How To Keep Moving Forward With My Practice

Introduce Yourself
#1

Hi all,

This is my first post on the forum. I joined Cracking The Code because I passionately want to improve my playing. I find the Pickslanting Primer endlessly fascinating, and it’s expanded my understanding of the mechanics involved in my playing so much.

Unfortunately, I feel as though I am reaching a point in my own practicing where I am becoming increasingly despondent at my lack of progress. I have been consciously working on my speed picking for about 6 months now, for around an hour a day (give or take). I try to spend that entire time being mindful of my technique, and constantly assessing it for accuracy and fluidity. I’ve been applying many of the principles I have learned in the Pickslanting Primer, but I still feel as though I am just not making progress.

Some things I’ve learned so far:

  • I am a huge string-hopper, and trying to train myself out of this is extremely hard.
  • I’ve played angle pad most of my guitar playing life (about 20 years), but after a couple of months of Cracking The Code, just could not get it to work with speed picking, so switched to trigger style.
  • Probably the biggest problem I have right now is figuring out where my supporting fingers on my picking hand go. I seem to get so much more accuracy when I anchor something on the guitar body, but then when I try to play down to the lower strings, this just becomes unsustainable.

I know it’s possible for me to learn to do this. But I feel as though I’m reaching a point where, the more time I put in, the more I feel like a total failure because my hands just don’t seem to want to do what I’m seeing in the Pickslanting Primer videos. My conceptual knowledge has increased vastly, but my hands just don’t want to do it.

Anyway, that’s my (slightly negative) introduction of myself to this forum. I’m hoping maybe being part of a community like this can help keep me on this journey, and motivate me to keep trying.

Chris

#2

Welcome!

Step 1: Pretend you just dunked your head in water and are shaking it off. Allow the furstration to slough away like excess water :wink:

Step 2: Pick a song or measure or scale or etude you’re having troubles with that would illustrate your ‘problems’ and clip 20-40s of video. Preferably looking down the neck so The Picking Experts can see your form.

Step 3: Be prepared to try to search for a way to pick that is NOT string hopping. Luckily this can be done in 5 minute chunks across a few days. If it’s not working, it’s not worth pursuing in most cases, so no need to get frustrated.

Step 4: Profit!

Here’s the post describing what The Picking Experts are looking for when it comes to video clips and what will allow for the quickest help. I promise you, if you give them a chance, you will be repaid in full.

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#3

Excellent response, I was about to suggest the same!

#4

I spend alot of my time practicing…that is - time spent on the edge of my abilities. It’s only when I get into a playing situation that I’m reminded I’ve come a long way and can sound good. Does that make sense?

TL;DR Practicing = demoralizing. Playing = worth the time spent practicing.

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#5

Be prepared to try to search for a way to pick that is NOT string hopping. Luckily this can be done in 5 minute chunks across a few days. If it’s not working, it’s not worth pursuing in most cases, so no need to get frustrated.

Be careful about this advice though. It’s absolutely worth trying, but it can be extremely demoralizing if you try everything and nothing works. I’d know from experience, not everyone can learn new picking motions that quickly.

#6

A fair point, although I’d wager that most of the difficulty is in identifying when you’re actually doing something different, versus just a slight adjustment on an existing inefficient motion.

Maybe it would have been better explained as “Be prepared to try and reject a few motions if they’re not noticeably more efficient after an assessment is made via some short video clips posted here, and not after 4 months of headbutting a wall.” :wink:

That will absolutely help eliminate the feeling of lack of progress. Because you can get immediate expert feedback over the course of a week or two, where you try out like 10 different motions (if things aren’t working) versus over the course of 2 years, where you feel you’re making no progress despite “trying everything”

1 Like
#7

Thankyou so much for the positive replies! I’m determined to keep working on this, even though sometimes I feel like giving up. I hope my post didn’t come across as too negative - the reason I am here is more than anything as a way to find positive motivation to keep going!

Here is a clip of my playing that I filmed last night. I feel extremely vulnerable sharing this, as it certainly doesn’t paint my guitar playing in a particularly good light. But that’s why I’m here, right?

A few notes on what is in this clip:

  • You can see at the beginning that I’m playing trigger style.
  • When I first start to tremelo pick, I am doing so with barely any supination. This is what feels ‘natural’ to me, and allows me to get the most fluid tremelo going. The problem is that there isn’t enough pick slant for it to transfer over to crossing the strings!
  • I have been going back and forth between allowing my supporting fingers to graze the body of the guitar, or be more curled in. When I allow them to graze, I can most naturally tremelo pick the E and B string. But as I play down to the lower strings, it starts to become to much of a stretch, and when it gets to the low E it feels totally unnatural!
  • Part way through the clip, I try supinating to get more of a pickslant. At this point, I lose all of that ‘natural’ feel, and you can see that I find it much harder to fluidly pick. I feel as though this is the biggest issue for me right now. I have watched Troy’s ‘Upstroke Escape’ video over and over, and everything makes sense all the way up until he tilts his wrist. The moment I do that, I lose any sense of it feeling easy, and it starts to feel like I have to force my wrist down across the strings.

Any advice or thoughts you have on my playing would be extremely appreciated! If there isn’t enough detail in the video to make a judgement, I can certainly try filming with some better lighting. Hopefully there’s enough in there to at least give an indication of where I’m at!

Chris

#8

Hey, nothing wrong with that playing! Looks like a great starting point. Also remember that you’re aiming to get better, not “I’m satisfied with my playing and want to show it off” so don’t feel like your playing should be perfect, kinda defeats the purpose!

I’m definitely not one of The Picking Experts but looking at it, it seems to me you’ve got yourself a downward escape method of picking. That’s what it looks like to me at least, I bet @Troy or @tommo would have some far more better insight though. Might also explain why those scaler lines become difficult, since unless they line up properly you’re going to be transitioning from picking down up down > switch to up down up > (trapped pick) switch and yeah that gums up the works.

#9

Thanks for your thoughts, @JB_Winnipeg .

Here’s a second video that might be easier to identify what’s going on:

In this, I try playing with no supination (what feels ‘natural’ to me), and then with some supination ('what causes things to fall apart!). I also included the same footage twice, once normal speed and once at 50%.

I guess where I’m struggling to understand what’s going on is that, in Troy’s video on Upstroke Escape, he refers to the wrist motion used when lightly supinating as simple. But whenever I add that supination, it feels strange to me, and I seem to lose what little progress I’ve made on my tremelo picking ability. I’m trying to figure out if I should just be hammering it out in my practice time, getting to a point where that supination works for me, or if that unnatural feeling is a sign that something else is wrong that needs to be corrected.

Chris

#10

It’s hard to tell for sure in this last video but it like you are doing a movement that is primarily elbow…which is a DSX motion…which is fighting the USX that you are trying to get.

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#11

Yep, I second that. The motion looks like elbow, perhaps with a little wrist. In other words, trying to change the slant is not going to change the motion.

@cellxadore, you need to find a motion that does not include elbow to be able to do USX! On the other hand, you seem to have a pretty smooth DSX going!

In a broader perspective, I think your problem is quite common. Someone with a primarily elbow mechanic wants to learn wrist USX, but it’s not working. Short of skipping USX altogether and go with the working DSX motion, I think the easiest way out of the rut is to try something totally different, like “gypsy” USX – forearm motion (rotation) with a flexed wrist. If you get that working you can always go back and add wrist USX at a later stage.

#12

Thanks for the feedback Johannes.

As a result of the comments here, I spent the last couple of days’ practice putting a couple of an hours each day into just focusing on wrist independence. Sitting down, making sure everything about my picking hand/arm is lined up correctly, and just trying to focus on getting the motion to come from my wrist.

At the end of each session, to be totally honest with you, I felt no further along than when I began.

Does anyone have any general advice/tips for optimizing practice time, when it comes to trying to isolate the wrist movements and build that motion?

#13

I would love to hear @Troy’s thoughts on this. I keep coming back over and over again to his ‘Starting With Speed’ video, in which he talks about how the motion is one that someone should be able to land on pretty quickly, and then it’s just about extending and finessing it with practice. I’m finding it hard to reconcile that with the experience I’m having, where I’m following the wrist motion instructions to the absolute letter, and then trying to get it going and it falling apart.

#14

My opinion may be controversial, but I think if wrist doesn’t click for someone immediately, they are better off pursuing gypsy-style forearm-wrist blend, or Vinnie Moore style elbow. I think the large number of possible wrist-based movements and what I perceive as the fairly nuanced problem of finding a wrist movement that “clicks” mean that the potential for frustration in attempting to find a wrist movement that “clicks” will be much greater than trying to get “elbow” to click, or trying to get gypsy-style rotation to click. While there is still some variability in those two movement types that can complicate the problem, I think there is more variability and more potential for frustation in trying to get the wrist to work. We’ve also seen that guys like Andy Wood tend to have the elbow start to get involved on their really fast single-escape phrases anyway, so if you are interested in playing those kind of lines, wrist alone is unlikely to give a complete solution anyway.

I still think there is value in attempting wrist motion in the early experimentation stages. But if it’s not happening right away (and indeed if no motion is clicking away), I think the fastest path to “something, anything, that clicks” will be through experimentation with elbow or with gypsy rotation.

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#15

Yup, I’m right there with you. And while completely logical, when Troy suggests using a rest stroke to train out of this…it goes completely counter to what I’ve been told for 20 years: pretend the tip of the pick is glued to the string - keep it as close to the string as possible at all times.

Interesting. This has been my experience as well (but I’ve only been studying the Pickslanting Primer for about three weeks now). For reasons unknown to me, trigger grip allows me to be a little faster than angle pad. At least for tremolo playing. If I try to use trigger grip and play a phrase I already know…it falls apart rapidly. It feels awkward. I’m guessing that’s just the newness.

I have felt EXACTLY the same way. It’s frustrating. I think we’re looking for a needle in a haystack. We’ll get period glimpses of it, but it’ll take awhile to find and keep it. The only advice I can give here is to remember to have fun. If you’re like me, you’re obsessing over this stuff. Troy’s presentations are logical and they seem so straightforward. So it’s easy to get frustrated when we’re not getting results (I know I am!)

I think it’s important to just step back every so often and just play for playing.

This certainly hasn’t helped me find a motion that “clicks”. But it has helped me keep some sanity.

Well, that and margaritas. :smile:

Best of luck to you! I’ll be following your thread as I’m sure there will be plenty of wisdom shared within it.