How to keep your hands synced and exercises to control them

Playing Technique
#1

Is there any exercise to keep your hands synced I’m having trouble keeping them synced as hell

#2

Correctly use a metronome as this guy explains, note the perfect rendition of Slayer at 320 bpm.

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#3

Active chunking is what works for me.

#4

Personal experience - the hand sync thing takes time…years for me…but it has gotten (and continues to) get better consistently by just continuing to try. I know this isn’t a dreamy response, but just my experience as someone who has employed exercises for just about everything music related.

#5

I was wondering what you thought about a possible alternative:

  • never play anything unless the hands are synched

So the above suggests slowly bumping up the metronome from a known-good state to a little faster, and then a little faster, but the rhythm is always perfect?

#6

I personally say forget a metronome for now. And do simple exercises. 1234, 1234, 1234.

I tried.

This is better.

#7

I like the exactness of that idea and also it would keep you focused and motivated to move towards the goal of syncing your hands - because you get to move to the up the metronome. The roadblocks I see would be 1) difficult to move into a creative space if you follow that rule exclusively and 2) in the way that walking is a different technique than running, so is playing slower vs faster…so my guess is that your body needs to experience things at speed while you get your hand sync legs under you. At the end of the day, keep trying it all - short bursts, slowing down, going for it at full speed, taking a break, keeping at it and focus on those things that are giving you some results. I have yet to come across more specific advice on hand sync development…also given live footage of some of my favorite players - it would seem it’s an aspect of guitar playing that seems to just come with some variability from day to day.

#8

I’ve always wanted to connect walking to musical expression, but it’s hard to do, though I’m sure everyone reading this has had the experience of being able to give a rough calculation or feeling to themselves for how many steps it will take to walk to a curb.

Same can be done for notes to the root.

Tho from my experiance using a metronome to get faster is just following a beat and not creating it yourself. So you are more focused on how you missed the beat and making some sound, left or right, rather than how you are bringing your left n right together.

#9

Does this analogy really hold? Shouldn’t the picking look the same at any speed, e.g., first I must work out what it should look like for high-speed with escapes, etc., and then I should practice it, starting slowly with a metronome?

I’m all for trying things quickly, etc., but it seems to me that the time will never be perfect unless a metronome is regularly used.

Right, you need to know the beat that you want in advance, then you learn to do what you wanted perfectly.

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#10

I think the mechanical movement should be learnt first, then you can try keep up with a metronone?

#11

Yes, very reasonable!

Then start the metronome at 60 (slow!) and start going up from there. One can get a free metronome for their phone.

There is a free book attached to the link that I shared, above, it is well worth reading.

#12

Percussionists had excellent time for ages before metronomes were ever invented.

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#13

They beat anyone who disagreed lol In time ofcourse.

Aint called 4 to the floor for nothing :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

#14

Metronomes are over 200 years old and I’m not sure how accurate ancient percussionists were.

But guitar players use new-fangled things like plastic plectrums, vacuum tubes, transistors, and speakers, so why not metronomes—not to mention click tracks? People should leverage every advantage that they can.

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#15

An ensemble of synchronised drummers

An ensemble of synchronised metronomes

I agree with this statement. I’m not arguing against using a metronome.

I am arguing that there is a lot more to understanding pulse, rhythm and synchronisation than you can learn with a metronome.

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#16

I like them! Now they’re probably better than the ancients because they can train with metronomes and the like should they want to, but I literally have no idea and merely speculate.

Absolutely! But regarding keeping hands synchronized, I think that a metronome is a wonderful tool.

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