Is string hopping…dangerous?

Playing Technique
#1

Not, like, literally harmful to your body. :slight_smile:

Generally — in sports, in learning other instruments — we’re taught to avoid repeating motions that we want to unlearn. “Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent.”

But then there’s Andy Wood, hopping away until he hits the appropriate speed. And in the more recent CtC videos, it seems like the whole ‘start with speed’ thing is explained in the sense of that faster motion being effectively a totally distinct technique from our slow-motion mechanic.

I’m now totally a believer that slowly inching up the metronome won’t ever make you go fast — I have nearly forty years of failure to document it! But my question for Troy and the rest of you:

If fast picking and slow picking are truly separate circuits and you can’t use one to develop the other, then is there any particular harm in continuing to use your inefficient hopping motion while doing things like memorizing left-hand fingerings or learning scales or just making music while you develop your faster mechanics through CtC?

Since the original CtC series taught me to recognize string hopping, I get frustrated/concerned anytime I notice my right hand hopping away on something difficult…

Can I relax? Is there any danger in continuing to reinforce (“groove”) a sub-optimal movement?

#2

An efficient alternate picking motion uses antagonistic muscles groups on the down and up strokes. This means that there are both “push” and “pull” portions in the movement cycle, and two notes are played per cycle.

Rhythmically, this is totally distinct from stringhopping, where the down and up strokes reuse the same extensor muscles. The creates a rhythmic feeling where everything is a “push,” and only one note is played per cycle.

I have seen several students discover very efficient picking movements, but struggle to actually utilise them while fretting because they have habituated the feeling of a picking hand “push” on every fretted note. This can be a difficult problem to overcome.

If you want to use stringhopping while memorising a sequence, it might not be harmful, but to internalise the rhythm, establish stable movement phase for synchronisation and chunk effectively, you need to use an efficient technique.

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