How to achieve consistency in musical performance?

General Music Discussion
#21

While I agree that mental state must have an effect on playing, it is hard to diagnose at what point is your mind working for or against you and to what extent.

@joebegly also raised this aspect, stating mental fatigue, but it happens even if I’m mentally happy and feeling fresh. I put a bucket load of time into the cliffs solo, but it wasn’t like thats all I was playing. The point is that I felt like I had already had some victory over that solo and it was something that I started to use as a jovial break from whatever I was working on at the time - it was a friend, not a threat.

But you do raise an interesting point about obsessive and I do wonder whether I have reframed obsessive or habitual behaviour as ‘fun’, when its not really.

I have seldom felt that practicing wasn’t fun - its an escape and can be freeform or rigid in structure, but right now I just feel like I want to feel some reliable results once even if the improvement is incremental. I don’t have an enormous amount of time available in my life and I know that I can’t be the best improviser, composer and or even an ‘original’ sounding player all at once and that doesn’t bother me greatly.

Please don’t get me wrong, I have made improvements over a longer span of time and CTC is the most significant factor in that.

I wish sometimes I was into something like Coldplay…guitar life would be simpler!

#22

Lol! Lower the bar. I like it :slight_smile:

#23

Hi!
I have also been playing for about 20 years (with a few years off here and there) and until a few months ago I felt exactly the same way you do. There were times when things felt so fluid and easy only to be gone the next session, and it was never fluid/easy from the beginning of the session but only after at least 30 minutes of playing. I thought this had to do with me not being warmed up and it annoyed me that some people could just grab the guitar and play straight away while I had to warm up for an hour just to show what I can do.

What made all the difference to me was learning how to play proper tremolo on one string, to find a technique that allowed me to have a good consistent tremolo on one string from the get go. I focused on nothing but this for some time and I found two motions that I could do even when my hands were cold. I then started to use these motions as my core motions and I have been much more consistent ever since.

The only thing that annoys me nowadays about the guitar is that it took me 20 years to realise i couldnt do a proper tremolo.

My tip is: try to find a technique that allows you to do a smooth and easy tremolo right away, dont try to emulate others too much, just try to get that picking hand moving on a single note. When I first found a motion that worked it felt great, weird but great. It felt so different that I didnt think I could use it for normal playing but it only took me a few days to get used to it.

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#24

Here is the best video on this topic that i’ve ever seen. The whole concept of it is just very counterintuitive to me. Instead of sitting there for hours polishing some lick, or song, or even some ear training drill, you just do something for 5 minutes and than you move on to the next thing. But you always keep getting back to it, revisiting what you just did. It’s not only more fun to learn this way, because you practice becomes much less monotonous, but it also seems to have a great effect on overall results. Thank you guys for this amazing interview!

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#25

Just to be clear, I wasn’t stating that you have any kind of mental illness! I was just using my experience as an example of how mental state has an affect on physical activities and physical health.
I just found myself able to relate to many things you have said and felt, perhaps for slightly different reasons, but I’d not rule out a cognitive element, even if it’s not immediately obvious or even if it’s not the main culprit.

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#26

Haha, no worries - I didn’t think that at all from your posts and I work in a mental health organisation (albeit in corporate services), so I know where I can get a referral if I need one :wink:. All points you raised were valid and and resonated… In the past and definitely during Covid, I knew better than to expect great performance when other areas of life are kicking your backside.

@BoBBoLove and @I_VI_ii_V , thanks for your posts.

Totally agree…

@I_VI_ii_V , yeah that interview was such a great one and started applying it pretty soon after. I’m probably due another viewing of that, so thanks for the reminder!!

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#27

I’m not 100% sure this is what you’re talking about, but in many of the great players I’ve seen, they literally practice self made licks all over the neck, and keep building their repertoire up.

It’s the same as talking, we know 1000’s of words and thats why we can flow through conversations. Yet even in that there are a lot of pauses and uhhhhs etc…

I think a big issue is when you watch someone else doing something, you don’t feel their effort at all, all you get is the disconnected finished product, and you accept it, as if everything they did was on purpose. Than the first person experience that the person is struggling and focusing and even being embarrassed that what they played was not perfect or what they meant to do.

I think it’s a disconnect between their experience of preforming and your experience of listening/watching.

Another thing I just thought of is the way we say things and our accents. We don’t even think about how we’re saying something most of the time unless you’re really trying to emphasize a point.
Thats in stark contrast to guitar for most of us as we are super nerotic about how we play something, thats got to be a massive sticking point in our flow.

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#28

I think there is a lot of truth in this.

I’ll offer an alternate take though. Sometimes seemingly conflicting observations can both be true, right? :wink:

Though there are probably things our heroes struggle with too and can’t play as consistently as they’d like, there is a huge bucket 'o licks they can play with total authority, in almost any situation.

Have you seen any videos of Troy being interviewed? There can be periods of like 10 minutes where he and the person interviewing him do nothing but talk. Then, to make a point about what he’s saying, Troy will rip out some ridiculous and fast phrase that covers a huge portion of the neck. And this happens all through the interview, in various genres with multiple motions. There’s no fumbling or hesitating or “oh wait a minute, let me try that again”. I think 5 - 10 minutes is plenty of time to “go cold” in any sense. So this is nowhere near a common sentiment that we need to be playing for at least 30 minutes before things “start to click” for us and we don’t feel sloppy anymore. And given that Troy isn’t doing these interviews multiple times per week (analogous to a professional musician that’s constantly playing live), it doesn’t seem as though the ability to do all this on demand is the result of him having done tons of these interviews on regular basis.

This is pretty similar to the interviews that Troy conducts, too. Lots of space between the musical examples, yet the subjects can play the phrases they are comfortable with pretty consistently on multiple takes.

I think this may tie in with @BoBBoLove’s excellent point about making sure whatever the core motion you need to use is something you can do without a second thought. I’m only an amateur, though I’m a former (failed) professional. Spending a lot of time getting a good tremolo going has made a big difference in my playing and I’ve noticed more lately (as I’m working more on solos and less/none on exercises) that on most days I can pretty accurately play something I’ve been working on at the target tempo as soon as I pick the guitar up. Granted, these solos aren’t Shawn Lane speed, but in the past (pre CtC) I would have concurred with others that I needed a good 20 - 40 minutes before I could produce anything I wouldn’t be embarrassed for others to hear.

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#29

There is that video of Troy saying downward pickslanting just works any time for him.
I can’t remember where it is.

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#30

Yeah I’ve heard him say in plenty threads that the wrist/forearm thing is something he can do at will. Though it ‘appears’ the other motions are pretty damn solid too lol! That gets back to your point about ‘our’ perception though.

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#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?.