Feel free to throw the video in here!
I feel the same way you do about your downstrokes, but for my upstrokes! I wonder if anyone is pretty much equal with both.
I’m glad you dig it! It’s been my go-to warm up since I came up with it, and I feel like my picking hand has never been this warm, this fast. I’m going to keep experimenting to see if I can push my speed by honing in on my weakest iteration (DUU).
(Thank you!)
Another update: my picking went up 8 BPM on the paradiddles since my last video (107 to 115) and my DBX “tester line” went up with it, from 214 to 230 16th notes. Pretty sure this is the fastest I’ve done this line, and pretty much the same as my max trem speed (I think it was 235ish?).
I focused more on DUU since my last video (spending most of my time on it), and used it as a tool to hone in my grip on the pick, which made the strokes feel more “even”.
To summarize, this is how I hold the pick when I just pick it up and usually leads to a “bad picking day”:
Once I started using this warm up, I noticed I immediately got in “the zone”, and hold the pick like this:
I seem to push my thumb away from the last joint of my index finger, so the pick is less “choked”, if the term fits?
Today I played around with the grip some more, specifically with how close to the tip of my thumb I hold the pick. This is how I started, capping out at about the 100ish BPM mark on DUU:
I ended up shifting it back a little bit, but this allowed me to hit 115 BPM:
Of course I’m not saying that this is how you should hold the pick, or even pick on general. What I AM saying though, is I’m pretty sure these paradiddles would be a great tool to help streamline your picking holistically, to include the actual motion as well as grip.
Damn you’ve got some serious speed!
Interesting analysis on the grip alterations and their effect on speed. I’ll have a bit of an experiment with these alterations on the paradiddle exercise and see if it affects my speed. I do need to fix my downstrokes first, but maybe some grip alterations could help this also!
Very interesting I did also notice my pick grip seemed different after trying to improve these paradiddles and I thought my pick was sticking out a bit more which may be the same as your second photo but I didn’t really take note of where my thumb was I just saw I had more pick showing.
Although it felt good with more pick showing I sort of dismissed it because I’m trying to improve my pinch harmonics and less pick helps with PHs for sure.
I’ll try it again tomorrow and take note of the pick grip.
There’s a good amount of variables throughout your body that in my experience affect your playing, so don’t be surprised if maybe your picking grip isn’t the weakest link in the chain. Never hurts to experiment though!
You should post a video, I’m curious to see why / how your upstrokes are better than your downstrokes.
What I’ve always done (and still do) for pinch harmonics is just rotate the thumb outwards (away from the index finger) to choke up on the pick, but then I go back to “neutral”.
Yes, im going to record myself within the next few days to see what I’m missing with the downstrokes.
I experimented today with trying to copy the motion I do with upstrokes, just in reverse. It’s showing some promise. I’ll have a better idea in a couple of days as to whether it’s going to work.
My upstrokes also sounded more aggressive without much effort, which is odd seen as I never practice all upstrokes…
This is a great exercise, thank you for sharing it.
I’ve altered it a little for myself for practicing syncopated rhythms, I stick with your triplets and changed it around a bit for quintuplets, septuplets and nonuplets.
DDU
DUU
DUUDU
DDUDU
DDUDUUD
DUUDDUD
UDDUUDU
UUDUDDU
DDUDUUDUU
DUUDDUDDU
DDUDUUDDU
DUUDDUDUU
…and so on in more permutations. The next thing I did was applying them to inside and outside picking so the change in stroke was on the adjacent string. This makes for a really great workout with compound tuplets and getting the feel of polyrhythms and syncopations.
Wow, you really took this and ran with it! I love it. I haven’t tinkered with it too much, mostly just trying to cap out speed in it so far. I think the next thing I’ll try is grouping in triplets.
Have you found this helping you feel polyrhythms better? Or string changes with the additional string?
Another push on speed: gave 120 BPM paradiddles / 240 BPM 16th notes DBX a try:
I’ll stay at this speed and try to clean it up, but again I’m pretty surprised by how quickly the speed ramped up as I worked on my weakest paradiddle (DUU).
Wow, that run you are playing there, it’s all inside picking alt picked ?
I notice you angle your hand differently depending on if you are going up or down, there is also some rotation between the up and down pick strokes, but, both seems to disappear the more you play it’s like you are honing it to the point where you have worked out the minimum rotation needed to make the escapes.
It’s all alternate picked 3 notes per string, so the first string change is outside, the next is inside, and so on (I think this is what you you meant by “inside picking”).
I noticed this too when recording these videos, I wonder why? Maybe it’s because I have to go across all the strings, so my hand just naturally angles in the direction I’m moving?
Do you mean like forearm rotation? @WhammyStarScream was mentioning something similar, but like the wrist angle, not something I’m cognizant of / intentionally doing.
Cool observation! I hope so, maybe this is indicative that I can’t get much faster than this (I think).
You were going so fast I thought it was 2NPS, ok cool.
Yeh that’s what it looks like, a kind of rocking motion using forearm rotation which seems to disappear but might just be so slight at the top speed we don’t see it.
Well I’ve been looking for exercises that would work well with syncopation practice and you just happened to post this a couple days before I started looking (funny how synchronicity works) and immediately found it to be just what I was looking for. I’ve already been working on getting the feel of quintuplets for months and months, not just for EJ licks either but for rhythm work. So it does make the accenting on the 1 easier to feel I think, and I’ve incorporated this into my rhythm workout.
I feel it’s also really good to get changing direction at any time for any reason to just feel natural once you get used to it and I think it would also be excellent to build patterns for practicing economy picking, which I’ll try to work on in the near future as I’ve always been dreadful at rest strokes.
I think this idea is the basis for a nice study tbh, I hope others pick it up and run with it too.
Awesome to hear that it’s helpful, especially in things that I would’ve personally never tried, like advanced note groupings and economy picking!
I have a buddy that does high level sports science research stuff (really bad at describing this) and one of the things he talks about being very important, if not most important, is the ability to quickly change velocity / direction, and for some reason this reminds me of that. He also plays guitar, so maybe I’ll show him this!
Same, hopefully more people (with various backgrounds and goals) will check it out and see what happens. I’ll also bring this up again whenever magnets ship, since it would be cool to see this “under the microscope”.
I remember noticing my hand moving in an arc when I tried to move across all six strings using wrist picking. I came to the conclusion that some of it is due to the guitar itself. Without picking, if I just tracked my hand and arm up and down, it moved in an arc. This happened more so on my Gibson style guitar than my strat. I’m practicing forearm and wrist now and it doesn’t happen with that technique so I never looked into it any further!
I also considered that it could be the body itself. I am only playing this guitar at the moment but hopefully getting a new one soon that is a pretty different style, I’ll do a similar video when I do and see if the movement is still there!
I don’t have much to say apart from you’re fast as fuck @Pepepicks66 You bitch! slow down! lol
Awesome playing.
I would like to know what pick you prefer tho.
I just noticed you refer to your alternate picking as dbx motion? This would be really cool to see with a cam zoomed right in, I’ve not seen dbx motion done that fast before, that I’m aware of anyway!
Lol thanks! Isn’t the whole point of this forum to find ways to pick things faster? 
I’m alternating between the tortex / nylon jazz III, both I think 1.5mm? Tortex is a little brighter / more bite I think, nylon maybe feels a bit better?
I call it DBX because I think it fits, hopefully it’s not a misnomer (@Troy and @tommo could clarify). I feel like if I did pure wrist motion it would be USX, but I feel like the finger motion makes it DBX.
Was hoping the magnet would be out by now, I’ve been trying to get closer shots. Maybe I should get some sort of phone mount clamp.
It would be really cool to see up close for sure. I bought this goose neck clamp thing for this reason, I’ve not tried it out yet though and not sure how close I’d actually be able to get the phone. The magnet would be ideal for sure!
