Picking Progress:
Like many guitarist here at CtC, I have been playing for a long time and have become very frustrated with picking. Through the years I avoided strict alternate picking. I even tried Tom Hess method of Directional Picking, but it didn’t work. By trade, I am a Death Metal Guitarist. I actually have pretty good tremolo picking on single string, so that is not the problem. Switching strings is, but I can work on that. I can do the chromatic picking exercise (The one everyone learns, when you first start playing) using tremolo pretty good. So playing rhythm was sort of easy. I don’t really know how fast my tremolo is, but it’s faster compared to some of the new members here (Don’t mean any disrespect, I am self taught. I am not that good with metronome). So I really don’t know how fast I am going. I once tried this tremolo rhythm technique to play lead and it actually kind of worked, but an instructor told (no names) me it was wrong. So I dropped it. So now with CtC, it’s completely different. I saw almost instant results, because I went back to my tremolo rhythm technique (Tweaked it, several times) and it works for this. Now here is the problem, I was practicing the tremolo chromatic exercise with just pure alternate picking and after those exercises; I go back to my normal Economy Picking (To practice scales and licks etc…). So it was just not working (I joined CtC, about 3 weeks ago. But I have known about CtC for at least four years). I was starting to get frustrated again. So here comes the AHA moment. I said to myself, Why don’t I just strictly do alternate picking, and see what happens? Bang…Bang…Bang… It worked!!! All these years, I avoided alternate picking. I went back and watched some of Troy’s videos a few times over… And he alternate picks most of the time. So I said to myself, if Troy was successful, this must be a good way to start. So I dropped everything I knew and tried strict alternate picking. CtC Members, once you become aware of the upward and downward pick escapes, alternate picking just becomes natural (I use both USX and DSX, with downward pick slant). I could not believe, how much control I have now, and it’s only been a couple of days. The door finally opened and I see a clear path. Now when I practice, I watch my picking hand and I mimic my tremolo rhythm style. It just works so well, it unbelievable.
So,
- Practicing with tremolo, then going back to economy picking, not working for me (At this stage)
- Practicing with tremolo, then going to strict alternate picking, is working for me
I am not saying Economy picking doesn’t work…It just doesn’t work for me at this point of my development. I can’t even begin to express my frustration with my picking over the years. What do you guys think? Some feedback would be awesome, I welcome it. I will upload a video later this week. I still need plenty of work, but I am ready for it…Thanks Troy and the guys at CTC, totally genius…