While I understand what Troy is going for with this analogy, I have a little problem with it, as riding a bike becomes easier, the faster you go. This is due to the gyroscopic effect that does not appear with guitar playing (as long as you are not Pete Townsend).
Just being a smart-ass here…
For those who don’t approve of that analogy, the difference between walking and sprinting is another useful analogy. When high-performing athletes sprint 60m or 100m, they are not performing the same movements as when they walk, only faster. Rather, when they sprint, they are making qualitatively different types of movements from walking.
You missed the essence of what i am saying. Obv there will be ap, but by starting with tremolo, and then later cultivaing tremolo picking (strict ap) into something to use while crossing strings, may limit a players development.
Here we are 30 years later trying to clean up our ap technique by formalizing slant changes. If yjm or gambale method were more popular, the entire aproach to the instrument could be different today.
What is surprising if you think about it is that strict ap was never really successful in general playing or even at the pinnacle (people suspect petrucci really was a swiper and didnt command 2wps, for instance) its like several influential players and teachers floated an ideal that was responsible for many player’s failures, when they didnt even use it or understand it themselves.
I don’t think @Frylock did miss the essence of your post. What he basically said is that tremolo picking is not the alpha and omega of picking, which obviously makes sense. Instead I think that when you start doing that stuff you realize very soon that string changing/transfer is the core issue that would give you headaches for years 
hence I don’t really understand your grip about tremolo picking here, and what it has to do with the fact that you apparently prefer economy picking for string transfer as opposed to strict alternate …
… which is perfectly fine…
… but please leave the right to others to favor and use other methods. When you say alternate was not successful you seem to elude the fact that John McLaughlin was one of the most influential guitarist for fast picking, that an entire school of guitar playing (Bluegrass) is largely based on alternate picking, that even among jazz players (a genre that surely has more economy pickers) guys like Pat Martino use that stuff.
You didn’t quite get it either. Tremolo picking is the gateway into attempting to primarily use AP for string crossing.
My point was that early on, much emphasis is placed on tremolo picking (single string AP) and synchronizing it with the left hand. Furthermore, beginners start out playing patterns that are geometrically organized so that string crossing is easy. They don’t get trapped with pentatonics. Everything good so far…
Later on, they continue to use AP for string crossing when introduced to 3nps modal forms. They either continue to organize phrases to be geometrically advantageous, they intuitively(or now, intellecutally) develop a 2wps system to overcome the difficulties of AP, and most people still don’t reach the promised land.
Contrast that to what would happen if players are introduced to economy picking early on. What if they are taught early pentatonic licks with mixed notes per string and learn to incorporate sweeps and economy strokes?
When they get to 3nps scales, they might, instead of grappling with pick slanting, hopping, etc, instead resort to economy picking. [Aside: There are 100x more players who can riff on 3nps scales using legato than there are ppl who can do it with pickign. I think this proves my point that there is a knowledge/ability gap with how to pick these forms.]
My point is that an early introduction and reverence for strict AP (tremolo) causes problems later on. AP is not suitable for playing many phrases and the whole pickslanting thing is at least partly a kludge to overcome it.
How about this as a compromise: Early on, players should be given equal exposure to economy picking and taught that it is more effective than AP/pickslanting for many things that they will endeavor to play later on.
Look at Rick Graham to see what happens when someone has a great command of economy picking.
Sorry but no … well, you might think it is but that certainly is not true for everybody.
Single string is … single string. By definition it has nothing to do with how you deal with string crossing/transfer. What you do for changing string (eco or alternate or whatever else) is whole different story.
I should have mentioned “muscle memory”… but I don’t think it matters. I give up.
The greatest players make use of economy/hybrid/sweep picking and players who “force” AP so they can use geometrically advantageous patterns that work with 2wps end up sounding mechanical. .02
I think this forum is great, there are other people discussing topics that are very important to me, but we need to realize that not everyone will come to the same conclusions.
But the thing is, now that we know a bit more about picking we don’t really have to choose a single technique and stick with it forever. Some licks may come out better with economy etc., others with pure alternate. Why not keep both options in the toolbox?
Don’t usually need to quote myself.
You still need 2WPS for economy picking. As soon as there is a string change you cannot sweep, you have to escape the plane of the strings. I definitely have a problem with beginners being told that they shoud be able to alternate pick everything, but strict economy picking brings the same issues. The easier way to start would most likely be a one way pickslanting approach, combining alternate picking, sweeping and legato.
Yes, this is a good idea. But instead of letting beginners feast on even-note grouping licks like pentatonics (played with downstrokes), I think an effort should be made to incorporate economy picking.
It might be possible to devise some great sounding rock licks with odd note groupings that can only be played quickly with economy picking. Partly because they would sound great, but also to help ingrain the notion that string crossing can often be done better with economy.
I am currently working on playing asc/desc diatonic sequences of fourths using what ammounts to several two string sweeps mixed within the picking. Trying to see if this will yield fruit and let me play these at above 70% speed.
Maybe! We know from customer feedback that jazz players are less interested in practicing the kind of fast sequenced lines that rock and metal players dig. And we know that bluegrass players often have less interest in economy and sweep techniques, regardless of how easy or effective they might be.
Ultimately, because we’re in the business of instruction, we need to provide multiple pathways, with the clearest possible plain English descriptions of how things work, and let the player choose.
Personally I do not have a soapbox to stand on when it comes to technique - they’re all great. For every technique I know, I have written riffs with that technique that I wouldn’t have written with any other, even if I could subsequently play that riff with other techniques if I tried. More music: it’s the strongest argument I can think of for learning multiple ways of doing things.
That’s why you are a researcher/instructor/artist!! Mad scientistight I add?
Very true when you said: what’s the line you are trying to play? It’s all about the line you’re attemptting.
To my ear, tremolo always sounded somewhat unmusical and unpleasant (not just on electric guitar, but on any plucked instrument), so I think I’ve never really deliberately practised it on guitar. It only occured to me recently, that probably it (practising tremolo) would be helpful for improving playing technique in general.
Before CtC my alternate picking was very behind my playing, clocking at like 100bpms 16ths tense, while my tremolo would reach like 200+ easy (i had an unhealthy relationship with the tremolo lick in eruption 
).
It was only after CtC that I figured out why… I mainly used forearm rotation with string-hopping for general playing but (almost unconciously) switched to elbow dsx exclusively for tremolo lines. Since then, I successfully incorporated my tremolo mechanic and now use it for almost every fast lines I play, including yngway, gilbert and wylde licks.
My point is that if it werent for tremolo picking, I would not have developed a motion I can use for lots of fast stuff I wanted to play and never could pre-CtC. So I may be biased, but I think tremolo (specially palm-muted) is actually great for beginners to develop a fast yet useful picking motion while avoiding string-hopping.
All these movements (forearm, wrist, elbow, fingers) are deceptively complex, there are many different ways of playing essentially the same ideas and bad-habbits can easily form in the beginnings. Imo its the general lack of awareness and knowledge of these movements that are the real culprints of the world-wide frustration surrounding speed picking. Thankfully people might start becoming more aware of the CtC material and not fail at shredding for ~10 years with the solution right under their noses like I did 
Ps: I always hated economy picking, not really my thing
Hi! There’s a point in topicstarter words. For example, I could easily do fast tremolo picking (around 240-260bpm) but I still can’t do easiest stuff requiring more than one string even in moderate speed (after couple of years I managed to play the Poptart lick with 110bpm).
Since stringhopping is the main problem here and you don’t deal with stringhopping when doing tremolo - it’s kinda obvious.
Though I’m not sure that it’s totally useless. It gives you a feeling what is like to play smoothly without your pick stucking. Some kind of reference point.
I know it sounds weird, but people can actually end up string-hopping even when tremolo, Troy discusses in another post that they’ve seen people doing it, and I believe it because I was one of them!
Before CtC I used to play trailing edge with a Morse style grip, but switched to the standart grip for tremolo. Everytime I tried tremolo picking with the Morse grip, I would fail to activate the elbow motion, and it would be slow, clumsy and tense. Not because of string switching or tremolo, but because I was using inefficient motions for what I wanted to play, without even realizing it.
It does sound strange ) Since stringhopping is impossible on one string by definition.
But I do understand what you are talking about. Some people can’t do picking effectively, so when they practice fast tremolo they achieve some effectivness. Problem is it depends on what techique they come to. My tremolo technique is useless when dealing with changing strings.
So, I try to use different approaches to play when using more than one string. For me my tremolo is almost useless. It’s true to say I don’t remeber when I used it last time.
@Troy has been using the term stringhopping to refer to a type of motion, and it’s definitely possible to perform that type of motion on one string. The hallmark of stringhopping is that in one axis of movement, the movement along that axis reverses after the pick strikes the string (i.e. halfway through the pickstroke). The textbook version involves wrist flexion as the pick approaches the string, but then reversing to wrist extension immediately after striking the string.
Oh, I got it! Thanks!
It was a drastical changes in terminology while I was absent. All that UPX DSX… I’m a bit confused