Hyperspeed Picking

I emailed him a few questions when I was writing my final paper for my degree and he talked with me for about an hour on Skype to make sure he gave me proper responses for everything. He’s an all round great guy! He has some great tuitional material, and, to keep vaguely on topic, he’s one of the only other people I’ve seen do my weird ‘clenched fist’ hyper picking movement.

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I think you should ask him to join us!
This is really interesting and by the way shows (at least to me) that he put in a fair amount of time on thinking about what he’s doing.
So technically i have a guess - as always :grin: - by angling the pick you remove the snap which can cause quite a lot of resistance. If there’s enough angle in the pick the displacement kindof moves from the string to the wrist, if the wrist is not locked the pick glides over the string. That happens even with thin and light picks.
When you play flat, the pick bends and the string is moved out of the way.
I think that has pretty small impact on players with huge pick motions and lots of momentum, when you try to get the pick through with as less effort as possible it’s probably a game changer.

I played stubbies pretty much from the begining, they remove the angle question almost completely, They always hit the string with a round part. But from sound view they are limiting, there’s simply no agressive sound on the pickstroke.
When i was an active player in the past, I spent most time on accoustic where that had little impact, now playing exclusively for fun and on electric I’m thinking of changing the pick.

Which now leads to a question, do you know how the picks with the twisted top are called? I think John plays them and it seems to me the twist is designed to add attack when playing with no or small angle, which I do.

Edir: Forgot to mention that, I’m totally jealous on Rowans left hand, even in that clip with no sound you can see how flawless his fretting is.

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The resistance of the pick could be a factor. Personally, I don’t angle the pick a lot, but I do use a small amount of the actual pick (just a tiny bit of the tip.) I didn’t notice this until I had the magnet, but I think it helps, less pick to go through the string.
John used to play Sik Piks, which I used for around a year, they were great. Sadly the owner of the company died so they don’t make them any more. I’d still use them if they were available. I’ve got some left, maybe i’ll look into 3d printing them or something. They certainly made a difference, but I think I could do it with any pick as long as it doesn’t bend at all.
Also, yes, Rowan has some insane legato abilities!

Pure Space Invader stuff here! Ha!

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Oh man … life’s unfair. :disappointed_relieved:
So I’ll put my hope in another company to continue that one day.

Even thin picks don’t bend anymore if you play them angled and the top is a little rounded.
I read somewhere Paul Gilbert uses 0.5 (or 0.6 I’m not sure) now, I think angled it’s more the shape than the thickness.
In addidtion the curve you get lifts you over the string which should make slanting easier.
I try to use that when I’m crosspicking, just it feels and looks strange.

I think I’ll have a look on some of Rowans lessons later on, I saw just one or tow of his clips before (and honestly i had the impression he might be a little drunk there, which I’m totally fine with with when I’m drunk too, but mostly I’m in office when tubing), but it seems he can give some interesting insights when talking seriously.

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wolf Hoffman still has a great guitar tone! I saw Accept two months ago in Filderstadt and it was incredible. Wolf is almost 60 and looks incredible :wink: He could take Bruce Willis’ spot easily.

Udo left the Band a while ago to form U.D.O. . I never really liked him, so I like the mew singer better anyway.

Yes, but they are usually 50+

She is also still active, her Band is called “Doro”. We played the same festival 2 years ago.
She headlined the “20 Bucks entry friday”, we opened the “free of charge saturday”, but hey! I’m almost a Rockstar now :joy:

There is bad singers, good singers, incredible singers and then there is Dio :wink:

Tom

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It’s a real shame. I’ve thought about doing something similar, but with a more durable material. Those things wore down FAST! But me becoming a business entrepreneur?.. probably not! I might 3d print some personal ones, but I don’t have to time to devote to it at the moment, and Swiss Picks are doing me fine for now.
Paul Gilbert uses super thing ones, clearly didn’t do him any harm! I just can’t get on with them myself and can’t achieve the hyper movement using them. Maybe I could if I got used to it!
He’s not drunk, that’s just his style of presentation, doesn’t take things too seriously! If I ever start doing youtube lessons, I imagine they’d be similarly crazy!

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Hopefully Dunlop or another of the big guys take over, if they have enough requests.

So for Rowan drunk or not, there’s way more depth in his statements than I realized on first view, so my fault.
There’s so many cool guys out there, it’s easy to judge too fast.