How to be sure you aren't string hopping?

Playing Technique
#1

Obviously the best way would be to film 120fps and watch it back in slow motion. I’m not sure my phone (iphone6s) is up to this and I don’t have a better camera. Is there a way to tell otherwise or anything I should specifically be looking for in my playing? I mean, when I play very slowly, I can make sure I’m burying and escaping the pick, but when I go back to full speed, I can’t really tell.

Is there any kind of speed barrier to string hopping? Like for example, if you’re string hopping, you won’t be able to play 16th notes at 120bpm or something? I’m assuming not but I figured I’d ask anyway while I save up the money for a reliable camera. Any recommendations?

#2

You can definitely get 120fps slow mo on iPhone 6s!

This may be helpful as well - and let us know if any detail seems to be missing when it comes to filming your playing:

https://troygrady.com/help/filming-your-playing/

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#3

Yes, it’s around there for me. You’ll also notice that if you sustain such activity you’ll tire rather quickly.

Alternate picking, on the other hand, is something you can sustain forever at those speeds without getting tired.

#4

under that criteria, I’m definitely string hopping then :frowning:

#5

Get a metronome and set it to 150 bpm. Now find out how to tremolo pick 16th notes at that speed. It should be easy. You should be able to sustain it for minutes without breaking a sweat.

Can you do it at 180? 200?

Your goal is to find a mechanic that let’s you perform at these speeds. Try everything. Change the pick angle. Use your wrist. Try with the elbow. Maybe more forearm?

You can put the metronome away after getting a feel for how fast 150+ bpm is (a speed that’s going to force you into an efficient technique).

The goal here is to experiment. You should be spending most of your time exploring different movements, hand positions, pick-angles, guitar heights, standing, seated etc and not explicitly practicing to get faster or more accurate at this initial stage. Try everything and anything. The goal is to get an efficient picking motion any way you can. There are world class players using mostly forearm, wrist or elbow and every blend of these movements, so don’t be too picky.

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#6

Thanks @lars. So I should do this before even attacking the problem of string skipping? It seems like I’m using forearm flexion (the knocking motion) and that’s causing me to string skip.

#7

Hi Ryan! Everything @lars is saying is on point. As per our discussion in the other thread, your mission, should you choose to accept it, to find a smooth alternate picking motion on a single string. Evaluate how it feels, and how it looks on video, to see if it’s smooth. If it’s not smooth, try again. Compare your motion to a visual reference of what your target motion looks like when done correctly. If it doesn’t feel the smooth and doesn’t look like the target, try again. Keep trying with short attempts at this, 20-30 seconds here and there, until you get somewhere.

Don’t work on string-switching licks, don’t work on string skipping licks, don’t work on “two way pickslanting” or anything fancy. Get your base motion down first. I feel like you’ve got “two way pickslanting” on the brain and for that I apologize. Pursuing that will never go anywhere if your base motion isn’t smooth and consistent first.

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#8

Agree with everything said here.

You need to get your technique to where its comfortable, and smooth… before you start moving it around.

And don’t be afraid to try all sorts of blends until it feels comfortable. There are tons of different ways to accomplish the double-escape without bouncing.

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#9

Thanks @Troy. No apologies necessary, of course. If it wasn’t for you, none of us would be here, after all. I couldn’t possibly thank you enough. I’ve been watching your videos on string hopping, and it helped me to realize that that was my issue–but I’ve also gotten ahead of myself a bit when watching the anti-gravity series. I can’t help it, I just love that stuff!

I"m going to work on getting the single string mechanic down and do a lot of experimenting with various pick attacks. I’ll report back!

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#10

Hey @Troy and @lars !

Just as an update…I’ve spent the past few days playing with picking mechanics on a single string (mostly single note) with and without a metronome. I’ve found that I wasn’t pick slanting in either direction enough, and settled on a pretty extreme DWPS angle with primarily wrist motion. I THINK my wrist mechanic is rotational, in the Yngwie style. Like opening a doorknob.

Anyway, I got up to 16th notes at 150 BPM on a single note, and it’s a little challenging still but comfortable. String escape is also definitely happening on my upstrokes.

So What’s next? I’m assuming learning and practicing DWPS licks that end on upstrokes? I’ve been working on pentatonic 4’s and circular sixes.

Another final question—how “deep” should I be picking? Should my pick only go beyond the string as far as is necessary to get the note to ring out clearly?

Also, the picking motion should feel more like “pushing” through the string rather than brushing it, right?

Thanks guys!

#11

I don’t see any reason to use more motion than that, do you?

#12

Great job!

Yeah, this is a good next step. But you should probably spend a little more time on the old exercise, to make sure it’s at least capable of tremolo at 200 bpm. It can be hard to unlearn ingrained movements, so even if you might be a bit bored it can be efficient to ensure you don’t commit to a movement that can’t take you all the way. Doesn’t have to be a huge time investment, just keep coming back to it every once in a while when practicing.

Don’t worry about this, yet. This is more about tone and style than about mechanical limitations (until you reach 220+ bpm). If you watch Zakk Wylde he has huge movements. His upstrokes are literally up in the air and his downstrokes are buried deep. Despite this, he can rip through those pentatonic lines like a knife through butter and blazing speeds.

Not sure what you’re asking here. What’s the difference between these two? Less pick? Different angle of pick to string?

#13

Larger motions are easier to control.

#14

Do you know the scientific reason for why larger motions are easier to control? I’d be interested in knowing the science behind that.

BTW, what area of science would cover that type of thing? Kinesiology perhaps?

#15

Something to do with using more muscles.

I think a more accurate thing for me to to have said would maybe be “larger motions are easier to keep in time with less tension”.

A pendulum might happily keep on swinging at it’s full arc for ages, but if you wanted to move it back and forth 1 mm you’d constantly have to stop and start it, putting energy in each time.

#16

Regarding the pendulum comparison, we aren’t using a pendulum, so whether the arc is relatively large or small, we don’t have the luxury of larger arcs not needing us to constantly stop and start them. We have to constantly stop and start our picking arcs whether they’re big arcs or small ones.

Regarding “something to do with using more muscles”, you’ve just made me consider something I hadn’t considered before. Do you think that the size of the muscles used by a certain motion mechanic influences how easy it is to control that particular style of picking? For example, using the elbow as the primary driver uses the biceps and triceps which are fairly large muscles. Using wrist movements as the sole means of moving the pick doesn’t bring those large muscles into play. Relying only on wrist movements to alternate pick utilizes muscles in the wrist and forearm which are smaller muscles than the biceps and triceps. Do you think it’s possible that this makes a wrist motion mechanic easier to control than an elbow motion mechanic? I think it’s an interesting topic worthy of looking into.

If this theory of mine turns out to be valid, then the logical extension of it would be that the ideal motion mechanic utilizes primarily thumb and finger motions for moving the pick because those use the smallest muscles of all the various alternate picking motion mechanics. When we write, we use our thumb and fingers to move the pencil. When artists paint, they use thumb and fingers to move the paint brush and they require extremely controlled movements. This makes me think there is a good chance my theory might be correct.

#17

That all sounds plausible but I’d have to defer to someone who actually knows the anatomy and mechanics of it all.

I’d caution against even considering the idea of an “ideal motion mechanic” because there are so many different things we might want to play on guitar and so many different ways of doing them.

I have a suspicion that we might be surprised how many muscles come in to play a long way from the hand even with what looks like the smallest possible amount of motion from “just” the wrist or fingers.

Except for when we rest stroke.

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#18

Do you happen to know if we have any posters here with expertise in that field? I’d be very interested in their ideas on this.

That’s certainly a point worth considering. Maybe the point you made with that statement nullifies the possibility of there being one ideal motion mechanic. Then again maybe not. I’m not sure how scientists would go about testing guitarists to see of there is one particular motion mechanic that can be scientifically shown to be superior to all others, but if they could find a way to do it, the results of it would be fascinating to me and probably to quite a few other posters here.

Imagine if they were to find that using a combination of wrist and fingers to move the pick is the superior motion mechanic and that guitarists who use other motion mechanics achieved their success not because of their different motion mechanic but in spite of it! If that were the result of a very well conducted study by some very good scientists, it certainly would start a tremendous number of highly passionate discussions all over the guitar players’ world!

#19

There could be a single most efficient motion mechanic, say, but there couldn’t be one single one that’s ideal for funk strumming, Beaumont Rag, Angel of Death, 6 string swept arpeggios and descending 4s on a single string. Please feel free to enumerate examples at will.

#20

I can narrow that down somewhat, and remember, I’m saying I’m interested in seeing if it would even be possible for good scientists to devise a way to figure out what is the superior motion mechanic. Even if it’s possible to devise a test to find out, the results might very well be that there is no single superior method. I’m very interested in this concept but I’m not claiming that there must be one superior way - I’m saying there might be one superior way.

Since by “one superior way” I mean “for alternate picking single note lines”, that eliminates funk strumming, Angel Of Death, etc.which narrows things down considerably.

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