Maybe you can't handle pickslanting at all...?

Technique Critique
#81

First of all - congratulations @tommo on your new addition! With one of ours, I got 30 hours of sleep over 15 days; I hope you do better than that.

Thanks for the Shawn Lane vid. “Fast and sloppy… then clean it up,” says Lane. Hmmm, where I have heard this before? :wink: [Another take-away for me - his fretting fingers really high-step on some of those fast runs; maybe we can be less concerned about the strictly precise, micro-movement ‘finger independence’ that is often touted as necessary in the left hand for fast playing…?]

If we’re going to be exacting about this, Lane does seem to suggest first getting a lick or pattern down accurately at a slow speed. Then, jump the tempo way past that (like everyone says here on the Forum), rather than slowly bumping it up. I understand that hitting the gas pedal is important - but ostensibly, so is first having your right and left hand knowing their moves cold.

Okay, I’m gonna try to put that all together: a ‘slow burn’ on one string (each hand around 70 until the pattern’s burned in good) and then put the hands together at 100 and see how that goes.

#82

Hey @Yaakov! As you know I’ve been away from the forum for a while, how are things going with this?

To answer your question a bit late - Yes! You can definitely start by learning a new lick slowly, until you got the various finger placements and sequence of pickstrokes memorised. But soon after that you can try the “fast and sloppy” route.

This can even happen in the same session! If it’s a simple enough lick (in your case, let’s do USX licks with a decent number of notes per string, say 4 or 6), you can spend a couple of minutes doing slow reps for memorization, then try immediately a few reps fast to get an idea of where you are heading! Then you can go to a medium-fast speed for cleaning up, then try again fast, then move on to a new lick or write a small etude with interesting variations of the lick, and so on :slight_smile:

#83

Cool. I’ll try that. Good to know I’m on the right track. Thanks:)