My 3 week review

It’s been about 3 weeks now since I’ve become a member and here is where I’m at. Just wondering if it seems like I’m on the right path?

I went through all the videos on different picking techniques and enjoyed that. I have been trying to tweak my picking with some success.

I’ve watched the Cracking the Code series on YouTube (which is why I joined).

So right now I’m having fun going through all the chapters on Yngwie and getting a good benchmark of where my skill level is. I can play along to Troy’s clips at 60-70%. 70% on some I’m still sloppy. It is a good feeling when I can actually see improvement. I do sometimes just feel like I’ve hit a wall and won’t be able to get to 80%. (Also thanks to the peeps that told me how to play it in a loop!!)

I’ve hought a metronome and have been trying to take it slow and gradually build speed. I notice that I cannot just go right to my fastest picking. I still need to ramp up to it and if I am impatient about it, I’ll just be really sloppy as I’m approaching the fastest speed I was able to do the last time I was practicing a lick. (Taking my geekery to the next level, I’ve started recording licks/date/max speed.)

Thoughts?

3 Likes

70% sounds pretty good, because if I remember correctly Troy plays some of these licks insanely fast.

I think a suggestion many of us would give around here is to occasionally throw away the metronome and just play these licks as fast as you can without worrying about accuracy. And/or set the metronome much higher that your currently “clean” tempos, and just try to wing it a few times :slight_smile:

Edit: it’s a bit like approaching your desired speed “cleanly from below” and “sloppily from above” if that makes sense!

5 Likes

and my best advice would be about the opposite lol. Well I might agree with the “wing it a FEW times.”

I cant give you a checklist but I would pick a really basic skill and set about to master it or at least double your current skill on it. if you are doing the Yngwie thing then maybe of course the Yngwie 6 note pattern is a great place to start. Get it fast and smooth on one string then start moving it between multiple strings etc.

Then of course youll want to start tackling actually 3nps type string crossing Yngwie style, or if you want to do 2wps then youll move onto stuff like the Paul Gilbert lick or better yet, simplified versions of it such as:

E------------5–7--5--------
B–5--6–8------------8–6-

That one extra note gives you way more time to work out those string switches

or try some of the various one way loops such as Gilbert sixes etc

I think there are multiple ways to approach improvement. I sort of like the way of picking one basic thing and spend 80% of your time on it…as opposed to spreading yourself too thin goofing off with many things at once. Once youve greatly improved your skill on that one thing, say the Yngwie 6 string lick, youll find the next things come way easier etc.

Me personally, I have had great improvement recently just megadosing on repetitions done at various speeds. of course, not everyone wants to practice 13-15 hrs per week which is what ive been averaging.

if I only had one or two hrs per day I think id pick a basic bread and butter skill and start off with about 150-200ish reps done slowly and in perfect control and then id leave that particular lick alone until the next day. (or do a morning session, then again later in the day) of course then youd move on to other things in that session but maybe you try to keep things in the same related family. For instance 40 minutes of variations of the Yngwie 6 note pattern followed by 20 minutes of just jamming or whatever. After a week of intense Yngwie 6 note single string practice your coordination may have tremendously improved.

Next day. check the lick you did the 200 reps on and see if indeed it feels somewhat easier and smoother today. It should. The body adapts…thats what all of this is about. So now do it again but a little faster. STAY RELAXED as you increase the speed.

Maybe start to throw in other metronome exercises such as gradually seeing how fast you can work up to without making too many mistakes.

for me, once the mistakes start, or once the tension starts to rise, you have done enough as far as the “pushing for speed” aspect. The speed will come as you gradually build up your avg practice speed while keeping the hands relaxed.

Its interesting because I have heard people diss metronome practice and also “slow” practice…but you wonder if they have ever really given it a try? I think a one week experiment on your part would be a great learning experience for all of us. Take a good basic lick. Do 100 to 200 smooth controlled reps. go to other stuff perhaps. Next day it should feel smoother. Do your same 100-200 reps a little faster. Maybe at the end of that day work it up and see how fast u can get it before it falls apart. FINISH WITH SOME SMOOTH CONTROLLED REPS THOUGH. Dont let the fast mistakes be the last thing you give your brain before you stop for the day. Continue on for a week gradually getting that smooth mistake free form faster etc. Check your top speed at the end of that one week. Could be interesting

id follow the 80/20 rule for the speed of practice too. 80% “slow” and controlled, mistake free, tension free reps versus 20% of pushing for speed and “winging it”. I see the winging it aspect as more of testing where you are at and when u do get lucky and bust out some fast clean stuff you then know whats possible and you can gradually work your way to that form to where it becomes “normal” for you

I put “slow” in quotes because its really a BS term that we throw around. No ones talking about micro speeds here. We are talking about a very controlled speed where you dont make mistakes and where you dont have tension. That ‘slow’ speed wont stay slow for too long long. the body adapts. Gradually your “slow” starts to catch up to your speed burst speed.

again, my 2 cents worth, people make WAY too much out of the mantra of “but slow form isnt the same as fast form”. Of course there is truth to it but again, how slow is “slow.” As you gradually build up your practice speed the form naturally improves and becomes more efficient.

2 Likes

okay I somewhat retract my “opposite” comment because I didnt see the word “occasionally” the first time I read this lol

2 Likes

Hey @Norseman thanks for posting and sounds like you’re making some good progress!

Warmup is definitely a thing that seems to vary a lot; it’s come up a lot and we don’t have a ton of clear info but if you search the forum you can check out some existing discussions on this e.g. How much time do you need to get back up to speed?

Not sure if you’ve been sticking mainly to one picking motion or playing around with a few, but one thing we generally suggest is that you might try experimenting a bit to see if there are other movements / variations that feel relatively easier or harder than what you’re used to.

If you’re up for it I’d say feel free to make a #technique-critique topic if there’s anything you think it might help to get specific feedback on.

Want to clarify as there are a couple different things here we should be careful not to conflate—

There’s goofing off in the sense of unfocused practice, not really concentrating, kind of the opposite of “deliberate practice” which should be purposeful and focused. Agree this is good to keep in mind!

But also worth noting that practicing several multiple things at once i.e. alternating within a practice session in the sense of what we see referred to as “random practice” or “interleaved practice”, can actually be very beneficial for learning.

I think the gist of what @Troy often emphasizes re: practicing at speed rather than only working up slowly isn’t that you should never practice at slower speeds, just that when it comes to motor learning, figuring out a new technique specifically, practicing at a high speed often has a different feel / different motion than the same thing played at even a medium speed.

Some good description in our recent blog post here:

2 Likes

Wow thanks for all this great advice guys!!!

I feel like I’m already following a lot of what everyone’s saying. I’ve watched instructional stuff from Petrucci, Vai, Robert Baker, Andy James and our very own @Troy!! I do warm up for a few minutes and stretch out …play some chords and riffs too. Then I’ll usually pickup the lick(s) I was last working on and see either if I can play them smoother, or how much I have to slow them down from where I left off (I have been tracking this in a notebook to quantify my progress.

You guys have given me a lot to digest and I appreciate it a lot. I’ll probably read this thread 2-3 more times LOL

Where can I get one of those neck clamps like Troy has in the videos? I’d like to capture myself playing and post it for some honest critiquing.

Talk to you guys soon!

Ed

1 Like

I seem to remember there was a big discussion on this site at least several months ago, maybe half a year ago or more, about how much to practice playing fast and how much time to spend playing slowly. So for the benefit of those who may not have been part of the forum at the time, I’ll repeat what I wrote back then:
I took guitar lessons from Dallas Perkins (Looking Glass Project, former Roxx Gang guitarist) in 1988 or 1989 while I was going to USF in Tampa, Florida. He not only went to GIT but he and Paul Gilbert were roommates back then. I think Dallas also taught at GIT. Dallas told me that 90% of his technique practice was slow and only 10% of the time did he practice fast. He even said sometimes he practices so slow that I wouldn’t believe it.

For Dallas Perkins, practicing in that way has paid off big time as he has impeccable form in a variety of techniques such as alternate picking, sweeping, and 6 or 8 finger tapping.

As far as I know, Dallas Perkins has also never suffered any injuries from playing his very high tech style of shred guitar despite that he practiced many hours per day, every day.

This is, or should be, a major consideration to take onto account when deciding whether you want to choose a practice strategy along these lines, or whether you’re in the “go all out, all the time because the motion at slower speeds changes” camp. The consideration being this: If you spend the majority of your technique practice time at very high speeds you’re going to put an inordinate amount of stress on your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints. You’ll be courting injury.

Practicing some at very fast speeds but mostly at slower speeds is a way of practicing that has produced many virtuoso players. Not only has it produced excellent results but it’s much healthier and safer than playing all out, all or most of the time. If you push your hands and wrists to the limit for hours on end, day after day, month after month, you will end up getting hurt. It’s not a question of if; it’s just a question of when.

3 Likes

I’ve been spending just a little time doing 2 note per string pentatonic runs (some day when I get some video of me playing uploaded you’ll see what I mean) and I very quickly progressed from playing 6 notes per beat at 60BPM to 6 notes per beat at 90BPM. Then I started feeling some pain in the back of my hand and chilled. I checked again yesterday with these licks and after 3 weeks I’m still at 90. It’s frustrating but I definitely don’t want to cause injury. I’m gonna try the 80/20 for a couple weeks and see what happens.

Thanks for the tips - that goes for everyone!!

1 Like

well there is definitely a balance in how much tension to feel in the hands etc. At the top speeds we arent able to think about every single note etc so we are just going through patterns we have burnt into our fingers and minds. The hands have to be moving free and easy to efficiently blaze thru those patterns

So we cant have too much of a “death grip” but at the same time we have to have some tension etc. I like the word “lively”.

I cant comment too much on pentatonics as I havent spent as much time on them and therefore my pent stuff is a little behind by 3 note stuff. I had determined to master the ‘Paul Gilbert lick’ or die trying lol…so I have sort of put off pent stuff for a bit

to me, one difference with pent stuff is that you have to really be up on your “string tracking”. In other words you are changing the position of the rt hand quickly as you pick because after every 2 notes you have to be on another string. Whereas with 3nps stuff you have a proportionally longer time.

as a matter of fact I guess you could look at things on a continuum of scale as far as the quickness or severity of string tracking.

from easiest to hardest:

single string stuff. (no string tracking)

Yngwie 6 note pattern across the strings. at least 6 notes between string changes

4 nps scales or patterns. 4 notes before changing strings

3nps. at least 3 notes before changing, more usually due to backtracking patterns etc

pent stuff. 2 notes then change strings.

“crosspicking” change string on EVERY stroke

So we see that the string tracking for Pent stuff is at the hard end of the scale. Its almost to the point where its like picking on the move whereas we (me anyway) may like the feeling of settling in to pick long sequences on one string. We cant really “settle in” on pent stuff as we have to basically keep the string tracking going the whole time AS we pick

Heck, I might start working on basic crosspicking licks just to make the pent stuff seem easier by comparison lol

im just thinking out loud here bro

peace, JJ

1 Like