Learning at Warp Three Speed

[snewmy]

Tom thanks for the explanation. Would you be able to give me an actionable example so i can better understand? for example i am trying to learn sweeping, Sextuplets at 125 BPM. Ignoring the right hand part. What would be the correct learning process for the left hand?

[gw12505]

Thanks for chiming in, Tom. That actually makes a lot of sense

[GodinXtsa]

Dean Lamb often mentions doing exactly this for sweep picking and I believe for alternate picking. He says it’s essential to get better timing at ultra fast speeds.

[lukasgraesslin]

@kgk

I wonder, is there anybody that moves their picking hand quickly and then waits, resulting in more uniformity at every speed? My guess is, “no,” nobody does that. And why not? Anyway, thanks for the video!

I think that’s what for example Jon Bjork calls “transition speed”, i.e. trying to make the movement itself still as fast as possible but then wait in between to match the tempo. So essentially in order to not fall back to a slower movement alltogether even though the tempo is slower.

[Tom_Gilroy]

@gw12505

Thanks for chiming in, Tom. That actually makes a lot of sense

No problem!

@snewmy

Tom thanks for the explanation.

I’m glad to help.

@snewmy

Would you be able to give me an actionable example so i can better understand?

I don’t mean to be obtuse or to deflect, but I think this would be quite difficult to do exclusively through text. As I said above, this is a deep topic. There are a lot of prerequisite concepts to understand the “why” behind everything, and different examples are required to demonstrate different concepts clearly.

We have to begin with a fretting posture based on the resting position of the hand which is both maneuverable and naturally aligns the muscles to task. There is no universal fretting posture, there are different archetypes each with their own strengths and weaknesses, so we need some idea of which posture or postures will be suitable.

That much in itself is a huge topic (at least a few hours of instruction), but assuming we have that, we need to solve for fretting sequence which avoids bad cases, which minimizes movement reuse frequency and which facilitates fretting hand flow (that is, the fingers used must result in the hand moving in the intended directions).

Then, we need to start working the fretting sequence on the guitar. With the understanding that we will not be able to achieve the type of fine control that was described in my previous comment at speed, our goal is to find the gross “maneuver” of the fretting hand which will “aim” the fingers. With the understanding that movements will inevitably become smaller and less powerful at higher frequency, it’s actually better to start with large, powerful movements which feel easy.

See my comment about Fitt’s law and forced oscillators here:

Question about picking velocity & orientation

Hi @pickfly . Sorry I couldn’t respond to this question sooner, I’ve been very ill this last week and I’m just starting to improve. I hope you can forgive any typos, etc. I very strongly recommend that you aim to make large, powerful movements which change direction rapidly and which feel effortless. The usual idea of economy of motion is that smaller movement are faster or more efficient is incredibly naive. It is totally incompatible with the physical and motor control realities of the situ…

More than that, we need the gross maneuver of the fretting hand to be rhythmically regular and clearly perceptible. We need to be able to feel the pulse in the gross movement of the fretting arm and hand, not just the fretting of the individual fingers. In order to synchronize with the picking hand, we need to ensure that the gross movements of the picking and fretting hands and arms have compatible movement phase. If we can ensure this, synchronization is immediate, automatic and stable.

Then, we train for speed as I’ve outlined in my other comments.

Slow practice, building speed and that viewpoint

I’ve written extensively about this on the forum before. Here’s a link to a comment where I outline the process of developing playing speed: In short, we can not speed up slow playing. Our nervous systems just don’t work like that. When we repeat any sequence of actions, we naturally activate pattern generators in our nervous system. If that sequence is rhythmic (that is, related to our internal clock), the pattern generated will be also. Once the pattern is generated, the sequence can be p…

@snewmy

for example i am trying to learn sweeping, Sextuplets at 125 BPM.

Most sweep fingering have been sufficiently well “vetted” at this stage, so assuming that you have the appropriate fretting postures and the understanding the situational movements that are used to reduce movement frequency (the rock, the roll and the reveal), you can get started in applying the fretting sequence and trying to find the gross maneuver as described above. There are some optimizations I could suggest for specific shapes, but the usual fingerings for most of the standard 1 and 2 octave major and minor shapes are reasonably good.

@snewmy

Ignoring the right hand part.

Never ignore the picking hand.

It’s fine to do some repetitions without the picking hand to allow you to focus on feeling the rhythm of the gross maneuver of the fretting hand, but it’s critical to understand what the picking hand will be doing and relate them to eachother. If we focus on playing everything for the fretting hand with hammers or pull-offs, we’ll force a sequence of fretting actions which is not representative of the version which incorporates picking.

More than that, we need the movement phases of the picking and fretting hands to be compatible to ensure synchronization. Starting with each hand separately and trying to combine them can result in building two one-handed coordinations which are not rhythmically compatible and which cannot be synchronized. Trying to match individual pick strokes to individual fretting actions will not produce stable synchronization if the gross rhythmic movements of the hands are not in phase.

I’m quite busy this weekend and I really don’t have time to write up a complete post that goes into all of this in more depth. I should have some time on Monday and I might be able to make a video discussing some of these ideas and provide an example.