Miserlou! - My attempts at learning an efficient picking motion

[JB_Winnipeg]

Miserlou - Full Version!

So for the past couple days I’ve been comping together a cover for Miserlou. Always liked the song and reading through past threads, I remember @Troy saying something akin to ‘many guitar players have difficulty making it through Miserlou’ when explaining that ANY fast motion is a good motion if you apply it to music’ and that stuck with me.

I figured if I REALLY wanted to see if I could get a solid repeatable tremolo figured out, best place to start was Miserlou! So that’s what I did. Initially I found it somewhat tough but literally after … I’d say 2 days of effort, I could play … whatever the BPM of this song is at (160-170ish ballpark I guess) or slightly higher near indefinitely. Which I’m pretty happy with.

I unfortunately don’t have any down the neck technique footage (yet) but I plan to get some in the near future now that this is out of my system heh. I’m hoping to ID a single escape motion that I can use, USX/DSX I don’t care, but if I can maintain the trem tempo of Miserlou I figure I should have a reliable single escape motion waiting to be exploited.

Anyway, thanks for checking this out, I know it’s not professional grade or anything, but it’s my first ‘real’ cover. I would’ve done the drums too but they’re packed away in storage at the moment.

Next time!

Addendum: If anyone’s interested in what my Reaper/DAW timeline looks like (I always think it looks cool!)

The guitar track also labelled “Kazoo” was the result of a HILARIOUS attempt at octave’ing that solo to get it to sound more like the trumpet in the original and it… backfired? Succeeded amazingly? Had to dial it back unfortunately but I kept the clip (it’s hysterical)

Which I have included a link to here for obvious (HILARIOUS) reasons, and because I have to share the experience of hearing THAT for the first time with the rest of the world. It’s too good not to.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VHvdLeUuw_GJbqc28pg5JDAb1-8V9qzn/view?usp=sharing

[Pepepicks66]

“incoherent yelling” lmao I’m here just for this

[eric_divers]

I absolutely lost it when the kazoo came in. It’s a good thing I was muted on this Zoom meeting

[JB_Winnipeg]

YESSSSSSSS! I nearly peed myself howling at home alone!

[JB_Winnipeg]

Alright, I dun captured some along the neck tremolo footage. No 2 hour warmups or anything, just sat down Saturday morning and let the camera tell it like it is. I was both mildly surprised and also somewhat happy by what I saw.

Surprised in that it’s clearly visible the motion isnt’t as locked in as it feels occasionally, because it appears my brain is still trying to ‘decide’ if I want DBX USX or DSX for the tremolo. Obviously there’s room to maneuver and more speed and smoothness to unlock.

I’m going to link the clips and just brain dump (as briefly as possible)
Normal Speed

Full Slow Mo clip

The start of the Low E tremolo appears to be primarily DSX, looks like mostly elbow driven, but but at about the 12s mark (on the slow-mo version) maybe it starts to drift to a more DBX style of movement? Likely due to the ‘need’ to divert resources away from picking and concentrate on fretting a bit? I dunno, but I do remember it alternating between a ‘forced’ feeling where I was straining and a more relaxed and easy feeling, so probably these things are related.

Normal Speed

Slow Mo

Jumping to the High E tremolo clip, this is where I get a bit confused. At first blush, visually it looks like an elbow driven primary motion, but it seems I’m maybe making a somewhat USX style picking motion at the business end? Suggesting probably a combination of wrist being supported by elbow to allow for that? Unsure exactly, but I do find it very difficult to go from the Low E tremolo and swap to the High E if I were to try and play through the song in one go. Again, likely related.

Doing these today feels a lot more forced and I was missing far more often and losing cadence, than I was a few days ago, forcing the speed to try and exagerate any fluctuations might be causing this. I noticed I basically ‘flexed’ into the tremolo, which is probably not a good sign for a truly efficient and useable motion, but maybe that’s just innefficiency right now. More data needed I think.

Normal Speed

Slow Mo

This one is interesting to me, because I don’t know whether it’s the position on the bridge or strings above/below being in the back of my mind but I have found since I started that tremolo on the A string was the most consistent and relaxed out of the three. Again, there’s some slight hiccups into different motions near the end when I do a bit more fretting, like my other ‘learned’ motion is trying re-assert dominance or something. Anyway, this seems the more straight forward of all three to me.

Anyway, would love to hear from any and all with their insights or observations about this. Hopefully this is useful to someone else too.

[Pepepicks66]

First impression from your clips is that you’re picking very hard. This could be a combination of gripping too hard or deep. From my experience, when I play faster stuff, it’s not as loud as this is.

Something I used to practice to to get the right attack was to alternate pick at a comfortable pace, then make the notes as quiet as I could without changing the tempo, and seeing how long I could maintain that volume. Again in my experience, my faster playing is much closer in volume / attack to the “quieter” side of that spectrum.

[JB_Winnipeg]

Now that you mention it, I DO remember consciously trying to ‘ease’ up on the attack/dig and noticing a significant easing of tension while I was doing the actual tracking of the various parts. Not so when I took the down the neck videos clearly!

Might be a variety of factors at play because a lot of Troy’s playing/picking looks downright ferocious in its force but that’s a good point, thanks for pointing it out.