How to achieve consistency in musical performance?

General Music Discussion
#31

The tremolo is a great example because of its simplicity - we have seen many examples on this forum of people that have either a very inefficient one and are still seeking it and others that have found it and is now available on request - fast and smooth. How many have one that is on a knife edge? Quite good but not fully matured? I’m a bit like that - I can get it to 200bpm 16ths smooth at times - I know when I do it, feels great. But sometimes I max out way shorter or its fast but not smooth? I have experimented with both very playful relaxed attempts and monitoring to hardcore militant practice both with similar results!

I have never found anything on guitar easy or smooth that I could turn on when I wanted…not for the lack of trying. I know what it feels like when its good, but I don’t feel what was different. For someone that has one or more types of motions down - can they actually go back to being crap if they don’t pay particular attention to it, or is it just a given now?

#32

Yeah, I can’t speak for others, but for me personally that is exactly why I’ve been thinking so much about consistency.

The most I can figure is that it’s part physical (subconsciously hitting a combination of joint motion, contact and pivot points, warmup, and moving within the most physically comfortable part of my joint motion, rather than going to the ulnar/radial extremes), and part mental (getting in “the zone”, rather than paying strict attention to my picking and constantly checking how relaxed I feel, which subconsciously results in higher tension and uncomfortable movement).

Of course, even the “uncomfortable” version of my tremolo is faster than my fretting hand coordination allows, and this is something I’m specifically working on right now; but there’s always this feeling “I could be doing the same, but with a faster potential maximum”, and that’s what is killing me.

#33

The forearm and wrist motion is the only one I can get beyond 200bpm. I can’t get any wrist only motion going near that speed. If I do, it’s some setup fluke that I immediately lose where I was and how I did it.
So makes sense that there may be certain motions each person can just do without much thought going into it.

#34

I have no doubt that different joints work differently than others, and have different capability / potential. But I was shocked to discover over the past year or so that there are seemingly simple motions that I still wasn’t doing optimally, and where I still had another 40-50bpm in the tank. No joke.

I could never get “wrist only” going in that over-200 range on a guitar, but I realized as a result of messing around with the table tapping tests that I was probably always able to do that — on a table. I just never did it on a guitar. I talked about this in the interview with Rick Hollis when we talked about doing fast downstrokes. You’ll see the super fast “tapping” style motion when I get it going briefly:

It’s really scary how much faster it is than whatever I normally do. And it’s still just “wrist” motion.

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#35

Right, and lets be honest, Troy has way more motions than most virtuoso players :slight_smile: Most have 1 core, then some helper…or the lucky ‘wrist’ players who can do it all lol just because wrist is their core lol!

As always, tons of gray area. Rusty Cooley has a ferocious elbow, but his slower (relative term in his case) shows a good deal of wrist and rotational mechanic. I know for quite a while, the general consensus of the amazing @Bill_hall is that he was an elbow guy. Troy’s interview exposed that Bill has a lot of other motions that he can do very well also, for different types of licks.

Still, back to some earlier discussions, I’d love to know the “routine”, if there is one, of a player who can just nail most of their core licks and solos at the drop of hat. Same for my wish list question to know what concert pianists and violinists do. Once we cut through the dogma of them saying “well I start with an hour of scale practice” :slight_smile: That may or may not be the secret sauce to their consistency. How do they practice the pieces they play? As I say this I recall this guy, who seems to have pretty thought provoking blogs:

Maybe I should revisit some of his concepts.

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#36

James uses middle finger, thats why he has that fast down picking. It’s flexion extension, vs adduction abduction. The muscles are much stronger with that back n forth vs side to side.

What you posted @Troy makes me think that the double picking practice technique is a great way to develop alternative picking? The motion creates a pecking type style that I was a bit apprehensive recommending before as I thought is was classed as string hopping. Is this string hopping? I know it’s not using the same muscle ove n over, but the term string hopping has always made me think of this bouncing/pecking motion.

#37

Are you asking about the clip you’ve linked to? I tried scanning that but I’m not sure specifically what you’re referring to.

Anything you can do fast that doesn’t have unpleasant arm tension, and doesn’t create soreness or obvious fatique, is probably efficient. So I wouldn’t worry about that.

Re: Hetfield, most players that use the three-finger grip are not doing pure flexion-extension. Several of these very fast wrist motions appear to be the diagonal ones that move in between the axes, like the “dart thrower” motion that death metal expert Molly Tuttle does, and the “reverse dart thrower” that moves opposite to that, which is more like Hetfield and EVH.

I think we have to remember that these axes are made up by people for descriptive purposes. They aren’t really “real” in the sense that you could argue the joint was designed to move best in the dart-thrower ways that involve all the muscles, and those should be the axes we use as reference points. This is what the Hospital for Special Surgery researchers suggested in our interview, i.e. that “dart thrower” motion is present in so many daily activities that you could think of it as a kind of baseline.

#38

This section
It’s a combination as you say, not a pure back n forth, creating that circular or oblong shape.
But if you just down stroke it is largely flexion extension. With a little circular motion from wrist rotation. And very minimal adduction abduction. Creating a circular motion.

Molly impressed me with her death metal chops too… lol, I think that the back n forth motion uses far bigger muscle than the side to side ones tho. The dart motion/ pecking is not string hopping right?

#39

From what you’ve written, you’re describing how double escape motion works when performed with a supinated arm position. This is usually, but not always, accompanied by a middle- or three-finger pick grip. Like other double escape wrist motions, it’s a flat semicircular motion that is perfectly efficient. It is not stringhopping so there’s no need to worry about that.

The supinated form of wrist motion is one of the “big three” styles of wrist motion that we cover in the Primer. It’s the one used by Steve Morse and Albert Lee, and players we’ve interviewed more recently like James Seliga. Here’s what James’ motion looks like, and in slow motion you’ll not the flat / efficient nature of the joint motion right away:

Sorry for the tangent — I now return you to your regularly scheduled topic about consistency!

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#40

Thank you for the tangent :stuck_out_tongue: That guys picking is so smooth :open_mouth:
I would like to ask related to the topic, the downward pick slanting, is that your go to, to just shread from cold?.

#41

Hmmm these Nathan Cole videos are pretty good. Check this out:

He’s talking about a high degree of repetition of playing things correctly. And that makes sense! If you play something over and over again and constantly muck it up, is it ever going to be good? Or maybe it’s slop 20 times and then you get a good one and say “ah, finally!”, then it’s onto something else lol! He’s finding ways to play successfully, even if he has to do what he refers to as “change the rules” in order to get this success. Then he repeats these successes over and over again until he loses focus. I can’t say I’ve tried that often, and it sounds like his bedrock.

#42

There’s not a default. Whichever technique we have to use for a lesson. I can do wrist-forearm motion like Doug Aldrich, but it feels basically the same to me as a more Gypsy form where you flex the wrist and have an air gap. The arm position is slightly different but the skill feels the same. I can do various wrist motions. I have spent the most time using the Andy Wood / Di Meola style, but I can also do the Molly Tuttle form with the thumb anchor, and also the EVH / Albert Lee form with the supinated arm position and the three-finger grip. They all they feel the same to me. I wouldn’t make a big deal out of thinking of them as different techniques, because if you can do any of them, I think you can probably do all of them.

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#43

I can absolutely relate to this.
Achieving consistency and especially cleaning up performances consistently, once you’ve got in the ballpark, is something I’ve been struggling with forever. Honestly, I don’t think there’s a solution.
I’ve come to think that this is what really separates the true virtuosos from normal people - executing the toughest techniques at a high level consistently, and at will, or at least without the need for a 1000 takes.
I believe it takes some inherent focus or some other quality that I can’t quite put my finger on.
The good news is the bar of what can be done consistently can be raised, but for me it feels like only up to an individual limit.

My solution ? be realistic on what can be achieved with the limited time I have, and not get too hung up on what I can’t achieve with reasonable effort. Sometimes I will try to mess around with the really difficult stuff with occasional breakthroughs, but I don’t get too invested and set my expectations accordingly.
The upside - I have more fun with things I can actually do!

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#44

Are you guys having issues with your own stuff? Or other peoples?
I can play my own stuff well everytime as it’s literally all my own comfortable movements that feel right for me.

But playing other peoples can be a pain in the ass, as I’m not them mentally or physically.
Paul gilbert himself even struggled with eddies music as they both are very different people.

(obviously he’s flying through that, but it’s very Paul and not Eddie)

I think that consistency issues really are just us trying to get something too perfect.

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#45

I struggle with everything :joy:

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#46

Lol, though I’m sure you have an easy time just being you.

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#47

I find accepting what you can currently do is the way to express yourself and flow.

I feel this might be to dudeish lol, but I am expressing an honest thought (dispite being drunk n high, right now) and thats how you get consistently, you let go of the small details and you go with the flow.
I struggle a lot with this too regularly if I’m trying to be something I’m not. If I do it my way it works. Just like Paul gilbert did in that vid.

#48

Both!

Although I agree with this (the perfect getting in the way of the good, I’m talking about where you’re playing completely melts down for no apparent reason, not just a few flubbed notes here in there.

I have managed to calm down from my earlier ranty posts… I spent last night meditating on all the issues with my playing and trying to see the positive side of things. I think there are a few key areas that suffer this inconsistency issue and I’m either focussing too much or too little at any given point. I’m gonna hatch a plan tonight…

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#49

Just thought of this again, and I think an issue could be — counterintuitively — over-practice!

Disclaimer: this is not scientific, just plausible based on my own personal experience.

Sometimes, if I practice something too much in the same day it may improve initially but then it can start getting worse as you keep hammering on it. Similarly, very often my best recordings happen in the first handful of takes of the session, and after that they start deteriorating in quality.

Perhaps we should be more conscious when this starts happening and stop immediately. It may be beneficial to go back to “the thing in question” later in the day or even better the next day.

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#50

I’ve found over practice a limit too, I think you can focus on something so much that you acually create a pit, or dip where you get stuck. I have never in my life focused on a phrase verbally as much as I have a guitar line.

I would imagine if you practice saying something to much, it also loses that loose flow, it comes across as practiced and fake.