I've hit a brick wall after 2 weeks

Technique Critique
#1

Hey all!

Hope everyone is doing well!
Lately i’ve been relearning how to alternate pick and narrowed down my focus on just a couple of simple exercises.

One of them is this one :slight_smile:

I started out very slow and I’ve been able to work my way up to 90bpm consistently as the video shows. It took me 2 weeks approx of daily practice for atleast an hour just focussing on this exercise.

The problem however is that, I don’t feel like I can speed up this picking movement a whole lot more. My target is 120bpm… So at this point it feels lightyears away. I’m trying to get rid of my string hopping movement and it seems i’m not doing that anymore, or atleast it improved alot. My fretting hand can go atleast 10-15 bpm faster legato style so i’m guessing it’s purely a picking issue. I’ve also noticed that when i try to go a bit faster in any fashion, i’m completely lost on my string shift and picking direction. I don’t feel the movements anymore so it feels disorientated.

I have been experimenting with throwing in a bit more arm movement and not resting any fingers on the body. It does benefit playing faster but then my switch from G to D becomes very sloppy so i don’t want to make any sacrifices anymore when it comes to clean playing or being in control of muting and such.
Also, i’m afraid i might relearning bad habits again since it’s been very hard to unlearn them so i just wanted to put this out here, maybe you guys can see what i should do different.
Maybe it’s just a matter of getting the reps in and keep pushing for tempo, and if that’s the case i’m more than happy to continue my wrist picking (dws) .

I would just like to know if i’m on the right track this time.

Cheers Ian!

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#2

Hey Ian! Sounds good!

I think you have done enough medium-speed reps with this one, and I also think you may have over-practiced it.

So I have 2 quick suggestions for you:

  1. try to go to 120bpm straight away and see what happens. It may be sloppy at first, but it will give you an idea of what that speed feels like.

  2. play a wider variety of licks! If you don’t make progress on a given lick in 5-10minutes, move on to something else!

Finally, a must watch about the topic of speed :slight_smile:

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#3

Hey @tommo,

I’m always trying to play at a much higher speed mid practice because i already knew about this “getting used to the speed” thing, i’m always pushing for 110 for a bit but it sounds ridiculous :smiley: and I’m afraid things won’t set themselves straight and it might result in just plain fast sloppyness… So taking that in regard I thought i needed more reps instead of pushing for tempo.

Kind of lost on this one, but i’ll try 120bpm every time i’m practicing and see how it will go :smiley:

play a wider variety of licks! If you don’t make progress on a given lick in 5-10minutes, move on to something else!
[/quote]

Well, i’m playing a total of 3 exercises but it’s all six note patterns on 2 strings, would you suggest mixing it up with other stuff like Shawn said in the video? like playing sixes, fours and maybe 2 note per string licks? My philosophy was that i should make the exercises as small as possible so I could mainly focus on my problem area…wich is the string switch.

#4

So first of all that lick is a predominantly upward escape lick or DBX if you can do DBX. So if you aren’t adopting a picking trajectory that works with it, you may hit a speed limit with it.

Second if you feel are picking in a way that is conducive to the escape pattern of the lick, and your fretting hand can go faster, but are reaching a roadblock with your picking hand at 90-100bpm it’s usually because what your actually using may not be as efficiently fast as it needs to be, meaning you likely have something extra in there that is slowing it down or you are over thinking something.

If you are losing track of the lick, it’s also a good idea to try and emphasize the accents by exaggerating them a bit at first.

If that is you in the vid, it looks like you are playing in a more trapped/dbx position , though it could be the camera angle. I’ll have to look at it a bit closer, but since you aren’t playing it at your max capacity complete with any slop, it’s hard to pin point what could be stopping you, because you are playing it at a very comfortable speed where a lot of those things won’t happen.

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#5

Very good point that I should have mentioned, thanks for chiming in :slight_smile:

Little addition: you could also test what happens when you start the same lick with an upstroke, so all the string changes are reversed. Does it become easier to speed things up?

Of course, a lot of people complain that they don’t like to begin on an upstroke. But I think it’s something everyone can get used to and definitely worth exploring to expand one’s toolbox.

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#6

Hey Fossegrim, thanks for your input!

Yes, i’m aware my upstroke is my escape. That’s why i’m trying to use a downward pickslant because I learned on this website that those 2 belong to eachother just like upward pickslanting and downward escapes right?
Like you said accenting works for me to find my first downpick at the beginning of the lick each time, but i’m not sure i will be able to accent the 5th and 6th note of that lick. That’s where the string shift happens and all in all it’s a weird place to accent because it’s the 2 last notes of the lick…So then i’ll end up accenting the 1st, 5th and 6th but i will give it a try if it means getting a better feel of where I am.

I made a new video of the same lick

…instead of just doing it on 90bpm, I also went to 100bpm ( and it kind of worked!!) and finally 110bpm (wich completely fell apart). So, I hope you’ll have a better view of what i’m doing wrong.

The main problem at this moment is losing momentum, orientation and accuracy when I have to do the string switch to play the last 2 notes of the lick.

I’m sorry to put you through this and I thank you for the help so far! :slight_smile:

#7

Hey,

I’ll definitely try out the reverse way…I never thought of this to be honest :smiley:

Thanks alot!

#8

Is that posture (sorta gipsy-jazz style) comfortable or are you just attempting it for academic reasons? What would be the most comfortable posture for you to do this?

Also, I think 110 is a good test tempo for you: you clearly have the necessary picking speed to play at this tempo, and at the same time you won’t be able to get away with inefficient motions to clear the string changes.

Don’t forget to try the upstroke version too. I know you mentioned you have an upwards escape but you never know what happens when you speed things up and the autopilot takes over :wink: In fact, towards the end of your video the motion looks pretty flat (use the 0.25 speed on YT to check yourself), and perhaps it may even tend towards downward escape

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#9

Well i’m really just trying new things out lately and this posture is the result of that . I guess it’s my new normal and yes, it feels natural to hold the pick like this at the moment. It took some time though.

At first i would hold the pick between my thumb, index and middlefinger, then I changed it to thumb and index. Back then if I tried speeding up a lick I automatically went upward pickslant, wich would require a downward escape now I think about it.
But it was very inacurate, no way to play fast and almost spastic in a way I did not know about the escapes either :smiley:
After a couple of years I changed my ways to focus more on downward pickslant because it felt like it had more potential.
I got better consistency but yeah, up until it really picks up pace and then it falls apart as dispayed in the video.

So, it’s hard to say what would feel most comfortable to hold the pick because i’ve been all over the place, the only thing that stuck was the paul gilbert way of holding the pick, and that’s it. Only now for about a year or so I’ve been really trying to figure out why it still doesn’t work like I want it to and that resulted into this posture.

Yes, i’ve been really busy today just going on 110 bpm no matter how sloppy it was, if anything, 100bpm suddenly felt alot better just now. I’ve been doing this for 2 weeks now every day (along with legato practice and picking exercises) but I would slowly build up the tempo from 78bpm to 90bpm and occasionaly try my luck on 100bpm. So that’s a little win there already i guess :smiley:

Yeah, definitely, you have given me the idea it might be a good thing to try out the upward slant again since that was wat I naturally did waaay before i ever thought about how to actually hold a pick.

Thanks for your time man!

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#10

Hi! Great playing so far.

I’m not really getting a clear sense of what the problem is. Are you saying you can’t physically move your picking hand past a certain speed? Or are you saying that there’s something about the line that is sloppy past a certain speed?

As far as the speed of the picking motion itself, you really shouldn’t have to “work up” to that. As Tommo is implying, you probably already have picking speed, you just have to measure it. Have you taken any of our table tapping tests and what were the metronome values on those?

The next step is tremolo. Fret a single note and pick fast. The result should be somewhere in the ballpark of your table tapping results. If it’s not similar to the table tapping tests, then the motion is wrong. Find one that is more similar in speed to the tests.

Once you can play a single note fast, you determine which escape that is, and then you can play phrases that match that escape. It may or may not be upstroke escape when you find your best motion.

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#11

So again it’s kind of hard to tell by the angle, but because you have the camera at sort of an upwards tilt, some things may be visually a little skewed. From the vantage point of the camera your picking trajectory looks more like it tries to follow a more pendulum like shape instead of a strict diagonal one that is more typically common with USX players. That in it of itself isn’t really a deal breaker, and is actually an asset, and I wouldn’t really be too concerned with that being the reason for the speed bumps. But what I do see is that your motion in general looks a little ridged, not quite wrist, more forearm dominant, which may be why your losing it a little after just a few repetitions at that higher speed. Your also not hitting the last note of each sequence so that could also mess with things. Keep in mind too, working with a metronome may be contributing to that as well. There tends to be a psychological aspect of tensing up if you can’t quite line up with the click.

What the other guys are hinting at is that since you you are hitting speed bumps with the two string lick, what is the speed like doing a sextuplet lick on one string? If you are hitting the same speed bumps n just an open string, you may need to take another look at the picking mechanic in general and make sure it’s the right one for you, or maybe incorporate a helper mechanic in there.

The other danger too, while we are at it, is that sometimes we look for performance enhancers when none were truly needed in the first place, and it could be that your first instinctual method when you first picked up the guitar, was the correct one for you all along.

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#12

Hi Troy!

Nice to get a respond from the man himself! :slight_smile:

To make a long story short, i found out that my tremolo picking is more than fast enough, the potential is there to play fast licks. The biggest problem I have is a very sloppy string switch past a certain speed.

I have been going at it for the past 2 days just cranking the speed up to 110 or 120 even and when i drop back to 100 it sure feels more comfortable. I also noticed that my picking depth is a bit too deep for real effective movement.
So, when I raise my right hand just a little bit it feels easier to do since there isn’t as much resistance from the string. At the same time, lighter picking and smaller movement makes it even easier to lose orientation for me on my string switch, so i guess i’ll have to get used to this a little bit. The harder picking has somekind of tactile effect on me where it’s easier to play in time on 1 string, but makes the string shift way harder unless I use a very exaggerated wrist movement…wich is okay up until like 100bpm. No way I could speed that up to 120bpm.

At this point i’m still experimenting with everything you guys are proposing so I’m just flowing with the process and see where i’ll end up, I hope it will click eventually.

No I havent, but i will check it out and post the results here!

Thank you for your time Troy!

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#13

I’ll just chime in to say that you don’t need to worry about this. Plenty great players out there who play fast and fluid with significant pick depth.

If you follow the steps outlined above by Troy, you will not need to consciously worry about pick depth, it will automatically adjust itself by feel based on your most comfortable picking style.

1 Like
#14

I just tested it out and posted a video to show you :

It seems i can get it up to 110bpm before it starts to fall apart to play in time.

However, if I don’t have to focus on a metronome and just tremolo pick as fast i can it’s much faster and pretty consistent too. Here I did it with a metronome to give you an idea :slight_smile: quote=“Fossegrim, post:11, topic:52788”]
what is the speed like doing a sextuplet lick on one string? If you are hitting the same speed bumps n just an open string, you may need to take another look at the picking mechanic in general and make sure it’s the right one for you, or maybe incorporate a helper mechanic in there.
[/quote]

I just tested it out and posted a video to show you :

It seems i can get it up to 110bpm before it starts to fall apart to play in time.

However, if I don’t have to focus on a metronome and just tremolo pick as fast i can it’s much faster and pretty consistent too. Here I did it with a metronome to give you an idea:

It seems i can pretty much hold it up on 190bpm playing quarter notes but i can go faster, but then i lose sense of time and note value. As you can see here, my hand also takes another posture, more of an EVH kind of thing and i’m anchored (I did practice the trem picking part of eruption some time ago and i found that his way of doing it feels easier for me). So tremolo picking and just alternate picking are 2 different animals for me.

I’m starting to think that as well, but until now I haven’t really tested it out, I tried a couple of times but it feels very weird again. I’m definetly not able to play at the same speed as i’m working on at the moment so i’m kind of procrastinating this and continuing to try things out with my current way of playing.

And @Troy , I tried the table tapping test. It seems i can go to 218bpm on my google metronome with 2 taps per beat… I could go a little bit faster, but the metronome was maxed out.

Thanks for your feedback!

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#15

I’m on it!

thanks for your input man! :slight_smile:

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#16

Few more quick comments:

1 admin note: to make the video embed post it like so (address on its own line without spaces):

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Https:youtube etc. etc.

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The first comments that come to mind from your videos are:

in the first video, you should not need to “warmup” towards the desired speed every time, particularly if it’s a simple one-note tremolo and if you are not pushing for your personal speed record or something. You should get used to just setting up the metronome at — say 110 as in your example — and start playing at the correct tempo (of course, things could be different if you are trying to memorize a complex piece of music).

I like the fluidity of the “tremolo” video more. It looks to me like a pure wrist motion from a flexed, gipsy-like position. It also looks like a very flat USX motion (or perhaps fully trapped? hard to tell). So a next step could be to try some simple USX phrases (e.g. 4 or 6 notes per string on a couple adjacent strings) at a decent speed and check by feel if the string changes are fluid.

Out of curiosity, can you also show us your “old” way of picking that you mentioned above?

2 Likes
#17

I’ll keep it in mind, thanks for the headsup!

Good point! I played the exercise in my first video on different speeds to show where and how it falls apart. Didn’t do a very good job with filming because there wasn’t much to see due to the bad angle :smiley: but i’m pretty much capable to immediately do it on my max speed (I see max speed as being able to play the exercise while maintaining cleanliness) wich is 100 bpm atm. I’m pushing for 110-120 so to even hit a few notes with the right timing on those speeds requires a few reps but i guess that’s normal…but the string switch is what trips me up even on 100bpm. it may be my max speed now, but i’m barely holding it together :smiley:

It also feels good to play like this, i got more control of what my wrist does and arm movement is ruled out completely I think. I tried to make this my default picking technique, but once confronted with string shifts, it doesn’t translate very well so I gave up on it…I only use it when i want to tremolo pick something on the B or high E and the G string. It doesn’t work very well on the other strings as far as I know.

But I was wondering, what do you mean with a fully trapped motion?

I will try it out today, I got the Anti-gravity stuff, and i believe there where some sixes and fours excercises in there. I’ll try and play those for a bit and see where it brings me.
I think it’s indeed very important for me at this point to make a string switch after an upward pick. I did not think of this before but an equal number of notes on each string and ending on an upstroke before I do the switch might do the trick. What I do now is play 4 notes on the G, and then 2 on the D before I switch to G again.

I just tried to play something on my old way (minus the thumb/index/middlefinger pick holding) but I came to the conclusion the main part about it is the upward pickslant. Never mind the playing :smiley:
Also, this comes easy on the thick strings, not so much on the lower…the complete opposite of my current way of playing. There the alt picking on 1 string comes easy on the thin strings (G, B, E)

Grr, the more i think of it the more confusing it gets! :smiley:

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#18

Lucky for me, I got a link ready for this :wink:

It really depends on the motion you are using. The previous videos look like Upstroke Escape (USX), so the upstroke string change is the efficient one:

The latest video (which looks great, by the way), is almost certainly DSX (Downstroke escape), and here the downstroke string changes are the efficient ones:

These 2 different picking motions are basically 2 different languages, and you have to be conscious about what things are “easy” in one language or the other.

If you don’t know this and try to play all possible types of phrases with all possible types of motions, you’ll end up feeling like things are hit and miss with no clear pattern. This is basically where many of us were before Troy came along :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#19

Thank you so much for this @tommo !!

Something has to give in coming weeks as i’m armed to the teeth with all of the feedback and suggestions i get from here, the Anti gravity and Volcano bundles, and now the clear explenation on the different motions and their benefits.

As soon as I’m making improvements on any front (alt/ trem picking or string switching) I will update you with a video :slight_smile:

Again, thanks for caring and for your time. It works very motivating to keep working at it and not be happy with mediocracy.

You guys rule!!!

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