Is this reverse dart throw ok? it's not nearly as fast as my tests

hi there… first post of mine

i’ve been practicing the reverse dart-throw 3 finger trailing edge
technique for about two weeks now.
my tests were encouraging, but so far i haven’t been
able to translate them to the guitar properly.
am i missing something or doing something wrong? or should i just keep
going and everything’s fine? thanks

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What happens if you try and pick at your test speed?

Generally you don’t get much faster over time, your starting point has to be the fast motion and then you just work on being able to control it :slight_smile:

i can’t get anywhere near my test speed…
this is why asked if i’m doing something wrong technically

Is that your normal picking technique? If not, it wouldn’t be unusual for it to feel awkward for some time – especially if you haven’t worked hard on picking technique before. Can you play a fast tremolo with some other technique?

I’m a Dart Thrower player, but for kicks I tried messing around with the three-finger trailing-edge technique you’re using here. What I found is that I immediately encountered a “garage spike” problem, where the pick gets hung up on the string very easily. To fix that I tried rotating the pick around all three different axes, and I had the most success when the pick was much flatter with the strings, pointing about 40 degrees behind the headstock instead of directly into the body like it looks like you’re doing.

I’m curious about the pick orientation of accomplished players who use this technique, like George Benson. I couldn’t really see what Benson does, though, in the short excerpt of his playing in the Choosing a Pick Grip section of the Pickslanting Primer.

I see you’re a MiM member, have you watched the pickslanting primer? Have you followed Troy’s reverse dart thrower motion tutorial? With the step-by-step process where you tap on the guitar, try to do the motion but without holding a pick and so on?

yes i have watched the whole thing in detail

it’s definitely not the technique i got used to. i’m mostly a dart thrower, not reverse dart thrower. also - my problem was garage spikes only at first; no i got over it but still can’t reach the desired speed.
my question basically was - when i attempt a reverse dart throw (the first video i posted),
AM I DOING SOMETHING WRONG?
for me to reach faster speed - do i need to change something technically or just keep practicing?

this is me playing tremolo in dart throw technique

Ok but did you follow the process? Did you do the tapping test on guitar? Did you tap against something attached to the strings (like sticky notes)? And so on? At which point in the process, does your motion slow down? The theory behind this process it, at every step, you should be fast

CtC theory is that you should be fast from the beginning, not speeding up by practicing slow. If you can’t play whatever you play fast – it means that something needs to change.

That’s why I recommend following the step-by-step process that Troy recorded, where you basically translate the tapping test to a tremolo through a series of steps, at each step, you change only one variable. And at each step you should be as fast as you were at the beginning when you were doing the tapping

This is not dart thrower. Dart thrower is a wrist motion. What you recorded there is elbow motion

What @kbr wrote is on target — this isn’t working nearly as well as your elbow motion, which is awesome btw! You have that smooth thing we see with players can do elbow really well. Your motion test results are also awesome, more than enough performance to do just about any technique you want.

I’ll just add that our process for translating the speed to the guitar isn’t a magic bullet. But at least it gives you a way to say, ok, I can do it up until this point and then at the next step I can’t do it. And usually when you film the technique at that step it looks different. And at least that tells you, ok, the issue isn’t your ability per se — it’s that you haven’t figured out how to do the exact same form on the instrument itself. It gives you something concrete to do in your testing.

If you run into trouble I recommend making a critique on the platform and @tommo and I will take a look.

Also how about trying this exercise: start tapping your guitar like an idiot, then simply shift your hand a bit to the right until it starts hitting the string

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i DID followed the step by step process, tapped on my guitar, attached sticky notes etc…

You have a membership, so I recommend making a Technique Critique on the platform, we’re happy to take a look. The advice you’re getting here from @kbr is excellent. But if you’re paying us to help solve your problems you may as well take advantage of it!

Awesome picking motion!

So at which step of the process, does the motion slow down?

We know that at the beginning, the tapping test on a table – it is fast.
But at the end, when you try to hit a string – it’s slow.

So mathematically, at some point during the translation process, there is a step where before the step it’s still fast, and after that step it’s slow.

It’s probably some psychological thing that you’re thinking “oh it’s time to hit the string now, I need to do that different thing now”.

Thank you. I’m just hitting the guitar like an idiot. It’s simple. :stuck_out_tongue:

I was experiencing something very similar and noticed an improvement after I aligned the tip of the pick a little bit more in the direction of the index and middle fingers. A small adjustment can go a long way.