth with any type of a rotating or turning motion, then try adding a turning or rotating motion to your tremolo picking, sort of like if you were stirring a drink quickly, your wrist would orate; it wouldn’t just move back and forth. Another way to look at the motion is turning the key in your car ignition. If you don’t use any rotational movement already I suggest you incorporate it in roughly half of your tremolo picking practice to see if you start progressing more while using that motion.

Let me know how this works for you.

[Troy]

or I do it completely wrong

I wouldn’t rule this out. Have you posted a clip of your playing yet? If not, let’s take a look. If you’re stringhopping it would explain everything you describe here.

[Acecrusher]

Troy, from what he wrote it seems to me he says his tremolo picking is very slow and has not gotten faster in a long time. In tremolo picking, string hopping doesn’t apply; it’s not applicable.

I do think he may be doing his tremolo picking with an inefficient technique, but it’s impossible to know from the info we have.

[Troy]

In tremolo picking, string hopping doesn’t apply; it’s not applicable.

We have seen many examples right here in Technique Critique on the forum of players unable to play smoothly on a single string due to stringhopping. Some people internalize a repetitive lifting motion of the hand as their core picking motion at some early stage in their playing, and this affects everything they do, even single string phrases. It’s hard for them to unlearn this and we’ve been trying numerous methods including rest stroke, and switching motion mechanics to stop it.

Sometimes players already have other methods of moving which are fine, but they’ve convinced themselves they don’t want to use them, or someone told them they shouldn’t use them. All of which is counterproductive.

So, if we can check out footage of what @Mando is doing, we’ll have a better shot at understanding whether or not this is happening.

[Acecrusher]

Using string hopping when there’s no string to which to hop sounds like a bizarre problem to have, but if you say you’ve seen it, I believe you.

Regarding players being told to not do other motion, my first teacher told me to use only wrist like he said Al Dimeola picked. I heard Vinnie Moore used elbow and then got severely injured because of it. Is there any truth to that? Nevertheless, I use some elbow along with wrist now and play better than ever. Al Dimeola says players who use their elbow “usually sound as bad as they look.” Have you heard him say that? Any thoughts on that saying by DiMeola?

Yes, of course it would help to see video footage of Mando’s playing. I suggested this to him in an earlier post of mine in this thread. He didn’t reply to whether he would or even whether he could do it. My phone for example, does not record video. I hope to get a new phone soon though which does record video. 120 fps is the ideal thing to look for right?

[Mando]

Thanks again for your replies.
You can see videos of my playing here, If needed I can take some again from a closer angle (All the speeds I am playing at are my top speeds, except for the couple of purely crosspicking patterns) :

Mando's Picking - Starting from close to zero

Hi! I just discovered CtC and I have to say I’m very excited about it as it’s been a few years I have been trying to get my picking hand faster and cleaner without any progress at all. Some members asked me on my presentation post to make a few videos of my technique to see what is wrong with it, so here they are! As you’ll see, the things I play most are bluegrass oriented, either on mandolin or guitar. I made quite a few videos (don’t worry, most of them last about 5-10 sec only) so you can…

@Acecrusher: I’ll try your “program” of 30mins instead of the one I’m doing now. As you said, I don’t have anything to lose anyway! I guess I am probably not overtrained (at least not physically) because I don’t feel any pain at all.

• When using some wrist, I can’t reach a point where I feel my muscles working, which feels very strange and frustrating, as I stare at my hand wanting it to move faster, but it’s like if the message didn’t get across to the wrist/hand.
  -Only if I use purely locked elbow will I feel like I can strain to get faster (and it eventually will burn a bit).

I’ll definitely try to incorporate some wrist rotation in the mix (I gave it a try a couple of weeks ago when discovering CtC but quickly gave up as it felt super awkward and slow, but maybe I should just stick at it for longer), as I seem to be using mostly wrist deviation at the moment.

@Troy: I don’t know fore sure if I’m stringhopping. It would make sense as I understand the muscle responsible for wrist flexion/extension is slower and weaker, and my feeling actually is that I can’t apply any muscle power into picking faster. However, I did not find any increase of speed working on the DWPS material (I am actually a bit slower when using it, although it feels very reliable and natural).

Thanks again guys, I’m really hopping to find a solution to break this wall I’m facing. It would be of so much help in my music playing and make life much easier overall.

[nitro1976]

Hi Mando,

I watched your picking videos. It’s hard to judge from the videos what the reason is that you can’t increase speed.

My first question is, were you to lay your picking hand on a flat surface, like a table and act as if the table is the guitar, are you then able to move your hand up and down at higher speeds than 100/140 bpm? In other words, playing air guitar while your hand is supported by the table, palm downwards.

This way you don’t have the string resisting your pick and you can concentrate purely on the motion that your hand is making.

Second, I would advise you to take private lessons from a good (bluegrass) player, who has the skills you want. 1-on-1 coaching is always much better than trying to learn stuff from videos.

Good luck!

[theGuyFromGermany]

Hi and welcome!
I’m pretty sure Troy will be able to figure out the problem in the mechanic.
To me it seems your tremolo-speed is pretty close to the average speed when string hopping which’d probably mean that even on tremolo you still have the idea of crossing strings somewhere in your head - probably unconsicious.
To me its a long time ago when i developed my single string playing, but i remember that it helped me a lot to use a fat and round pick, simply to find out how few effort is really needed to make the string ring. this does not mean that you need to use that kind of pick forecver its just handy to get a feeling for the motion to cross a string with that tiny snap to make it ring. from there it was pretty easy - at least for me - to speed that motion up.

[Sorc]

I agree, it looks like there’s some string hopping going on. The typical solution would probably be using rest strokes to get rid of it, but I don’t think that would result in a bluegrass friendly technique.

[theGuyFromGermany]

I agree, it looks like there’s some string hopping going on. The typical solution would probably be using rest strokes to get rid of it, but I don’t think that would result in a bluegrass friendly technique.

The strange thing is that he wrote that is his max speed for tremolo playing.
I’d say first of all he needs some confidence that he can move the pick up and down with fair speed before dealing how to speed up crosspicking - which is probably the hardest thing to do.

[Sorc]

I remember having the same problem with certain one string lines. I wanted to play them faster, but my hand just started doing a string hopping movement, even though there was no reason for it. So it’s definitely possible to have these issues even when playing on one string.

[theGuyFromGermany]

I remember having the same problem with certain one string lines. I wanted to play them faster, but my hand just started doing a string hopping movement, even though there was no reason for it. So it’s definitely possible to have these issues even when playing on one string.

Sure it is, and i don’t even think it’s a bad thing. Probably the reason for it is that your motion tries to protect accuracy and clearity - that’s not a bad thing.
iI just wanted to prevent that he tries to focus on one of the hardest thing at first.
Troy said somewhere that motions should be developed by feel and I totally agree with that, so if there’s automatically added that hop somewhere in your motion, I’d say the first thing needed is some kind of ‘reset’ so you can figure out new options by feel.

[Acecrusher]

OK Mando, I watched your tremolo picking technique and I’m not going to sugarcoat this because that wouldn’t be doing you any favors. While I still hope you use the practice program I designed specifically for you, with the 30 minutes of temple picking every other day, I no see that you are going to also have to change the actual motion you use for tremolo picking.

The motion you use now has no power behind it! Simply put, the muscles you are using in your current tremolo picking technique aren’t strong enough, at least not in that position, to ever tremolo pick fast.

The good news is I believe that using the program I developed for you, you can make tremeendous progress in increasing your tremolo picking speed if you just give my program one, or at the most two months in order to see a significant improvement in the strength and speed of your tremolo picking!

Since you have to work on using a new tremolo picking style in addition to following the practice regimen I laid out for you, I’m going to make one modification it the program. You will still tremolo pick for 30 minutes a day but you will try several different tremolo picking styles in that 30 minutes. For example, you could do something like 10 minutes of one technique, rest 2 or 3 minutes, try 10 minutes of another technique, rest 2 or 3 minutes, and finally 10 minutes of tremolo picking using a third technique.

It appears that your right hand is far too relaxed when tremolo picking. I know most people suggest being relaxed but you have taking being relaxed to an extreme! You have to have some tension in your muscles when you pick fast!

Your motion needs to change too. When tried and proven technique for tremolo picking is picking the string, whatever string you have chosen to sorta with, by making the pick make a motion that starts by going downwards and then bottoming out with a shallow semicircle motion before then moving upwards again. In total, your pick will be making a shape that looks a lot like letter U. The only difference is that the sides of the letter U won’t be as tall and not exactly vertical either. Imagine the letter U motion but witout such long vertical ups and downs at the beginning of the pick stroke and not only would they not be as tall on the sides of the U, mazing it resemble the lower case u better, but also instead of the sides of the u being straight up and down, they’d be more angled so that the motion really looks more like a semicircle. Imagine something circular, like an orange. Imagine taking the orange and cutting it so that the blade of the knife is parallel to the tabletop the orange is sitting on. You cut all the way through it so you have two perfect halves - the top half and the bottom half. Hollow out the insides of the orange. Your pick angle would basically be as if you took the tip of the pick and traced the bottom half of the orange from the top of one side, down and across through the bottom and then arcing gracefully up the opposite side. That will be the picking technique I want you to try.

Finally, in your last 10 minutes of tremolo practice, yu can experiment with the bottom of a semicircle shape for the pick to move along, or a more side to side motion, but this time involve the elbow joint. I want you to use the elbow joint and very importantly, do not tense up the elbow joint! Use at most, light tension in the elbow joint.For the most part the elbow joint can be very relaxed and still add a tremendous amount of speed to your tremolo picking.

Now you have the entire custom made program that I developed just for you! Use it for at last a month and report back to me roughly once a week. I don’t ant you to use a metronome at all during this period of time, OK? The reason being I don’t want the metronome setting up subconscious mental blocks for you. I don’t want you knowing exactly how fast you are picking so if say, you are attempting a speed of 4 notes per beat at 148 beats a minute, I don’t want a little voice in the back of your head telling you “This is too fast! You can’t do it”!

Feel free to record your tremolo picking sessions so that at the end of the moth you can gauge your progress by listening back to a session in the first week, a session 10 days later, and another 10 days later, and then the last session of the month. I feel confident that you will be able to hear yourself progress as you listen back t the month’s practice sessions, especially comparing the first session of the month and the last one of the month!

[Acecrusher]

Mando, It occurred to me that you might want to know my qualifications as a teacher. so here they are:

I have played electric guitar from September of 1984 to the present day which is almost 34 years of guitar playing. I have taught many people along the way, especially through the 80s and 90s. One student I had came to me knowing only how to strum chords and absolutely nothing else. After 2 years of one hour lessons weekly, he applied to Berklee and was accepted!

I am educated in music theory ( college course taken in music theory), I played piano for 2 years before switching to guitar, as early as the last 80s I as already working on figuring out exactly how I played the way I played since I couldn’t teach how to play if I didn’t understand how I do what i do on the guitar. There are many very good guitarists who can’t teach because they don’t know how to explain what it is they do on the guitar.

[Mando]

@nitro1976: I tried laying the hand flat on the table, and while initially my max speed was the same as when picking, it surprisingly gradually increased up to 140bpm (still on the table), and I felt a the muscles burning in my forearm, which is a first ! I’ll definitely keep on doing that as it seems it helps me “wake up” these muscles, and maybe it is part of the solution!
Sadly, private lessons are not an option where I leave (up in the French Alps).

@theGuyFromGermany: my tremolo speed is indeed very close to my crosspicking speed. I used to play with a heavy round pick and did not feel much difference about it, but I can surely try again for a week or two!

@Sorc: from the videos I watched around here, I’m not sure whether I do stringhopping or if it’s just the “bluegrass crosspicking” way to clear off the strings… It does not really feel like I use so much flexion/extension in my picking, though, I think it’s more like a curb.

@Acecrusher : wow, thanks so much for dedicating this time to help! Don’t worry about not sugarcoating: the more things I’m doing wrong, the more it means I can improve!
I do feel like there is no power in my wirst when I pick, indeed, so I will try various motions as you said. Hopefully one of them will feel right and more powerful after some practice. I get the sliced orange idea! If I understand right I probably have to add some wrist rotation to achieve this motion.
The click might be hindering my progress, as there is no doubt my plateau is not only physical but also in my head, so I’ll do that for a while as well.

Again, thanks a million for caring about my picking, which is really a big deal for me. The good thing is I have nothing to lose and I can only get better, so I will follow your advices for sure!

Well, finally I have some ideas to work with! Only time will tell how my picking will evolve, but it’s much more motivating to work with some possible solutions rather than keeping on doing things that just don’t work!

[theGuyFromGermany]

my tremolo speed is indeed very close to my crosspicking speed. I used to play with a heavy round pick and did not feel much difference about it, but I can surely try again for a week or two

Don’t get me wrong there. It’s not about the pick itself. A round pick kind or forces your hand/fingers to feel the movement on the string and discover where is resistance. It’s only about getting a feeling for the movement. Thin pciks gets flexed to a point and then snap over the strings and your muscles dont get any information what happens in between. Once you think your muscles know what to do there’s no need to stay on a specific pick - eventthough is still play round ones.
Anyway i’d probably wait until Troy had a closer view on your motion - I can’t even tell you if it’s really stringhopping, all my thoughts are based on the feeling you describe.

[Acecrusher]

Hi Mando!

You are my first student in a while, and the first one I’ve ever spent this kind of time on for free but I like your attitude so consider it a late Christmas present, ho ho ho!

You wrote: “the more things I’m doing wrong, the more it means I can improve!” That’s it! That’s the attitude!

You wrote: "I do feel like there is no power in my wirst when I pick, indeed, so I will try various motions as you said. Hopefully one of them will feel right and more powerful after some practice. " I knew it! I could tell just to look at you. I don’t know exactly how I knew; call it 34 years of acquired wisdom.

“I get the sliced orange idea! If I understand right I probably have to add some wrist rotation to achieve this motion.” That’s great, Mando! I wasn’t sure how to describe t since I’ve never taught anyone without being face to face with them. So glad that I was able to explain it in way that allowed you to picture the correct motion - the correct arc.

“The click might be hindering my progress, as there is no doubt my plateau is not only physical but also in my head, so I’ll do that for a while as well.” - That’s the idea, to trick your mind into surpassing speeds you are lacking the necessary confidence that you can pass them. I’ll tell you where I go this idea back in my early days as a teacher. Before I played guitar I lifted weights. I had a weight lifting book by Franco Columbu - a former Mr.Olympia and also a former competition in The World’s Strongest Man competition. In his book he told a story about a guy who every time he walked into the weightlifting gym, he would do the exact same thing. he would go over to a rack where there was a rack with a 315 pound barbell on it. He would take the bar off the rack, just barely manage to press it over his head using 100% effort, and then he’d go to the locker room where he’d get changed for his workout. Try as he might, he could never press more than the 315 pounds.

One day after pressing the 315 pounds over his head, he started walking towards the locker room when he went back and took a closer look at the barbell. He found that it didn’t have the 315 pounds always had on it. That day it had an extra 20 pound plate on each side! It didn’t weight 315; it weighed 355 pounds! He had had the ability to lift a full 40 pounds extra for who knows how long, masked under the weight of self doubt and a lack of confidence!

You have been comfortable at 110 BPM for a very long time and I’ll bet that just like the guy in the story, you have the capacity to do more, and still comfortably, just as long as you don’t know exactly how many BPMs you are playing at so your lack of self confidence doesn’t have the opportunity to hold you back.

“Again, thanks a million for caring about my picking, which is really a big deal for me. The good thing is I have nothing to lose and I can only get better, so I will follow your advices for sure!”

You are very welcome! And yes, please do follow my advice, as I’ve got good reasons for every detail of your program I custom made for you. If at any time during the next month you running a serious problem, such as suspecting you’re developing tendonitis (which is highly unlikely with a day of rest in between every speed session) make sure you contact me right away!

Good luck Mando!

[Troy]

from the videos I watched around here, I’m not sure whether I do stringhopping or if it’s just the “bluegrass crosspicking” way to clear off the strings

Sorry I missed these clips earlier! Thanks for posting these. It’s a great selection of shots and makes it obvious what is going on. There is a simple answer to your problem:

You are stringhopping.

Your crosspicking form is not actually the efficient crosspicking movement used by players like Molly Tuttle - it is stringhopping. And it is the same as the motion you use for general purpose wrist-oriented playing like in the guitar clips, in other words, also stringhopping. Your tremolo motion is perhaps something else, maybe we could call it stringhopping, but the point is that it is not efficient either, so it’s sort of a moot point what it is.

Your “tense and locked” clip - that is not stringhopping! You’re doing that correct. Either that movement, or one like it but less tense, is what will break you out of this rut.

Your playing is great, you have plenty of musical and fretboard knowledge, but as a few folks have pointed out, to make things more relaxed, you’re going to need to change your picking motion.

Have you watched the intro broadcast on picking motions yet? Most of the basics are covered here:

https://troygrady.com/channels/talking-the-code/introduction-to-picking-motion/

Do not concern yourself with the difference between pickslanting movements and crosspicking movements yet. These motions we discuss here are the core of all of them. If you can’t do these, you won’t be able to play smoothly at any tempo, whether it’s pickslanting or crosspicking. And great bluegrass mando players like Andy Wood are pickslanting most of the time anyway. There is one type of pickstroke (one!) that Andy does which I would think of as a crosspicking movement more so than a pickslanting one, so you can get quite far with just developing fluid “straight line” picking speed.

General note to everyone:

I feel like we’ve dumped a lot of words on @Mando and possibly confused him! This is a common problem, and we all need to be able to look at excellent and clear clips of the kind that he has posted and know immediately when we’re seeing stringhopping movements. Immediately. No hesitation, no guesswork. And targeted advice for eliminating this without writing volumes.

[Misha]

Hey! I’m in the same boat just like you (although I can play a bit faster like 120-125bpm). I’m still struggling at developing speed. I can play in short bursts at 140-150bpm (or about 90bpm sixtuplets), right now my pinky knuckle started to hurt/swell so need to quit and recover, although everything I do looks fine visually (except for some static stuff like my posture etc). You can check out my vids if you want.

Everybody gave you some great advice like eliminating string hopping using rest strokes - that’s a great advice. String hopping seems like the only potential threat for developing speed. As mentioned before, you can try speed bursts like mixing eights and sixteens (4 notes of eights, then 8 notes of sixteens). Also you need to make sure if you’re feeling the right muscles (located in your forearm, if you move your wrist sideways you should see them moving, the feeling should be similar to squeezing a rag). If you feel the tension in a different place (wrist, fingers, elbow, shoulder etc), then there’s something wrong in you static position (wrist angle, posture, the way you are sitting and holding your guitar).

You need a visual reference point for knowing what you need to do. I chosed Paul Gilbert. Also you need to record two angles (from the fretboard and guitar body). Here are some visual things that help me to get closer at getting it right).

1. Make sure that you guitar is placed reliably (ideally it should be resting on your leg without hands involved, if you’re using you right hand just to hold the guitar in place it will cause extra static tension). Another thing that might help is the right leg position, the hip should be aimed upwards, so the guitar won’t slide down and force you to hold it with the right hand (static tension).

2. From the guitar body view, make sure that guitar neck is not aimed too much upwards, because it might make your wrist look deviated upwards instead of looking neutral when in static position (the wrist and the forearm should form a straight line). It should be more parallel to the floor. Try to experiment with your posture without forcing your hands to hold the guitar while not playing.

Hope it might help you. Although I’m not sure, after six years of struggling, it’s still a mystery to me how it’s possible to tremolo pick fast, I guess it’s some sort of psychological barrier formed due to multiple frustrations. I feel that our problem (slow picking hand phenomenon) is not examined enough, I still haven’t seen people who could solve this problem (since such problem is extremely rare). 99,9% of people aren’t having any trouble with (and are not even thinking/struggling with it). If the simplest movement such as picking up and down is causing so much trouble, then there’s definitely something wrong in our hands/mind. But you gotta try. There are some experimental solutions like rest strokes, speed burts etc (although even these solutions come from people who never had any trouble with picking). Sorry for sounding so discouraged and skeptical.

Anyway, good luck, that’s all I can say. I hope that at least one of us will get rid of this curse (don’t know how to call it otherwise).

[Mando]

This is a lot of info indeed, but I wrote all the advices I got down on paper and will make sure I don’t get confused. It appears that first and foremost, I have to change my motion to a more efficient one.

@Troy : thanks for reviewing my videos. Great, at least now I know what I’m doing wrong, which means there is something I can solve. I hope that someday my eye is as sharp as yours and I can help others in return.

I’m gonna watch this broadcast you mention. I thought I would save it for later, thinking it was too advanced stuff and went to Pickslanting Primer and interviews first instead (as well as Talking the Code). Now I know where to restart!
I did try to incorporate various motions discribed in “four essential motion mechanics for picking” but everything felt awkward and slow. Now I know that my technique is wrong so I have to change it anyway, no matter if it takes time to make the new one feel more natural.

Would you recommend one “mix of motions” to start with (Acecruscher advised to add some wrist rotation), or do you reckon it is only a matter of trying a finding what suits you after a while?

@Misha : thanks for the posture advices. I think I’m not too bad on that side, but I’ll double check and pay close attention to it as well.
I understand your idea about the fact that it’s tough to see that most of the solutions to picking speed come from people who never had issues with speed, and I think it is the way things are in many other fields of competence. I found however that this is the great thing about CtC: Troy looks at what naturals do, analyses it and try to make it usable by others (instead of the all the common “make smaller movements, you’ll pick faster”). I also hope we both get out of that hole, but as long as we keep trying, there is no reason why it wouldn’t happen soon!

Well, once again, thanks to you all. I was not expecting to actually get ideas to work with so quickly, and now I’m super frustrated because I happen to exceptionnally have tons of work until Sunday and will not be able to focus full blown on picking till then. But this is fantastic, it means I’m now eager to practice picking and that hope is back in my practice (I usually hate my picking practice because I’ve been unsuccessful at it for too long, but hopefully I get off to a better start now, and I know that improvement is addictive)!