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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#3

Thank you for your response, Tom! I believe I am in for some of the same unlearning those students went through…

Can you recommend any exercises to help reveal the sensation of firing those antagonistic muscle groups in a proper alternating “push” and “pull”? (I feel a light bulb moment happening – that’s why we play at “warp three,” isn’t it?)

#4

Speaking personally, FWIW, I had a string hopping problem for a long time until I decided to use thumb-finger motion (AKA ‘circular picking’) which bypassed the string hopping problem entirely since string hopping is a wrist-based thing.

#5

I’m always happy to help.

This can be a tough problem to solve.

Most students get it quickly once they have an efficient picking movement, and the approach I use to teach efficient picking mechanics almost always bypasses this problem entirely.

Still, there are some students who will revert to stringhopping whenever the fretting hand is involved for some time after discovering an efficient picking movement.

I’ll try, it’s hard to capture everything in text. Obviously, I go in much more detail in lessons.

The first thing to understand is that picking speed for single escape mechanics are roughly equivalent to drumming. Drummers get two hands, but get one stroke per hand (ignoring doubles, Moellers, etc). Guitarists get one hand, but we get two strokes (up and down).

You should be able to play continuous accented 16th notes on a single string as fast as you can drum a continuous 16th note roll with you fingers on a surface (a table top, your knee, etc).

Fast drumming is normal, you’ve heard it all your life. No competent drummer thinks that a 16th note single-stroke roll at 170-180 bpm is “fast.” Guitarists all over the world are struggling to pick 16th notes at 120 bpm.

So, how fast can you drum continuous accented 16ths? See this video (made for another member):

https://youtube.com/shorts/7Md3Aa_osJM?si=F--hwdbjF3TDNrgL

This is the nearest perceptual analogue I can give for what fast picking “feels like” rhythmically. I have a full system of rhythmic rudiments to train this, but this is fundamentally what it’s all about.

Some people think it don’t be like it is, but it do.

Getting that connected to the fretting hand is a challenge in itself. Most guitarists can’t keep time with their fretting hands, and most guitarists’ picking hands follow their fretting hands. We need to be able to clearly perceive rhythmic pulse in both hands.

The simplest exercise is to alternate between two note on a single string, alternate picking both notes. The crucial thing here is that you don’t think “pick, pick” on both notes. If you have habituated the feeling of “push” on every fretted note, you’ll interpret this rhythmically as “push, push.” You’ve developed a strong attractor in your motor system.

Instead, think “tick-tock” as you pick the notes. Use large, powerful movements in both hands. Power and range of motion are good things. Rest strokes can be very helpful.

I’m delighted that worked for you, but I’d mention that there are plenty of terribly inefficient movement patterns that are possible with thumb and finger movement, too.

I can do fast thumb-finger movement. I don’t personally believe that it confers any unique advantage over any other efficient picking movement. More than that, from my teaching experience, it seems to be the movement that has the lowest success rate among students who try to learn it.

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#6

I was just speaking personally. It may be the case that most people don’t find their solution to string hopping with that picking motion, but there is no danger in experimenting with it.

#7

Of course, I just wanted to add a word of caution for people reading in case they thought thumb-finger motion is some kind of guaranteed fix for stringhopping.

I absolutely agree that people should experiment, you never know what will work for you until it works for you. I just don’t want people getting tunnel vision in pursuit of any specific movement pattern.

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#8

What @Tom_Gilroy said!

If you only ever use stringhopping at slow speeds that’s fine. This is very common as we saw in Andy’s technique. You could argue that people do this at slow speeds because it’s actually in some sense “better”: easy to learn, gets over the string during string changes, uses a large relaxed motion with normal hand speed instead of a small slower tense one, etc. It’s a “good enough” engineering solution because it does what you need, arguably better than trying to use a fancy technique that makes a really flat motion that just skates over the strings and requires more accuracy.

But as you speed up, that changes. It can definitely cause muscle strain / reuse issues when you hammer away at it trying to do faster lines. Bluegrass roll patterns are a classic case where people get good “medium speed” results but complain about arm strain and not being able to go faster. It stops being “good enough” at that point.

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#9

Is it possible to get bluegrass roll patterns faster than medium speed with DBX without any TWPS? I know Molly Tuttle can with her DT technique but what about RDT, finger motion and shoulder motion? I try to stay DBX when experimenting with this sort of thing but I’m wondering if I should try and introduce some TWPS and see what happens :slight_smile:

#10

Great – thank you for chiming in, Troy! And thank you @Tom_Gilroy for the really detailed response. I spent a few years taking drum lessons, but had never thought about connecting it to guitar on a technique level. I’ll have to find my practice pad in the attic somewhere…

For what it’s worth, this discussion has really helped reveal some CtC concepts that I’ve been only partially understanding for years. Now that it’s clearer, I can see that the information has been on this site forever but I’d let a few misunderstandings compound until I was off on the wrong track.

So fantastic to get such thoughtful help here on the forum – thank you, everyone!

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#11

I’m not sure, but I’ve come to believe that people naturally solve for a preferred “rhythmic density”, too.

When we play slowly, every note is articulated as it’s own rhythmic event. We synchronize individual fretting actions to individual pick strokes so that every note is it’s own distinct rhythmic event. Stringhopping might allow us to maintain enough rhythmic density that we can play at slower tempos comfortably.

If we were to use maximally efficient picking and fretting hand mechanics, the movements could feel too slow to be comfortable.

No problem!

#12

Does anyone idly stroll with the same gait they use to sprint? No, because that would be somewhere between extremely awkward and impossible, right? lol This is a similar sort of thing.

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#13

That’s interesting to have that reaffirmed. I think I kinda did something similar already – I only thought of the first pickstroke as “pick” and then of the second one as some kind of “rebound” if that makes sense(?)

#14

That makes sense.

What matters is that you understand the down stroke and the up stroke as a single “push/pull” cycle, and that you learn how that feels.

Thinking “pick, pick” or even counting “1, 2” can create the impression that every pickstroke “should” be one full cycle. It’s much better to think “tick, tock” or count a two-syllable word. This emphasises two parts of one repeating cycle.

If students become habituated to the sensation of one stroke per cycle, they can come to believe that this rhythmic feeling is “correct”. It becomes a stable attractor for the students’ motor systems.

You can break the attractor by forcing a bifurcation, that is, by demanding a speed that isn’t possible playing one note per cycle. Making speed the goal here can be effective, and it can result in the emergence of efficient movement patterns.

This is the logic of “starting with speed” and establishing an efficient tremolo mechanic first. It’s simple, and it has a high success rate for that goal. It’s probably the simplest and easiest approach for most people.

That said, it doesn’t work for everybody. Some people are very intent on maintaining the feeling they mistakenly believe is “right,” and will give this goal priority over achieving speed, and will speed limit themselves. For these people, there is no starting with speed.

Some other people will continually attempt to push through the speed barrier while preserving the rhythmic feeling they mistakenly believe is “right.” This is very strenuous and can result in overuse injuries.

Some people will discover a picking movement which allows them to “play fast”, but which doesn’t meaningfully connect to their internal clock. These movement patterns can’t be slowed down, so students can’t learn how to use these movements while synchronised with fretting. The speed is either “on” or “off.”

Lastly, it’s possible for a student to have discovered an efficient picking movement, but they cannot implement it while fretting. Many students bypass this problem completely, but this step doesn’t always come intuitively and many students struggle here. Even though they know what efficient picking “feels” like, they have always synchronised one fretting action to one cycle of the picking movement in all of their trained coordinations.

These students often create a mental distinction between “single-note” picking technique and “tremolo” picking technique (essentially, they believe in two limited types of “right”). This is a distinction without a difference. It doesn’t actually exist, and rationalising in this way can be very problematic.

I’ve been teaching this stuff for years now, I have seen all of these situations many times. They’re all completely fixable, but the student has to understand that “right” is a feeling, and they don’t know what “right” feels like yet. They need to know that there isn’t anything “wrong” with them and be open to a new experience.

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