Picking hand and tension

Technique Critique
#1

Hi.

I decided to join this community as a last effort to get my bad technique in shape. I started playing in my teens and practiced quite a lot until I hit a rut after two years or so of playing. After that, guitar has been mainly collecting dust, I would only occasionally pick it up and try to start from the ground up. No results so far.

My main problem is my terrible alternate picking technique. I used to heavily utilize arm and elbow for picking when I initially started and I guess that habit stuck with me unfortunately. On top of that, there is also a lot of tension involved in my playing. I just can’t be totally relaxed when playing. Either it’s picking hand or fretting, one or the other gets sore really quickly.

Here is a video. Any feedback is appreciated.

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#2

If you plug into an amp and put a lot of distortion on it, it forces you to be light, you could try that.

Also getting an anchor will help a load, be it your palm or fingers. You seem to be floating, so no anchor, that means the weight of your arm is overcoming your muscles ability to control the fine movements. You’re using your elbow with little to no anchor.

The main thing an anchor does is let you relax without losing your place, the second thing is acting as a leaver for finer movements.

Think about when you write, do you hover your hand over the paper or have some contact with it allowing you to do the small movements.

You can pick all six strings without palm tracking. So having your palm anchored to the bridge.

#3

Do you have a teacher?

#4

Thanks for the response!

I’ve been experimenting with more open fist form. While it helps with anchoring with a palm, at the same time I find it harder to keep the pick angle consistent. Sweet spot is D and G while low E and High E are the the strings on which the picking feels the most awkward.

I’ll post follow up video either today or tomorrow.

#5

Nope. Hard to find teachers who would give private lessons where I live. I’ve tried to reach out but no luck.

#6

There are sone great teachers available on Zoom, perhaps that might help? :thinking:

#7

I’d go so far as to say that online/Zoom instructors are your best bet.

Finding one locally is like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. They all teach guitar…but you need rather specific help.

#8

Here is the new video.

It might be a slight improvement, but the forearm movement is evidently still there. Crazy how my brain tells me that I’m only using wrist here while playing. Also, fretting hand get’s tired even after this brief period of time.

#9

Playing a full scale up and down at high speed with alternate picking is among the most mechanically challenging things you can play on guitar, you’d be much better served trying to get really fast on one string and slowly branching onto others over time.

Start at your target speed and try to find something that works, your current technique will give out straight away but the trick is to keep experimenting until you find something new that is more capable :slight_smile:

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#10

Not only very true - but something you never actually do when playing.

Where the real problem with playing fast comes is string changes.

The one thing I do see (and hopefully others will chime in) is your picking hand thumb. I’m a recovering Thumb-Bumper, so it sticks out (literally).

Yours is bent quite a bit - which by definition means tension. If you watch - you’ll also see you’re moving it. You extend as you go up, and contract as you go down. Not an ideal method for relaxed and precise picking.

Try this:

Hang your (empty and relaxed) hand at your side. Leave your fingers slack and lift your arm/turn your wrist as if you were going to pick a note. Your hand will naturally bring your thumb and index together. Without moving your picking hand, place your pick between your thumb and index.

Whatever that looks like…provided you’ve left your fingers slack and let them find their place - that’s how you can hold your pick with the least amount of tension. It will feel foreign and your picking will regress for a bit of time (mine did). But it works.

Open or closed hand depending on what feels comfortable. I seem to osscillate between a closed hand and open with my middle/ring/pinky lightly resting on the body/strings.

There’s more to it…but that’s a start.

#11

There’s a really good bit in the book Zen Guitar about releasing tension when you play might be worth the read. It helped me a lot with needless shoulder and forearm tension.

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#12

Looks pretty good, sounds awesome… Any way you could try a new thing, same scale idea, just a different amount of notes 4nps sequence from a 3 nps pattern and see just how fast you can go with it?

E------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5–7–8–7----
B--------------------------------------------------------------------5–7–8–7--------------------
G----------------------------------------------------4–5–7–5-----------------------------------
D------------------------------------4–5–7–5---------------------------------------------------
A-------------------3–5–7–5--------------------------------------------------------------------
E–3–5–7–5-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#13

This guy has roughly the same pick grip as you

But notice how he’s using his pinky on the body. Might be an easy thing to copy?

One thing though, you say two years? How long have you been practicing? If it is only really two years then the best advice I can give is keep it up, you will find your way over the years, hand tension naturally relaxes with experiance. There are things in my first few years I thought were just fake due to how good some were playing, but over time I see that it’s just experance. I’m still shit lol but can see it now you know.

try this.

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#14

Gonna pick this up from my local library. I was quite surprised they had this. Thanks for the tip!

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#15

I’ve experimented with a bunch of different styles. The problem is that when I find something that seems to work well for one thing, there always comes compromises for other things. Say if switching quickly from alt picking to rhythm playing or sweep picking.

Also, when I do find something that works it really hard to replicate that picking grip and motion next time. It’s like brain and picking hand just resets between practice.

#16

I actually saw that necrophagist solo video the other day. That’s insane.

When I say two years, I mean two years of regular practice. After that there has been even years of hiatus between when I started and now.

I’ll try to incorporate pinky anchoring to the current technique. I’ll get back to you with a video once I’ve properly tried it.

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#17

Well I think you are going to find that a lot. It’s a related but separate issue, just like hand sync is and one you may want to tackle as well. You will find that many players may have different or slightly different playing forms for lead and rhythm playing depending musical context.

Well the old adage of old habits die hard certainly applies. Your body is full of many types of memory and it will take a while before new habits and memories form (muscle and otherwise).You could consider taking pictures and writing notes of the small things you did differently like hand position, arm position, pick grip etc. and even from time to time observe in a mirror how it looks when you are doing something that seems to be an improvement. Eventually you will internalize it all.

This is a slow process.

As an aside I have a recent funny muscle memory playing posture story. I recently for the first time in my life started playing a short scale tune-o-matic Les Paul type guitar, and my picking hand wants to rest on the strings between the stop tail and the bridge (my hand is resting behind the bridge), effectively doing no muting at the bridge. This is exactly where the bridge/saddles would be on a 25.5” scale guitar, which I have played my whole life, and where the string tension for the pick might be more similar. At first when I noticed it I was like WTF, why am I doing this? And then it dawned on me. That’s how conditioned I was. Point being, we all have to make adjustments sometimes no matter how long we have been playing.

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#18

Ok i have nothing of value to add but this guy just flawlessly playing all necrophagist solos over a dry clicktrack with the derpiest guitar ever has absolutly shattered my soul.

I dont know if i want to erect a shrine to praise his glory and legend or if i want to make sure that he is mentally ok and capable of tying his shoelaces.

#19

Similar story here - I picked up a PRS McCarty 9 months ago with a 2 piece bridge, after having played only Floyds and Strat-style bridges for about 30 years. The biggest issue for me is that the bridge is considerably higher up off of the body, which doesn’t 100% gel with the contact points I normally like to keep with the picking hand - it forces a bit more pronation on the lower-pitched strings. Resting between the stoptail and the bridge, like you mention, puts the hand at a similar height distance as it would be on a “normal” guitar.

#20

Alright. I think I got something good going on now. As far as anchoring goes I found that a having loose anchor point with pinkie finger works quite well in my case. As opposed to more rigid anchor, like something Petrucci would use for example.

Most importantly, picking hand feels completely loose while using that technique. No tension what so ever.

There is still one issue to deal with and that’s the fretting hand tension. The fretting hand gets sore even in this latest video.

My most humble thanks for the feedback and instructions for everyone here. Such a killer community!

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