Hi, yes I can do maybe 1 bar or 2 max at the full speed. Was just wondering if I should keep going with a technique that fatigues quickly or try and change it up. At 90% of song tempo it feels very smooth but then quickly tenses and fatigues.
It is a combo of the fact that
1)down strokes and up strokes don’t always sound consistent, so all down strokes (or all upstrokes as Troy demonstrates in his most recent YT video) give a robotic type of uniformity known in the metal genre
- it is sort of macho to say you can do all downstrokes in fast tunes.
For some reason I never had trouble playing all down strokes. I’ve been into Metallica since I was about 10 though, and not really knowing anything about technique I just “went for it” and I’ve been able to do it as long as I can remember. I don’t practice it is often and I am sure I’m rusty. Any time I dust it off I can get through the intro of MOP without too much issue.
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@weealf I think it might be better to do the technique that hits the tempo, and practice by doing spurts of 3, then 5, 7, etc (ending on a strong quarter note).
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@weealf I watched your videos. I think you should add some tweaks till it feels easier. It’s possible your motion needs to go more out than down.
Have you seen this yet?
The whole video is worth watching but I’ve got it cued up to where the down-picking guys are shown. Hetfield to me looks like his hand is traveling away (“out”) from the body. Not sure if it’s a bad analogy but more the motion you’d make when you throw a Frisbee??? That’s sort of how I’m doing it and I fired the track right up and played along, no issues.
Well ok, some issues lol! But I just pulled the guitar up, no warm up or anything. I’m sure if I spent even an hour’s time, broken up into small chunks, I’d have dusted off. That’s not at all a brag, to me this isn’t hard and Troy says the very same thing in his video. When players are doing things we’re not able to do, it’s just because they’re doing it differently than we are. In other words, we’re working harder. So I’d say keep searching for a more efficient motion. Yours is close. You couldn’t hit 90% if it was wrong. Tweak grip/angle etc until you get something that feels “spring like”. To me this is almost floppy, elastic motion.
EDIT:
I just thought of something. Technically, you can economy pick part of it, yet still do all down picks. The main pattern is 2 palm muted open E’s, then the power chord, which for part of the riff happens on the A/D strings. So you could pick down on the first palm muted E (clear the strings to reset for the next down stroke) Down on the second palm muted E, without any need to clear the strings and reset, just continue with that down stroke and hit the power chord? maybe??? lol!
Just a thought, not sure if that would create “2 things to have to learn” where just one technique worked before.
Biggest tip I can give is you want the motion of the strum to be as “vertical” as possible. It should be close to a door knocking motion. You’ll have to supinate the proper amount to make that happen. For whatever reason, a 3 finger grip seems to help (Hetfield does this too).
Best of luck! You’re close!
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They actually play the whole thing on E and A. I had no idea until about a year ago. haha
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That’s much more metal, good for them! Goes with the “consistency of tone” thing I mentioned before why so many embark on this “all downstrokes” madness in general. I hereby retract my “half economy” idea lol!
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“Half economy” could work for the next riff… you know, duh duh DUNT duh duh DUNT duh duh DUNT duh duh DUNT duh duh DUNT DUNT. haha (E F B E F C E F Db etc)
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Right…still, the more I think about it, that whole notion of “half economy” just kills my # point of the whole purpose of this stuff - the macho thing.
That makes me think of…uhh…huh huh huh huh
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I’m sure that I could get close, particularly if I hit the compressor to rub out any dynamics…
Oh… yes, now I get it.
Alas, I don’t know what the sheet music is so I can’t follow along with your argument. I found this that looks pretty awesome, but I’m not sure if that’s what you’re playing:
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Yeah I think that looks pretty good. For the sake of whole concept it definitely does the job. What I was playing was not quite right anyway as @Riffdiculous pointed out.
Hi @joebegly thanks for your detailed response. I’ll watch the new video tonight, hadn’t got round to watching yet. I’ll also try a more supinated position and try to get more vertical. I can see for James Hetfield concert clips he really does bounce off the string quite vertically or more perpendicular to the plane of the strings. I’ve just started a Metallica phase and live the sound of their consistent muted chugs. Brilliant!
Thanks to everyone else for their comments too, as always it’s greatly appreciated!
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I know they also play that part all downs too, and I have seen Kirk specifically show it off that way on a video, but that part I honestly wouldn’t even bother playing that way, dashes with a splash of machismo or not. All downs doesn’t really add much to it in terms off consistency. IIRC, I think I alternate picked that part when I was learning it way back when.
Do you mean specifically that part because it is all single notes and has no chords? Or more generally with all down picked stuff? Waste of time etc. Personally I am over it. I can hear the difference but I’ve played plenty of heavy music (heavier than Metallica) where the other guitarist and I opted to to NOT do all downs. We were fine with the way it sounded.
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Even at my fastest in the 90s, I never once attempted to play this or any other Metallica songs using only downstrokes, hahaha. Maybe it’s more “METAL” but I had a teacher respond to my description of Dave Mustaine’s Spider Chords that those are “not very metal” either.
Metal is all in… The Eye Of The Beholder…
(••)
( ••)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
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Mostly that single note part. You can make that part sound mostly the same alternate picked without having to strain. All downs sound best on chuggy (root and 5th included in the chug) power chords and up to a certain tempo, but after that tempo all downs become unreliable, and alternate picked “chugs” don’t really sound the same because it is really hard to hit both strings in unison. Both MOP and Creeping death both are played at tempos and note divisions that hit that sweet spot tempo wise. A song like Battery on the other hand is out side of that “habitable zone” regarding tempo and note division and is played alternate picked on the low string gallop.
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You know, I just went in side the work room and fired on my amp for the first time in months to sip a glass of 1994 vintage nostalgia after saying all that stuff above just an hour ago, just to see how I would play these songs and realized I alternate between all downs and alternate picking on the chord parts too in various places.
I was playing creeping death because honestly I think it is an easier starting point for this kind of thing. It’s odd, but the placement of where this happens seems to have a very logical aspect to it even though it mostly seems to be a subconscious act.
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Just general musing, but I think that there’s a point where downpicking everything is easier than alternate picking; you don’t have to think about the right hand much at all. This is just a personal anecdote, but trying to do this any other way than straight downpicking feels harder.
I don’t think this is what is happening. He goes through the string, he’s not bouncing off it. I think people just think that because the motion appears to make a circle. When these motions are fast, they are fast because the muscles being used can operate really quickly, not because the string is returning some kind of energy to the pick. I’m pretty certain of this.
What you’re looking for is a motion that goes fast immediately, even if it’s only for short bursts. But I would caution this needs to be more than just two or three pickstrokes. That’s not a good enough test. You should be able to do at least a bar or two of very fast downstrokes or upstrokes, at the target speed, or it’s probably not the right technique.
Here’s an older attempt at downstrokes using a form that is more similar to yours. It’s about 220bpm. When I got it, it was fast immediately, and felt really easy. But as you can see in the clip, sometimes you just lose the coordination and freeze up. That’s how these things go:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B9AQ849n8VK/
As a general note, it’s ok if you feel like it’s random and you can’t activate the technique every time on command. And it’s ok if you feel like every muscle in your upper body is hulking out at first. That’s the part that you will quiet down with training. But you have to be hitting the target speed right away. Ideally, way beyond that, since MOP is somewhere in the mid 200-teens and the actual upper limit for this type of thing when done with the most efficient technique is substantially higher than that.
Also, when in doubt, try upstrokes! They can sound really good, and be freakishly easy and fast. See this thread for some examples:
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I’m probably still a few steps behind a lot of you guys in my picking technique journey, but I also came up with the “frisbee” analogy a few months ago as I’ve been figuring things out…wondering if maybe that’s part of the secret, but it definitely feels like a smooth motion that I can easily do fast. Another way I think about it would be the motion you’d use to “flick” your pick out to your fans standing in the front row. There’s a very specific motion required to throw a pick; otherwise it won’t go anywhere.
Just curious if anyone else ever thinks about this particular motion as being useful for picking?
That sounds legit to me. If you’ve seen the newer RDT sections of the primer, this is the motion Troy is showing us. It’s much closer to what we’d make knocking on a door than the “side-to-side” everyone associates wrist picking with. And even though it’s tilted on a different axis, I think the frisbee/fan-pick-flick motion isn’t much different than knocking on a door.