Hoping to get some critique on picking technique

Technique Critique
#1

Hey, okay I been trying this two way pick slanting for a bit. It’s kinda tricky. Uhm so yeah I was hoping to get some analysis on what I am doing.

This first video is me just trying to go as fast as I can the way I naturally would without paying attention.

And the second is my attempt at two way pick slanting (but it looks a bit funky to me…)

Edit* the first video, where i am going ham with no mind for technique, is that possible to get up to shred speed? And the second one, I know im not getting the twps right, but im not quite sure what the problem is.

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#4

Hey Rob!

A first comment is that, even though you say you are going as fast as you can, I have seen videos of your crazy tremolo where you play approx twice as fast (like miles ahead of anything I can do)!
The movements your are doing here look very different from that tremolo, and I suspect they are not as efficient.

I think the best starting point for you is to harness your tremolo speed for actual musical phrases, making sure that you always change strings after a downstroke (because IIRC you were doing a DSX motion).

Once you have got L/R coordination with DSX-only stuff, you could try to introduce also the upstroke string change, but you’ll probably need less drastic motions than what you are doing here.

Let me/us know what you think and how that goes :slight_smile:

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#5

Haha i never thought about that. I go into like scale mode instead of like tremolo mode… hmm ill have to try coming up with something :slight_smile: Thanks.

My left hand is the slow hand methinks. That was about as fast as my left can go. How long does it take to build up left hand coordination?

It seems a slogging effort. But anyhow yeah imma try some shit. :smiley:

*edit * okay yeah its my left hand with all the limitations. I get the feeling this shit will just take months of like finger exercizes?

#6

I’m not a fan of thinking of guitar playing like “exercises”. This leads to approaches like people repeating things for hours like at the gym. That’s not really what this about. I think of guitar skill much more like trying to learn a BMX or skateboard trick. First you can’t do it at all. Then you land it once, maybe even by accident. Then you can’t do it again. Then you land it twice, once by accident and once deliberately. And so on. Eventually you can land it every time on purpose. As I do this, I don’t bother with exercises. I just try to play the music I want to play. But a nice variety of it, so you have a wide variety of chances to land the trick.

As @Tommo says, whatever you’re doing here isn’t your best picking motion. Even though it may feel automatic (“scale mode”), you are choosing this motion. You’ve just chosen it so many times it feels like you’re not, but you are. Instead, don’t choose it. Choose your tremolo motion because that’s the better motion. Slow it down a tiny bit if you have to, but don’t change it. It’s already awesome.

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#7

Okay, because it keeps happening and I see literally everyone doing it I’m going to preface my comment with this. “For the sake of this comment, let’s just leave unsaid that I feel my own playing isn’t great and blahblahblah etc etc” so my advice is just my personal experience such that it is.

I found when I was having weird (what felt like) physical barriers preventing me from playing a scale at any speed above my current “comfortable” it was/is/continuestobe a sync issue that makes your brain think you’re just too slow with “your hand fingers” to use a Ben Ellerism.

Because man, you’ve got at least (by and large) 3 or 4 useable fingers that need to keep up with a single alternating picking motion. So doing the math that means unless you’ve got some serious neurological damage happening, your left hand side has to operate at roughly 50% to 66% as fast as your picking hand… #napkinmath

I found that if I concentrated on my left hand juuuuuuuust barely fretting the note, or even just letting it mute out because I was barely touching the strings and disregarded how it sounded, I could move my fingers exponentially faster. Sure the sync is still off, but it at least proved to my head brain that “actually you can do this, it’s just a coordination thing” which was useful info and another data point to refer to when you go into those fugue states and want to turn your guitar into firewood…

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#8

Yeah totally agree, each individual finger is more than fast enough. Ive just put almost no time into scales and shredding over the past 20 years.

So my left hand is starting out terribly uncoordinated. But it improves really fast with concerted effort. Like i bet im 10% faster than when I posted this question.

edit Yeah ur right about going lighter too. Every now and then im like “oh yeah, i gotta lighten up im trying to fucking crush the strings”.