Yeah, it is just incredible!
for any of the NPS nerds this is 16ths at 161 (10.7 NPS)…alternate picking one note per string. yikes. 5% faster than tumeni notes.
It is insane! And even cleaner then Steve Morse.
There is still a “pickslant” happening in Martin’s technique, as there is in almost everyone we have filmed. Watch him play pentatonic lines and you will notice various slight tilts to the movement that appear to track the direction of the line he’s playing. The technique itself doesn’t appear to require pickslanting in the sense of “angled motion path that causes escaped pickstrokes”. But there’s no question that when he does the movement it is not always uniform, and may have a “directional” component to it.
The same is true of Carl Miner and Steve Morse. Things are messy in the real world, and it is difficult to parse which of these movements are necessary, versus how much of this is simply idiosyncratic from player to player. But when you see multiple people all doing the same thing, I have to constantly remind myself that it’s probably happening for a reason…
I am posting this here to avoid creating another thread. The CtC folks will probably announce it in a dedicated thread at some point:
Can’t wait!!
Man, thank you. I practiced thumb and index movement, but it didn’t work for me, but yesterday i saw what you wrote. Last night i was able to play the martin miller arpeggios fluently, wrist extention with the middle and ring fingers on guitar, and string tracking from the shoulder are the keys i guess. Thank you again for showing what i couldn’t see.
Great to hear i could be of any help.
Also the hand/arm position is very important, you have to come a bit more from above. What i mean to say is that your arm is a bit more in a vertical position then most players would have it.
This is what i mean with the arm position.
As you can see the arm Andy Woods is comming a bit more from the side in comparison to Martin Miller’s arm which is comming a bit more from above. Steve morse is even comming more from aboven, a almost vertical arm position.
Thank you @Andjoy. Arm is more vertical, ok. Martin holds the pick at the tip of the thumb, even one third of the little jazz 3 is visible. What do you think of that?
Yes, little of the pick is stiking out and i believe he has a loose grip.
Sometimes the pick is more on the pad of the index finger and sometines more on the side; he switches between those grips.
Wow, I can’t believe I missed this thread the first time around. Especially since I based my picking around the great M.M.
Firstly,… I think most guitarists who use a lot of finger movement don’t just rely on the finger muscles alone, since finger are quite weak… and will fatigue very quickly. Mostly, we use the thumb to do the majority of the exertion. The thumb can either work with the index finger, or in my case, the the index finger can act almost as a resistance to the thumb, helping it return to it’s un-flexed position.
But for me, and a few other players here… there is actually more to it that this. The thumb can actually be ‘helped’ by the motion of the wrist & forearm. My forearm rotation actually helps to push the thumb, which then ‘pushes’ the finger. I don’t think M.M. does this… but I’ve seen others who do this. It requires a bit of finesse, and a very loose mechanic. The advantage of this goes back to minimizing fatigue at high speeds.
As far as the tracking from the shoulder vs elbow/above vs the side, I think both have their advantages. I used to use the shoulder from above… and found it very controlled for doing sweeps and for doing ascending/descending scalar stuff. But after switching to X-picking, I have switched to the tracking from the side, more like Andy Wood. I’ve found that shoulder tracking from above is tougher to use for really advanced 1NPS hopping around. For example, string-skipping alternations is awkward to do using my shoulder but works well with just the elbow. I can’t say this for certain, but think pure X-pickers are more likely to pick from the side.
When you look from about 8:58 you can see how much shoulder movement Martin uses with his crosspicking technique and how his arm comes more from above then from the side.
I watched my playing on slow motion, playing at real speed, unfortunately i swipe the top string
It happens according to steve morse’s technique. Do you know if martin miller swipes on glass prison?
Can you hear it? Does it spoil the overall effect? Can you make it so you can hear it less and less over time?
Well, to me that is the big difference between Martin and Steve; Martin almost never swipes due to the thumb/index finger motion lifting the pick out of the strings. As i already wrote, i think the index finger itself is not moving that much as it looks.
I have to hear yet another player who can alternate pick arpeggios that clean at those speeds as Martin does, it is just incredible!
When you look Martin playing the very difficult chord arperggio part of “Too Many Notes” he actually plays every note completely clean without any swiping.
If you watch Steve Morse himself playing it there is swiping going on; you also hear this.
Yeah I just had a close up look at MM interview clips, nary a swipe to be seen.
I’m pretty sure M. Miller doesn’t swipe on his 1NPS playing.
To me, it’s very tough to play 1NPS cleanly and swipe, because your moving around quite a bit… and swiping becomes a total pain to try and mute over.
To play one note per string arpeggios clean at those speeds without swiping is much harder in my opinion.
To get the pick out in time at every stroke is sooo difficult.
There’s no question that the technique involved for double-escaping is initially more challenging. But what I was saying is that swiping 1NPS, while easier to do, is more difficult to do cleanly. To me, it’s a bit of a rabbit hole. I tried it a couple years ago… and I initially thought it was showing promise… but in the end… it was very unsatisfying, and I abandon it for double-escaping.
Ok, i understand what you mean. Yes, you can here when swiping is going on. You hear it clearly for instance when Steve Morse is picking that arpeggio where he goes: 6 5 4 3 4 5 etc… When Matrin Miller does it it sounds much cleaner.
I just can’t do it at his speed though, so i have to swipe like Steve Morse.
Maybe…one day…pffff…