Martin Miller's finger and thumb technique

Playing Technique
#1

I don’t know if this has been figured out on the site, but I thought I’d put my progress on working out Martin Miller’s finger movement. I think the issue isn’t with the index finger, it’s the failure of the thumb to follow the index finger.

So what I did, having tried moving my index finger up and down quickly was to try the same with my thumb. The thumb hardly moves, the index finger moves brilliantly.

So, I thought, as I watched the grass court tennis, what if I tremolo my thumb with the lifting movement in the air. Did not work. Thumb would not move.

So, what if I used the index finger of my fretting hand to rest against the side of the thumb while I tried to tremolo the lifting. Slowly, over four days, it released. I then put my picking hand finger and thumb together and used the index finger of my fretting hand sticking out straight on the knuckle of my picking hand index finger to measure if I was lifting the thumb and finger together quickly. I am. Nice.

What I noticed when I first tried to moved my thumb quickly is that it sets off my forearm rotation. I cannot play this without forearm rotation. This is less so the case with the index finger tremolo on its own.

I then spent about a week synchronising in the air the rotation and the finger movement.

And then I picked up the guitar and a plectrum, and I’ve got to the process now of seeing if my joints are the right ones to turn the air guitar into real guitar.

My first attempt produced a swooping on both sides of the picking fingers, which slows down the picking speed, which is why Martin seems to use the sweeping only to move rightwards, but the tone of the notes is very good.

So I can see some experimentation will be in order.

I’ve come to the conclusion it is very hard to learn this while sitting with a guitar in your hands rather than in the air without the guitar. Not the conclusion I expected.

1 Like
#2

I have only read over this once, so it might be just me being an idiot, but a video would be great to see for each step of what you did and as an overall summary of what you are saying - I’m not sure I’m not 100% understanding.

I’ll give the above another go (when I’m not supposed to be working!), as I find these sorts of posts interesring.

#3

I should also say that I used his two fingers anchoring or changed to three fingers anchoring on my chest when I did each attempt.

What would be interesting to know is if your forearm rotates when you try to move your thumb quickly, as in the first part above. If not, then there is a difference between us.

#4

I’ve put a video of my transition from forearm rotation in the air to forearm rotation with finger and thumb movement in the air into my first post.

Does this look like I’m going in the correct direction? It feels right to me.

#5

Hey @NTC this is a tricky one because neither Troy nor myself have learned Martin’s technique yet.

TLDR: borrowing Troy’s words, " Trial and error is our best official advice!" :slight_smile:

In general, these days we don’t start anymore the teaching process with “what technique would you like to learn?”, because it does not seem to bring the best results.

As you have probably seen in recent technique critique posts, we usually start from something the player is already good at and build from there.

So I guess the question is: what lines are you trying to play which prompted you to work on Martin’s technique? do you have any video examples of yourself trying to play these lines? Because that’s usually an easier starting point!

I am aware this is probably a bit of a disappointing answer if you had this very specific technique in mind, but this seems to be the most effective teaching path for now.

#6

I have a wrist technique which moves strings from the elbow, and I have my forearm rotation technique which moves strings from the elbow with no muting. These are settled techniques and are fantastic.

I looked at Martin Miller’s playing because outside picking, one note on a string playing, is the thing I cannot produce at speed.

Do you see in the video I have posted how my finger and thumb kicks into the rotation? When I started I could not move my finger and thumb on the guitar, they were stationary. They would not lift at all.

The issue I’ve got is whether I should look to copy Martin’s grip, which is not my grip, or try to use my grip with my new finger and thumb movement? I have been using a flat thumb grip and holding it the middle of the plectrum. If I can get this right this could open up Martin’s technique for others to learn.

What I think I’m challenging is the idea of someone needing ‘fast fingers’ to play the technique. I think its learnt with a tremolo method like the other techniques, only a tremolo method which does not use the guitar string.

#7

Edit: again my comments are purely theoretical since I can’t do the technique

Yep I can see how they start moving, but when they do that it’s hard for me to imagine how it would translate into an alternate picking motion on the guitar. What happens when you bring this back onto the instrument?

That would be cool! In the spirit of trial and error I’d just say try both and see which one gives you the best results in terms of sound/speed/comfort.

Let us know how that goes! I doubt MM learned it this way, but if it works it works!

#8

PS:

it would also be interesting to see what happens / what are the actual problems when you try to do this with your current technique. I forgot if you already managed a magnet-like filming setup, if not here’s the usual link :slight_smile: