Picking/fretting synchronization

[kludge]

Do you have trouble with getting your fretting in sync with your picking? How do you address this problem?

I’m just now tackling this kind of strict picking in my playing. For years, I’ve gotten by with slurs played in an undisciplined way for speed. My hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides happen with good speed and time, my alternate picking is adequately fast, but… together, not so much.

I’ve found some fruit in the Uli Jon Roth triplet technique of pick-slur-pick pick-slur-pick, but I want to get the clean sound of pure alternate picking. Any suggestions on improving synchronization, or is it just hard time with a metronome? Pick slanting was a revelation on how to get the pick itself moving efficiently. I’m looking for a similar backdoor for the sync.

[element0s]

I still haven’t really figured it out. Years of metronome work and trying to line up chunks with accents haven’t really gotten me too far. I always feel like I’m guessing.

[Ian]

(from Ben Eller’s instagram)

That was me for 20 years

The two exercises below are what finally got my hands synced. When practicing them try to keep your fingers near the fretboard and try to maintain only one finger fretted at a time. For example in bar 1 you would lift your index finger slightly at the same time as fretting with your middle finger. This trains your brain with “when a finger frets, pick the string”.

Once I had them down everything else was just a matter of burning the new pattern into muscle memory. I have bunches of picking exercises that I practice but these two (especially the first measure) are what I go back to whenever my syncing needs tightening up.

[Brendan]

This may be of interest, previous thread with similar discussion:

Still working on hand sync, movements, and accuracy

I’ve been working on the six note pattern and moving it around on a single string but I’m still feeling something not quite clicking between the two hands. It’s almost like there is a stutter between them. I think that wrist extension is the fastest movement for me, but I still find my self slipping into a rotation like movement. Also, I think that from playing with such thick picks my edge picking is not very consistent. I used to economy pick everything so I would just rest stroke my pick thro…

[Jakku]

I think internal rhythm in general can be the culprit. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried playing piano or drums, but I feel like every instrument has a “sync issue” that can be boiled down to motor skills that have to work together. So there must be some cognition exercises out there for such a thing, in the broader sense.

[JonBjork]

Try working with accents. If you have an exercise in 16th notes for example. You want to play the exercise in four ways. Accent each note of each group of four in turn like this:

1. ONE 2 3 4
2. 1 TWO 3 4
3. 1 2 THREE 4
4. 1 2 3 FOUR

When you do this don’t overdo the accent, keep it musical but still obvious to anyone listening what note you’re accenting. Make sure to push slightly harder with the left hand on the accented notes just to really build the connection with the right hand.

This exercise if done correctly will force you to slow way the fuck down which is another HUGE part of getting your synchronization together.

The “Lazy zebra” thread is describing another (imo) essential technique to develop your synch.

Hope this helps