My last hope - Advice needed

Playing Technique
#1

I’m so bummed out with my playing. For years I assumed that players were just more talented than I was because no matter how much I practiced, there were certain kinds of licks and patterns I could never play well. Then I discovered this pickslanting idealogy.

I think I might be an upward slanter but whenever I look at videos of myself playing, it looks like the pick is at 90 degrees to the body of the guitar when I pick. When I try to use DWPS, my playing is horribly unsynchronised and I have a lot of tension in my right wrist. There’s obviously something I’m missing. When I play live (every week) my picking is horribly unreliable. The whole thing is a mess and I just don’t know if I can retrain myself.

I’m dejected. I don’t know where to start or what I’m doing wrong. I feel like I am probably practicing more mistakes.

Has anyone here managed to successfully crack the code so to speak? I really need someone to tell me it can be done because at this point in time, I feel terrible about my lack of progress.

Here’s hoping.

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#2

I’ve been making good progress: focusing on downward pickslanting and just banging out some really basic, simple licks (The Pickslanting Primer pack is pretty good for this IME). Don’t get discouraged. It took me 15 years to make any real progress.

#3

In my case the system totally works. it’s given me a new hand position that feels relaxed and doesn’t get fatigued. I think that the new position works for me because of my wrist position in conjunction with the DWPS.

Try this: hold up your picking hand and wave side to side, for me this has lots of tension.
next: drop your arm to your waist and make the same motion - like waving at the floor. still lots of tension.

finally, relax your wrist. . . the hand naturally hangs. now that waving motion less deviation and more rotational.

I hope this helps you . . it’s been a game changer for certain aspects of my playing

#4

Thanks for writing. Honestly? It sounds like you need a guitar lesson. From a teacher with experience in looking at picking technique from the ground up, preferably one who knows our stuff. If you had a specific issue you were trying to diagnose, I would say post a video in “Technique Critique” and we’ll take a look. But when the issue is simply general dissatisfaction, where nothing is working and you’re not sure why, then I think a “head to toe”-type assessment from an experienced teacher is the way to go.

Pickslanting, btw - not a magic bullet. It’s not a system or an ideology. It’s just a string-switching technique, which lots of great players over the years have used without realizing it. String switching happens to be a thing that is problematic for a lot of players, and so for those players whose techniques are mostly together already, but a little sloppy, pickslanting can be a game-changer.

But there are lots of other things that come before string switching - like holding the pick, getting set up / anchoring on the guitar, and learning how to move it in a comfortable way. It sounds like you’re not generally comfortable with your setup or may not have found a sweet spot yet. And that is way more fundamental and should be established first before you start looking at other things.

A good teacher will suss all this out, and will see what you’re not seeing, based on their experience with lots of other players.

I’ve sent a number of people to Ben Eller and Teemu Mäntysaari, and these guys are obviously fantastic. But there are only so many people they can teach. And there are lots of teachers among our viewers who know our stuff and have a couple years already teaching it via Skype and in person. I’m going to post a thread in the “Teachers Lounge” about this and see who wants to introduce themselves.

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#5

Do not get discouraged. I have been playing for 17 years and just very recently had a breakthrough with DWPS. I knew about pickslanting maybe about 10 or more years ago (at least the concepts but thanks to Troy’s work now we can use a common terminology) but DWPS just never worked for me at that time and believe me I put many hours on it. My breakthrough came from the impossibility to have a guitar for a whole month. I just had a small guitar arm (it’s call shred neck) so I worked for a whole month for about 4-6 hours a day on just DWPS between two strings while watching TV (literally). I already posted the general idea of what I did in another post Switching motion mechanics but if you look at the facts it did not take me 17 years to be able to execute DWPS but just a month with the proper focus.

On the other hand how is your UWPS? I am a fan of Andy James and I have taken several online classes and seminars with him and he is definitively an UWPS player. And as Teemu said in his interview as a teacher, I if the player is already pretty advance with UWPS probably it is not worth it trying to convert him or teach him DWPS. As in Andy’s technique he will find a way to play 2WPS or DWPS designed licks with UWPS (when I said designed licks I mean the ones with sweeps, legato o string skipping parts that are easier when using DWPS because if the lick has strictly an even number of notes per string all picked you can switch from DWPS to UWPS with just reversing the initial pick stroke).

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#6

Watch some videos of players that inspire you to play. Get some guidance from them. Play and practice music you enjoy. Your tastes and techniques are going to change slightly over time. I’ve been playing over 25 years and I’ve just recently switched picks again, and was critically analyzing how I held the pic again. There’s no shortcuts, just play and put the time in. You gotta play what you enjoy to do that.

My 2 cents. Lol

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#7

I had the same experience.

Here is my recommendation. This is what worked for me.

Look up the Steve Stein YouTube video on bursting.

The title is: Steve Stine Guitar Lesson -1 Important Technique to Learn Speed Picking

I followed this video and it “unlocked” the correct mechanics for alternate speed picking for me. I was at a max of 126b/m for 16th notes and after a month I was up past 152 b/m. A year later I am at 200 b/m.

My next step was moving to three note per string exercises with instruction from Troy’s Batio video.

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#8

2 posts were split to a new topic: ViciousHead technique feedback

#9

Totally understand the OP, despite the fact that I can actually do some speed runs fairly quickly, I am never comfortable with my picking technique, it always feels unreliable. I have a sweet spot range of picking riffs and a sweet spot for scale runs, but it feels like nothing in between. I recently watched a video of myself playing, noticed that almost everything I play outside of scale runs is string hoppy, and it feels SO strenuous, feels like the strings might as well be steel cabling from an elevator, the resistance is so intense, and that is probably because in order to recover quickly from the hopping means my picking depth is inconsistent. I have managed to emulate Nuno-style riffs doing this and that is kind of my style, which I like, but even something simple like the intro to Tears for Fears “Everybody wants to rule the world” seems scary, which is funny as I can play things that are indisputably more difficult pretty easily, lol. Sorry to hijack the thread a bit, i am just at a point where I just want to make the music I hear in my head, I feel like I have great ideas, but am failing to put it all together because of this picking issue. Definitely going to look into the Skype lessons thing :slight_smile:

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#10

I REALLY liked what you had to say. I felt the same way as Vicious Head. I would watch WAYYY too many Youtube videos and jump ALL OVER THE place and wasn’t getting anywhere. When you said “it did not take me 17 years to be able to execute DWPS but just a month with the proper focus” you hit the nail on the head. Our brains are SO powerful, we just need to tell them what to focus on.

I’m currently finishing up my MS in Clinical Psychology and during a recent residency, one of our faculty presented a special topics presentation on hypnotism. Like you may be feeling now, I was EXTREMELY skeptical. The presenter said that she had used it with good results for many different things. I found some self-hypnosis induction videos on YOUTUBE and followed the instructions. While “under” I visualized my right hand and what I wanted it to be doing under ideal circumstances. It helped. I also came up with a practice routine that was very specific and stuck to it. Maybe the hypnotism stuff is too fringe for some people, but it helped me focus. I was at the point where I would have probably worn a dress and lady shoes if I thought it would have helped. Luckily that scenario is off the table.

Hang tough Vicious head, and remember, those that give up have NEVER realized their true potential. This isn’t magic. It just takes time and focus. I really think you are in the right place.

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