Pepe's magnet shots

Technique Critique
#8

Another classic, I tried to isolate good reps and bad reps to see the mistakes:

Second recording attempt, I felt like my picking was getting more in the “groove” here (quite literally, as far as where I like to hold it on my thumb, farther back); I think the pattern on my sick pajamas is making the camera focus on it instead:

I found that my editor lets me have 2 separate instances of slo mo, so each video has a 1/4 and 1/8 speed portion.

Forgot to mention: this is the highest fret that I can hit with the magnet on, but I’m grazing it with my pinky and it’s just a tad bothersome (I feel like it affected my playing). Next recording will be transposed so I can add the second and third patterns.

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#9

Thanks! It looks like it’s the camera placment on your phone that is producing the slightly high angle, i.e. the lens appears to be closer to the center of the phone than the edge. I don’t recognize that phone, which make / model is that?

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#10

Nice playing! Two comments:

You’re good enough now at these type of mixed escape lines that I would drop this to about 85% of this speed and become much pickier about not tolerating scratchy attack, missed notes, or timing inconsistencies. The motions are there and you are well into the long tail, where the main thing that makes the accuracy improve is by playing in a slightly reduced speed range where mistakes still occur, but can be consciously noticed and fixed. Any slower and there are no mistakes to fix. Any faster, and they occur but are not fixable.

Second comment, I don’t think the slight thumb motion is doing you any favors. It mostly occurs on lower strings, so I think you just do this because the wrist has run out of range of motion and you can’t really reach those strings any more. The solution is to move the whole hand to a lower point. For a fixed repeating pattern like this, you can probably sit on a lower string — or partially on the body — to begin with, and just use wrist to reach all four strings. For 5- and 6-string lines, unless you have very large hands, you will probably require some tracking, either via elbow motion, or arm/shoulder motion, to reach them all. Yes you’ll have to learn what it feels like to sit in these other locations. But the picking motion becomes easier because you’re not asking the wrist to operate outside its comfort zone, introduce the complexity of finger helper motions, etc.

Nice work!

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#11

I wonder if there’s anyway I could mitigate that, maybe I’ll test some other zoom settings or placements.

Samsung S20 Ultra with a fat case!

I feel like this is my main weakness, as far as practicing goes. I’m happy if I can nail something once or twice really well, but never put in the " real work" in perfecting it consistently. I’ll try to work on this more!

This is something I’ve been experimenting with for years, as far as what joint is doing the tracking. I feel like the thumb just started to be more involved because I feel more accurate / comfortable moving my thumb and keeping my shoulder somewhere that’s comfortable and my palm somewhere that I can still control muting well. There are old videos here of me doing lines that are across all strings; I’ll try to remember some of them and do magnet shots!

Thanks for your time as always, and your insight! This thing has definitely been really fun and motivating me to play more.

#12

The cameras on the S20 appear to be approximately near the edge, however they might be a little bit farther away from the edge than on an iPhone. Maybe that’s all I’m seeing. If you have the “ultra” model it looks like there is an additional camera called the DepthVision camera which is located more toward the center of the phone. It might only be used to measure distance, not to produce an image. That camera would definitely produce a high angle if it’s used, but I’m not sure if it is.

It’s not that I’m against finger motion per se, it’s that I’ve become wary of any motion that only appears to activate intermittently. When we’ve filmed players, the helper motion seems to be where most of the mistakes occur. If the technique is working then I don’t worry about it. But if there are accuracy or other issues, and I also see helper motions, then I think ok, better off getting rid of them to reduce the number of variables and complexity.

Your motions look excellent in terms of being the right ballpark. There are simply a few lingering mechanical issues that you can potentially streamline or standardize (e.g. finger vs no fingers, anchor location, consistency of attack, etc.). The accuracy issues aren’t so much because motions are incorrect, as they are simply occasionally playing the wrong note or string. i.e. “Mistakes”, in the classic sense of the term.

I notice many of your clips are super fast, at speeds where it’s hard to make accuracy improvements because everything is a blur. We advise fast motion as a starting point, but only a starting point. This is just to make sure players don’t inadvertently choose an awkward and inefficient motion which can’t be sped up, or can’t be sped up without effort and tension. You’re beyond that point, so there’s no need to go full blast other than as an occasional test.

Of course if you slow down too much the motions are no longer the same and you’ll just get all the notes right with the wrong technique. So slowing down only a small amount to a zone where the hit rate is high but not perfect will give you a more manageable number of errors to try and fix. I would just make the mental note to use this slightly slower speed whenever possible and not slip into the all-out shred/fun zone. You don’t need hours per day to improve accuracy, just a greater percentage of time spent trying to get rid of errors in the “improvement zone”, where mental effort is greater.

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#13

More experimenting with the magnet setup; I think I mostly fixed the focus issue by locking the focus on the pick before I start recording!

I think this might be the first magnet shot of a bass on here, also first trailing edge?

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#14

The speed is fantastic and it looks effortless!

The sync is not 100% there* yet but I think you’ll be able to fix it by slowing down a little, then speeding up again etc.

*I am jealous so I needed to find something innit :smiley:

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#15

This is spot on and I definitely feel it! A big hurdle on bass for me is stretching the left hand to span the frets (I think I have pretty long fingers, so I’m guessing this is an issue for most people as well); I find myself focusing more on “aiming” the left hand that I do on syncing.

#16

Yep! I’m going to get myself a shorter scale bass at some point because… why work so hard? :slight_smile:

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#17

It’s so fast, and you go from zero to sonic that it almost looks fake/comical lol! That’s very much a compliment, BTW. Very cool playing!

I posted a video a few days ago of me trying to play Tumeni Notes (Joe's DBX Magnet Practice - #46 by joebegly), and I think I accidentally had a trailing edge grip in the first clip. I watched it again and it’s hard to say because it’s close to neutral but I’ve got that banana thumb happening. At any rate, your playing is way better than mine and you’re intentionally doing tailing edge, so I’ll allow you the honor of the first trailing edge video.

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#18

I was tempted to get one a while back, but I’m afraid of losing the clarity on low strings! Low B is 35” on this one, whereas a standard short scale is 30"? 32"?

Lol thank you! Minimizing the “ramp up” time for fast passages is one of the things that I’ve worked on; I feel better about it, but still not where I want it. I can tell that I sometimes hang on the first note if it’s not to a metronome.

noooo

Lol even if it’s not intentional, you’re still the first! I started experimenting again with it on guitar, and have found a couple things that have made me like it more. I’ll probably post a clip here soon!

#19

I’ve never really worked on descending / ascending 4s, so I started working it. Mostly trying to settle on a fingering for now, since it has that weird part between the B and G strings which I don’t think can be played with @Tom_Gilroy 's EDC fingerings. Here’s the fingering I settled on:

Magnet view:

Pretty sure I added an extra 4 notes on the fingering video?

#20

With the 4s, I’ve been working on accenting beats more so I don’t get lost / out of sync. I’ve been trying to find similar “rhythms” to play things that are in harder groupings, like this one:

Practicing it, alternating “gunning it” and controlled run throughs:

#21

Quick update on this Universal Mind thing I’ve been working on:

What’s most apparent (apart from the fact that I’m off beat) is that I mostly skip that middle string, sometimes hitting it, but mostly not. I’ll drop this to 140ish and see if I can get it up to at least 50% accuracy.

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#22

Looks great man!
So sorry for the ultra dumb, probably 100000 times already asked question, but despite seaching the site and the forum I couldn’t find an answer: How to get the magnet?

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#23

@Tallano thank you!

Not a dumb question, no worries! From what I understand, @Troy and the team are fulfilling all the orders for the Kickstarter backers first (which is why I have one), and then I think they will begin selling the remainder.

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#24

That’s correct, thanks for answering. What we might do is put a dummy product in the store with a note that says it’s not available yet. This way at least if people are searching in the store they’ll see it. We’ll take a crack at that shortly.

Nice playing! Yes, you are displacing the middle string pickstroke to the top string, if I’m seeing this correctly.

Sometimes this is connected to using single escape motion. You can see that you are USX-ing the top string via two-way pickslanting, even though this is not really a USX lick. The problem is, ironically, that it actually sounds good. It’s hard to hear the displacement (i.e. unpicked note), so the hand learns that this is “ok”. It just plays the top string instead because it’s mechanically simpler. Every repetition just reinforces this tendency to use the simpler USX motion over the DBX motion.

My hypothesis on this is that it’s due to form. I think the flatness of the arm position and grip makes the wrist motion closer to deviation, which is not as good at mixing escapes. This forces the forearm to rotate to get the escapes instead of letting the wrist do it. This is why the arm always wants to go back to USX instead of doing DBX like it should.

If this is true, going slower won’t fix it. The 2wps will just come back when you speed up again, and so will the tendency toward displacement. So one thing you can try instead to encourage DBX is three-finger grip and staying in a more supinated arm position all the time. Or, you can try using a more extended grip than the closed up one you use currently. Either one of these might permit the arm to be more supinated, and give the wrist more DBX capability. When you look at three-finger supinated players, you see a lot less arm flip flopping, and I think it’s basically because they don’t need it.

All just a hypothesis, but you can give that shot if you like, and maybe that will help.

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#25

This has been the motto for my time with the magnet so far!

I love having really detailed information about my playing, but it’s sometimes jarring to see how something can sound good while being far from perfect. I’m sure playing like this live would be (at least for my standards) just fine, but is it good enough to be a “legit take” in a recording? Totally depends on the artist of course, but I feel like that last push to perfection is the really hard, time-intensive effort.

I always think of the solo in “Purple Rain”, and how memorable it is, despite not being “flawless” technique.

#26

There is a qualititative difference between:

  1. the correct technique, with a good hit rate, with only occasional mistakes, very often which are not even audible, and

  2. mistakes that occur systematically, because something fundamental is happening in the technique that is not what you want

I don’t worry about category 1, and you probably wouldn’t either. But when it’s category 2, I don’t think fixing it means you’re a “perfectionist”. I hate that. It just means you’re trying to do the technique right. Once I can do a thing the way it’s supposed to be done, I care a lot less about occasional errors, especially if they’re not even detectable without slow-motion wizardry.

I’m suggesting with this clip is that it’s category 2. Not a judgment! It’s the story of my life. In my experience, trying to fix individual wrong notes doesn’t work when the issue is technique or form. i.e. It is not fundamentally an accuracy issue. Instead, sometimes an overall form change fixes all the notes, and puts you in category 1 with only occasional errors.

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#27

Reworked the fingering in the descending 4’s, also added the ascending bit so I can loop in groups of 8:

Testing out a new pedal too, hope it sounds good!

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