@uncleschaeflit looking at your videos, I think the stringhopping is due to a lack of anchoring your hand on the guitar (echoing what @adamprzezdziecki said with regards to a second point of contact along with your forearm). I don’t think this has anything to do with perceived tension, just an oversight in technique.
By the way, this clip shows a very interesting kind of stringhopping. Looks like it’s coming from upper arm, not from wrist flexion/extension.
That looks really interesting… Nevertheless, to me that basically looks the same as all stringhopping: Trying to play every note separately, instead of letting go and trying to get a feel for a technique that is fast but sloppy at first.
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Very helpful, thanks. I’m a herbalist, wilderness therapist, martial artist, and long-time meditator. This video shows me how to really link the practice of body-awareness with my guitar practice and playing. It provides a great bridge, and I think taking it a step further a body and mind free of excess tension is more open to the flow of energy, emotions, ideas, imagination…from the heart and through the hands into the world (in this case via the guitar).
Totally true. Here’s a quote from Claudio Arrau, a master pianist:
If you keep your body relaxed, the body is in contact with the depths of your soul. Is that clear? Because it’s quite important. If you are stiff, in any joint, you impede the current, the emotion, physical current of what the music itself dictates to you. If you have a stiff joint, you don’t let it go through [into the instrument].
Cheers! Z
Thanks to you and @adamprzezdziecki I’ve learned that I “float” with my right hand; I truly never considered this before.
It feels weird to anchor all the way on the bridge (yea, I get that most big changes will feel weird at first), but I’m now trying to keep my right hand somewhere on the guitar. Sometimes this leads to unintended muting, but my picking feels much less hoppy which is a major win.
Does this seem better to you?
@uncleschaeflit Still stringhopping, but noticeably improved compared to the initial video.
It looks like you have a good amount of the pick exposed, which I think is holding you back. I would try to hold the pick close enough to the tip that the side of your thumb could graze the strings if you barely tried.
Try anchoring (very lightly) your picking hand pinky, and “rubbing” it on the body of the guitar. Also, I notice I have a sort of inward pressure from my picking hand arm that presses the guitar body into my own body. For my elbow stuff, I observed these two things going on, not sure if it’s any help but try it and see if it helps…
Although I personally am working on wrist motions (opening up some different doors) I never really had a problem playing fast; the problem is always the note arrangement which needs to be modified to suit the fact that Elbow doesn’t do a certain escape motion…
Good luck!