This is after about 6 hours of practicing. I’m still behind at 160BPM but it does still feel smoother. What do I need to do different?
Thank you for all of the responses.
Its a little hard to here with the click being loud, but if I’m honest I think you need to lose the click altogether and just focus on experimenting with the motions. I think that that the click is ‘locking you in’ to that tempo and at this point we are not remotely concerned with timing. I’m a metronome guy and know how comfortable it makes me feel to play with it, buts its not pushing you at all here. Either that or bump it up way higher.
Good luck!
Thanks for doing this! Which of the tests did you take? And which one was the one where you were able to sustain at 190?
The motion in your clips is not efficient, so it’s time to forget about it and find something faster. As @Johannes says, you’re not picking 16th notes, you’re only picking three notes per click. So the 160 isn’t really 160, it’s much slower. Also, as @PickingApprentice is pointing out, a lot of times when people put a metronome on, they’re not even really following it. It’s just another thing that’s getting in the way, so I would also recommend turning it off.
What we’re looking for here is a feeling of speed that is similar to the feeling from taking the table top tests. It should feel easy, and be sustainable at a faster speed, usually above 160bpm sixteenth notes. But again we’re not using a metronome, we’ll measure it afterward if we need to.
So just go for it. Go all out, with the metronome off, and with everything you’ve got, and see what the motion looks like.
I really do appreciate the feedback. I made it through the beginning tremolo section of the primer course so far. I spent about an hour trying to feel the smoothness, It does feel better now. Here is my attempt with no metronome from tonight and trying to change some things. Please let me know if this is better and if not what can I do to improve.
Thanks again!
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I don’t know what to do. So I tried the new picking way in slow motion video 4. I don’t know if this is better, but now my elbow I sore and my arm is sore. I can’t seem to find anything comfortable Please help.
My first piece of advice is to rest that arm - let the soreness die down.
The video cones across as if you are trying to tightly control whats going on and keep it in time/super consistent, which is not really what you need to be going for. You need to throw caution to the wind, and blast out some notes and experiment.
When you are working on this, do you sit there banging away for minutes at a time without stopping? If so, you may be getting fatigue and soreness from that. Maybe blast it for no more than a couple of bars at a time, shake out your arm etc. and go again, trying out different motions.
All the videos above all seem to be at the same speed, as if you are locked into that tempo and rhythm, you could also try ‘reving’ like a car engine, start slowish and get faster and back down - all done over a handful of seconds, don’t stay slow for long at all. That this method helped me get a sense of how to drive my picking motion over various speeds and try and keep tension on the lower side.
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Thank you for the advice. I practice this for 2 hours straight which caused the soreness. I am frustrated but optimistic that I fix my picking issues. Tonight I watched Troy’s tutorial on motion and the wrist motion is the most comfortable for me. The USX downward pick slant is the most comfortable. I going to rest my arm tonight and shoot another video tomorrow. The part I’m having trouble understanding and evaluating in my picking is if my picking path is correct or not.
Thank you again.
From watching all your videos I can’t really see much difference in hand setup from the first video to the last. It’s very hard to just make microscopical changes in technique and expect big differences in result. What you need to do is to try and DRASTICALLY change your hand setup which will allow other muscles to activate.
Your body can clearly move much faster than this. The table top test proves this. So by trying different hand setups you can allow your body to find the best way to transfer that speed onto the guitar. And it might not be in that way that you think. Even though wrist feels smooth on the table, you might have to do something completely different on the guitar than what you think to get that motion to work. And also, I would not hesitate to try elbow or forearm rotation as basis for your motion.
I get that this setup and motion that you have got at the moment feels the most comfortable and reliable, but it’s clearly not working. But don’t worry, you will not loose this current technique if you try something new. You’ll just get more options.
So it would be very interesting to see a video where you test “all” different possibilities (resting different parts of the hand against the strings/bridge/guitar body, using different body joints for motion, using different pick grips and so forth) and just try to get maximum speed with all of them. No metronome. Just go for speed. And you don’t have to sit very long with each. If it is a technique that works, it might be speedy right away. And don’t worry if it doesn’t sound/feel perfect and consistent during your first tries. These are things that can be worked on later. What you want to find is raw speed.
Please try this. In front of the camera, if you want to share, or by yourself. But it is important that you do this. You don’t want to just continue in the same footsteps and missing out on motions that might be available to you.
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I see what you mean. Yes, I agree with you observations. The picking looks a bit laboured. Perhaps we should call it covert stringhopping. Stealth stringhopping? 
Hey @vampirehamer!
Potentially stating the obvious, but this should not be necessary to hit a fast tremolo motion:
In fact, a 6-hour session doing the same thing is probably counterproductive and may bring about risk of injury.
A fast motion should be fast immediately, and should need minimal to zero warmup!
And the guitar-less speed tests you did indeed suggest that you have much more in you than 160bpm triplets. Just guessing here but it may be useful to repeat that 210bpm speed test, then pick up the guitar and see if you can feel the difference between the two.
In any case, what @Troy and @qwertygitarr said
Since you yourself said that you don’t know what else to do, here’s a possible idea: try a 3-finger grip like Albert lee / Steve Morse and do the tremolo with that. Hopefully this is alien enough for you that you’ll be less likely to fall into old habits.
No metronome, all out. Don’t try for longer than 10 minutes at a time if it does not work.
Good luck and let us know how it goes!
EDIT: a video of you performing the guitar-less speed test at 210bpm may also be revealing!
Good shout - I would love to see that
Oh my god never do this! I’m sorry I missed this note in the previous post. I was just looking at the videos. Six hours is insane. A couple minutes is enough. If you are very slow and nowhere near the speed of your table tests, then doing more of it isn’t going to make any difference. You already know that something is not correct, and you can stop doing it. That’s one of the things we’re trying to achieve here — clarity of feedback, so there’s no more wasted time, less work, and less injury.
I highly recommend you stop playing completely until all arm soreness goes away. If this means that you don’t touch a guitar for a few days or even a week, then please do that.
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Please let me clarify, I did not play for 6 straight hours. My intent was that I have worked on this for a total of 6 hours since going the forum and watching the pick slanting primer course. I did work on this for 2hrs in a single day with several breaks in between. The 2 hour day is when my arm became sore.
Thanks to you guys assisting me with my alternate picking. I changed my hand placement, I think this is improvement.
Thanks for doing this, and thanks for getting into the spirit of experimentation.
This is an improvement over your earliest videos, where the pick looked like it was stopping halfway through the pickstroke. This doesn’t look like it’s doing that any more. In fact, if you told me this was just a medium speed you like to use for rhythm playing in metal and rock, and not your top speed, I would say this looks totally fine.
However if you tell me this is as fast as you can go, then we’re not there yet — this is far off from your table tap tests.
But let’s back up a a second. I think someone else asked this, but can you film a clip of actually doing the table tap tests? You mentioned getting as high as 210, and moving consistently at 190. Those are good numbers. Let’s take a look at that to make sure it looks smooth and we’re not missing out on something obvious.