Martin Miller technique

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.

2 Likes

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 :frowning:
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.

1 Like

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…