Picking technique falls apart on long passages

Playing Technique
#1

Whats up people! First post here, although I have been lurking for a while. As the title states I’m having a hard time putting long picking passages together. The piece in question is played at 155bpm, 16th notes and is four measures long, mostly TWPS.

I can practice each measure alone at 170bpm with no problems, its when I put the whole thing together where trouble starts. Back at 155bpm, I notice at the last measure my pick stroke becomes super wide, almost as if I’m “muscling” my way through it, it doesn’t sound good either. Definitely not the controlled motion I see when practicing the parts in isolation. I can play the entire passage cleanly at around 140bpm.

I suppose my question is, how do you guys build endurance for these types of things? I’ve been practicing this section since January and haven’t seen much improvement.

Thanks in advanced!

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#2

Hi! Thanks for un-lurking.

Can you play a simple repeating pattern on a single string, with a simple one-way pickslanting motion, in a single position for the same number of bars as the phrase you’re working on, with no issues? Can you do that same thing, on a single string, but in a couple different positions? Can you do that same thing on two strings, couple positions? If any of these fail I wouldn’t expect the more complicated phrase to work.

Based on what you’re describing I’d be a little suspicious that the movement or movements really aren’t totally learned and habitual yet. i.e. Unexpected change and/or awkwardness usually points in that direction.

Beyond that, this is a case where a video is worth a thousand words. There are many possible explanations for everything depending on what you mean by “long”, “falls apart” and “mostly 2wps”.

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#3

Hey troy! You’re right, there is some awkwardness in playing even simple stuff for that duration at those speeds. I just figured the longer I spent practicing these passages the easier it would become but I suppose that’s not the case, I haven’t made much progress in years. So I’m all ears for suggestions. I stole every light in my house and recorded some clips for you and everyone else

Here is the passage in question at 150bpm

Here’s a pure DWPS passage at 160bpm

#4

One thing that will sap your energy and cause you to fatigue more quickly is using excessive tension. Try to make sure you’re staying relaxed in your hands, wrists, and arms throughout long passages.

#5

Thanks for filming! Good lighting and angle here. When you do these, please remember to include regular speed video - otherwise it’s difficult to get a sense of what you’re playing, to hear what it sounds like, and to see if the movements are smooth. Aslo, 120fps is fine - 240 is often too slow unless you’re looking for something really specific, or filming hyperpicking technique. Here are a few more tips from our getting started guide:

https://troygrady.com/start/technique-critique/
https://troygrady.com/help/filming-your-playing/

Two things:

In general, if you want to learn to do long alternate picked sequences with synchronized hands, chunking a repeating pattern is how that is done. You start on a single string, single position. Then you move to single string, multi-position. And so on. If you can’t lock a simple repeating pattern together across as many repetitions as you want, then you shouldn’t expect anything longer to work either. We’ve discussed the process for this at length so I won’t reiterate it here. You can search the forum for posts about chunking, watch the Pickslanting Primer chapter on this:

https://troygrady.com/primer/downward-pickslanting/yngwie-malmsteen/chapter-2-building-speed-with-the-six-note-pattern/

…watch Episode 8 of Cracking the Code:

…watch this clip from our interview with Pietro Mazzoni:

…and probably a few more things I’m forgetting!

Implicit in all of this is that you have already started to nail down your picking motion, and make it habitual and consistent. It doesn’t have to happen all at once. The chunking process can be part of that. But as I’ve been writing about a lot here recently, motor learning is not about piling on the repetitions. It’s an active process of attempting to do a specific motion, evaluating the results by feel, sight, video, or all of the above, and if it’s not working, trying again after making some kind of change. As part of this I like to survey all available picking motions to see which ones you might want to work on. More thoughts on that here:

https://forum.troygrady.com/t/feedback-on-technique-for-a-newcomer-on-the-forum/

In summary, if you can re-post these with normal speed video that would be great. Otherwise, it’s likely that no matter what, if you haven’t gone through these processes yet then that’s probably where you’re at because this is sort of the universal answer to problems such as these.

Finally, I’ll also suggest that playing long sequences of synchronized alternate picked notes is an artistic choice, not a mechanical necessity. We’re wrapping up editing on our Frank Gambale interview now, and Frank is mostly a position-based player. He tends to move across the strings in a specific spot, and of course often uses sweeping for this. Very rarely, if ever, does he get going on a single string and just play some really fast repeating linear thing. Nor does he ever really play any non-stop subdivision like eighths or sixteenths for bars at a time. He can, but given free roam of the fretboard, he doesn’t really appear to.

For everyone who grew up in rock and sees “chunking the repeating phrase to build alternate picking” as the mandatory starting point for picking technique, it’s probably worth pointing out that there are other paths that may be totally different. And your ability or inability to play “long passages” may not even be musically all that necessary for you.

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