I more than doubled the speed of my rotational forearm mechanic in less than five months. Here's how

Playing Technique
#1

Hey everyone,

Long-time viewer of Cracking the Code since the early days of 2007/2008 or so, when Troy was ripping up the fretboard to Shawn Lane’s Centrifugal Funk while being ripped apart by envious YouTube commenters for his long hair. I thought I’d make this post detailing the issue of guitar speed which has eluded me for years until now. Since June 17, 2017, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around what results in effortless guitar speed. After years of achieving mediocre technical results in some areas of my playing and exceptional results in others, I couldn’t find a reliable system to increase my proficiency. I believe I now have the answer, or at least something close to it.

I woke up on the morning of June 17, 2017 and made a promise to myself that for the next year-to-date I would practice only two things on this instrument: tremolo picking on the open A string, and a small 10-9-7 three-note pattern on the G string. I needed to see how far I could take it, and having been interested in old school metal for years, I simply didn’t have the chops to play my favorite songs from bands like Death, Emperor, and so on. It was frustrating - I could relate to Troy’s observation in one episode of CtC where he says that so much of his ego was tied up in his guitar playing and he didn’t have much to show for it. I was sick of having wasted so much time and simply had no choice other than to do something about it.

It is now March 5, 2018 and I believe I have made some great progress with only a couple months left until my deadline. Here are my results so far:



Here are the main takeaways:

  • I start at about 95 bpm straight 16th notes. I don’t exactly know where I’m at now, but maybe one of you experts could figure out how many notes per second the clips I posted on SoundCloud are.
  • I never used a metronome. Not even once.
  • I never practiced “speed bursts” or forced myself to play faster than I was comfortable.
  • My progress was insanely slow until it almost seemed like in a matter of weeks I had the picking hand speed of which I had once previously dreamed. My progress simply exploded overnight. I am serious when I say I woke up one day and over the course of a few hours I had 85-90% of the skill level I have now.
  • I kept an actual log of my speed on a weekly basis, which gives several amazing data points that can eventually be graphed to provide a relatively predictable pattern of speed development on the electric guitar - at least for tremolo picking.

I am wondering if any of you would be interested in a multi-part series detailing my speed development and what I found over the course of the past several months. I’ve thought about YouTube being a good medium, but I’ve uncovered so many data points that it would be selfish for me not to share this. I also have a journal that I kept during these past few months.

Best,
Will

Bonus: I practiced so much I disintegrated the area underneath the pickups. It definitely was not like that before I began this routine.

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Capped for years at 100 bpm 16th notes
Been stuck at same speed for years, could use some help
#2

I’m only a month into this, and have had to radically shift my basic approach, but I think you’re right. If you were to distill shredding to it’s absolute purist element, it would be that tremolo picking mechanic.

Of course, there are nuances which need to be integrated in order to make it musical and to fluidly traverse strings vertically and horizontally, but first thing is first: Develop a lightning fast tremolo mechanic.

This began to really click for me about a week ago, and I looked down at my hand and I saw what I was seeing in the great shredders: My hand was moving in a way it had never moved before.

What was weird was that a month ago I attempted to move my hand in that manner to generate speed, but I quickly realized that isn’t how it works. I then simply focused on developing that fast tremolo picking and it began to work itself out organically.

Also, I’m hitting the bottom edge of my pickup like you are, so I guess I should see some serious wear and tear as I continue to develop this mechanic.

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#3

Posting only to add that that’s awesome, and guitars - particularly oil finished ones like that - really NEED to look played in. Can’t wait to see what it looks like in ten years’ time!

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#4

Nice! Definitely sounds like something many people may find interesting. We’d love to see some more detail on what you’ve learned from the process.

YouTube could be great for a series like this. Maybe a hybrid of video + written summary would be a good way to share here on the forum.

Just tried an online BPM counter thing and sounds like those tremolo examples are in the ballpark of 175 BPM!

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#5

Great post! Curious question though.
You mentioned you didn’t use a metronome and later you say you tracked your progress weekly.
What metric did you use to track your progress?
This helps me accept that tremolo picking is an important speed build tool. Thanks!

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#6

Nice! Definitely sounds like something many people may find interesting. We’d love to see some more detail on what you’ve learned from the process.

YouTube could be great for a series like this. Maybe a hybrid of video + written summary would be a good way to share here on the forum.

I think that’s a great idea, Brendan. I started writing an outline last night. It’s a huge project and I definitely think it would have to be a multi-part series. I might wait until June 17 to really have a year’s worth of data, but I’m going to start developing a plan.

Just tried an online BPM counter thing and sounds like those tremolo examples are in the ballpark of 175 BPM!

Interesting… I guess it depends on how you “chunk” the note groupings. When I think of the one example “Tremolo Picking - Plain”, I get a BPM count around 205-210.

I count the chunks as “1, 2, 3, 4” and not “1234, 1234, 1234”. Depending on how you do it, I noticed the BPM count can be drastically lower. I guess I have another data point to explore!

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#7

Great post! Curious question though.
You mentioned you didn’t use a metronome and later you say you tracked your progress weekly.
What metric did you use to track your progress?
This helps me accept that tremolo picking is an important speed build tool. Thanks!

What I did was use a tap tempo tool similar to what Brendan mentioned above. I recorded a quick clip of my playing in Guitar Rig and then would actually just sit there and manually tap the tempo out. Because, however, tremolo picking is just one gigantic stream of notes, it’s very hard to get a “feel” for the tempo. To remedy this, I would pick a group of maybe 2 or 4 notes on one string and then play them each 4 times (16th notes, essentially) to have a reference point so that I could accurately tap the tempo. Over time, this trend in speed would either rise or decrease slightly, but on a long enough timeline, the trend was always, always upwards.

#8

How many years have you been playing guitar?

#9

I’ve had a weird playing history… I first started learning in 2004, but I didn’t commit myself until college in 2009. Took a long break after 2010 and I’ve been hardcore committed these past two years.

#10

Would you do your program every day?

How long did you do each ( a string tremolo and 3 note pattern)?

#11

Hi! Great work on this. I dropped a few of these in Final Cut and as Brendan has ballparked, they’re in the 175 range beats per minute sixteenth notes, give or take, with the last clip being a touch faster around 180bpm. Since you mentioned you practice the A string specifically that makes sense.

So again, great work overcoming the hurdles. 180 is approximately the fat part of the bell curve in the online poll we put about picking speed, which you can find here:

https://troygrady.com/2016/08/22/survey-on-picking-speed/

Your initial speed of 90-something was probably not really representative of your actual ability and I would think that tapping eighth notes on a desk to a metronome would have registered faster than that at that time (relatively speaking).

So one question is what were you doing originally as far as picking motion and was it more of a stringhopping thing?

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#12

Could you post a video so I can see the forearm rotation mechanic? I feel like I am fighting the string on the Upstroke when I do DWPS; I am naturally an UWPS (I can tremolo around 200-210 with Deviation, although some elbow starts to creep in) using the Andy Wood style setup.

I am experimenting with Forearm rotation (with Deviation/Extension + Flexion) for Crosspicking

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#13

Hey Troy,

Thanks for the kind words!

Your initial speed of 90-something was probably not really representative of your actual ability and I would think that tapping eighth notes on a desk to a metronome would have registered faster than that at that time (relatively speaking).

Yeah, I could see that. The one good thing is that all of my data was gathered the same way, so at least the methodology provides for consistent, accurate data.

So one question is what were you doing originally as far as picking motion and was it more of a stringhopping thing?

I used to be a dreaded elbow spazzer. I had no control and “faked” all my speed, with zero ability to use multiple techniques in sequence. For a very long period of time I abandoned picking altogether due to insane frustration. I played mostly in the pianistic tapping style of Stanley Jordan and TJ Helmerich and, without trying to, developed some insane tapping speed. It was this disparity between my tapping and picking that lead me to give it one final go. I’m glad I did that.

Here’s a recording of some of my fastest rotational mechanic speed. It takes a lot of concentration and I can sustain it for about 20-30 seconds, tension-free.

I wonder how fast that registers in Final Cut Pro…

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#14

Could you post a video so I can see the forearm rotation mechanic? I feel like I am fighting the string on the Upstroke when I do DWPS; I am naturally an UWPS (I can tremolo around 200-210 with Deviation, although some elbow starts to creep in) using the Andy Wood style setup.

Almost missed this. Yeah, I’ll get around to that this weekend. I think it would be good to provide some physical proof of my mechanics so we’re all on the same page.

Also, apologies for multiple replies, not sure how to respond to two parties so they both get alerts.

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#15

What’s an elbow spazzer and why is it dreaded? Plenty of great players use elbow - Vinnie Moore comes to mind.

Out of curiosity was the elbow technique faster than your current selection of movements? What weren’t you able to do with it?

I’m asking only because one thing I’ve learned from the forum so far is that a lot of players who claim to have trouble with developing speed sometimes discount movements they have which are already working to some extent better than all the others they know. This is something we’ve seen a few different times now.

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#16

Probably should have phrased that differently… I meant moreso that I had extremely tense technique and it was difficult to switch between downpicking and alternate picking on the fly, which is a huge part of metal technique.

I didn’t like the fact that the elbow technique seemed to have a “reserve” of energy that I quickly burn through at substantial speed. It feels like the rotational mechanic is super relaxed in comparison.

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#17

You may enjoy the upcoming Brendon small interview. He’s super comfortable with elbow for metal rhythms. He wasn’t aware this was a thing people find difficult, but he has a fine touch and his pick attack is consistent and attractive. The rhythm starting at about :14 here is all elbow and it’s super effortless for him:

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#18

Hey DJ_Ddawg,

I uploaded a video for you. I am upgrading to a proper camera soon, but this iPhone video will have to do.

What I can say is that this technique doesn’t feel like “switching gears”. I think a lot of players have this problem where their technical playing is much, much different from their slow playing and it seems like they have to change tracks in their mind. This technique is the opposite of that, at least for me. I will say that this speed, which is my limit, does require a grace period to fully relax into. Troy talks about this in the Marshall Harrison series. Firing the neurons off in the brain that quickly takes practice. For every speed increase I’ve ever had, there was a gestation period where my body had to adapt to firing off the muscles that quickly even though I felt no excess tension.

Different take, but the “Buzzsaw” clip I posted above is around the same speed if you need a better indicator of the sound quality.

Any more questions hit me up. I’m here to help.

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#19

that’s me! or at least, I don’t use my elbow anymore, but I certainly don’t have your speed

#20

Didn’t Vinnie Moore injure his elbow in the late 80’s or early 90’s and almost lose his career because of it? I think he said it came from playing too much fast stuff using his elbow. I don’t remember details, but maybe you do. Is playing high speeds with the elbow more likely to result in injury than using the wrist?

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