Input for beginners - picking speed

Playing Technique
#1

All,
I’ve just joined this forum on a recommendation out of Justin Sandercoes’ online course. I consider myself a beginner (maybe emerging “intermediate”) having just seriously taken up guitar about 5 months ago (played casually 30+ years ago, just strumming open chords).

My question relates to realistic expectations and approach to picking speed. My pickiing practice includes quasis, major scale and minor pentatonic. I start with a 5 minute session of “minimum finger movement” (as slow as required to keep finger movement to a minimum) followed by multiple 2-3 minute sessions of increasing speeds for each (quasi, major, minor scales) until I hit a point where the quality is too low to continue progressing. My progression seems to have peaked at 60BPM for 1/16 notes. While my music preferences don’t require any high speed shredding, I believe I’ll need more speed to fully enjoy playing and am hoping to get input from other beginners (or those of you who teach or remember your beginning days) regarding progression and expectations.

I have a varied practice schedule of 2-3 hours a day, 6 days a week with alternating days focused on fingerstyle (no pick at all on those days, with focus on Travis style and picking patterns / songs). For both fingerstyle and pick days, I spend 15-20 minutes on scales and picking speed (all alternate picking). I tend to throttle back speed when my left/right hand coordination is poor and/or when my pick control seems to be suffering as I want to ensure quality of play doesn’t suffer at the cost of a bit more additional speed. I’ve experimented a bit with pick slanting and currently am settled into what I believe is a fairly neutral pick slant (I may be doing a bit of slanting prior to up/down stroke but not with any real intent). When I do my best, I tend to focus on my wrist action ensuring I am truly alternate picking and trying to keep a light grip on the pick.

As of today, I watched the videos on non-linear practice/learning (How should I practice for building speed?) and it really resonated with me. Will be trying that approach starting today.

Any input or suggestions appreciated.

Thanks!

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#2

Thanks for signing up!

I have strong feelings on this subject and I think most traditional musical practice is misguided on the subject of how hand motions should be learned. In short, I think that the word “practice” is a loaded term that means lots of different things, and you have to be clear what specifically you mean by using it. If by “practice” you really mean “learning a new hand movement I don’t yet have”, then that requires very specific, non-metronomic, much more deliberately exploratory type of “practice”. The same way you’d learn any new physical skill in athletics or anywhere else.

Here are some more hands-on thoughts on the subject:

In general, again, if you’re trying to learn a new kind of picking motion, one you don’t yet have and can’t yet do, then you need to practice like someone who doesn’t yet have that ability. So playing super slowly and “correctly” is off the table because you don’t yet know what “correct” even is.

That’s my mini-rant on the subect!

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#3

Troy - Thanks for the reply. I’m impressed with the level of interaction with this forum and your input is great. I agree with you on your point about knowing what “correct” is. Honestly, I was focused on my fretting hand as my intent was to deal with flying fingers and, to that end, the drill/practice has helped. To your point, I may not know what “correct” is with the picking hand and/or the combination of right/left coordination. After a bit of casual reading and some experimentation, I went with a neutral pick slant and a slight edge pick as a starting point. I’m certainly interested in your concept of experimentation to figure out what works for me - that combined with the other videos on CTC regarding the topic of how to practice resonate with me based on other things I’ve practiced and I’ll incorporate this concept into my picking.
What a great resource - THANKS!

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#4

I think this is a huge deal, and don’t understand why musicians in general don’t seem to talk much about it.

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#5

I am super guilty of flying fingers and there are certain fretting combinations where it feels just unstoppable. If you have the magic elixir for that, let us know!

I know we’re responsible for this confusion so I’ll apologize yet again until we can get this up in some core instructional material that people can browse. But the “slant” of the pick is not the same thing as the picking motion. You control them independently.

You start by choosing the picking motion. Elite players use an angled motion path, so that the pick escapes at one half of the motion, either on the downstroke or the upstroke. Lots of choices of motion mechanic are available, whether that’s elbow, or wrist, or something else. The wrist, for example, can be asked to create almost any type of motion path from vertical to a very flat low-angle escape. By contrast the elbow, just by its design, pretty much only operates with a low angle escape, and only on downstrokes. So you achieve your base “pickslanted” motion, i.e. angled motion path, by choosing your picking motion.

Whether or not you have to do anything to slant your grip depends on the motion you choose. More vertical motions are the ones where you will see players dial in some amount of slanted grip, so that the pick still hits the string nice and square compared to its path of travel. The Gypsy jazz players are the classic example of this. Eric Johnson is a great example in rock. On the other hand if the motion you choose escapes the strings at a flatter angle, then you will need little or possibly even no grip slant. There is no effect on the motion - this is just you altering your grip so that the attack is smooth. That’s all the grip slant does.

#6

Thanks for that clarification. I had already decided I need to take a step back and be sure I understand some fundamental concepts. Will dig through the material here a bit deeper and ensure I’m not going off half informed.
Thanks again.