Practicing Speed vs. Stamina

Playing Technique
#1

While I had very good success over the last few months by practicing speed bursts to raise my top speed, I’m now thinking about how much of my time I should spend on practicing at lower speed to improve my endurance.

Simple Example:
I can play some repitions of the yngwie 6s at 210 bpm (16ths), but I can not do that for a longer period (let’s say > 20s) at 180 bpm.
A maybe better example was playing 3nps scale fragments up and down over 2 strings. I can do that once at around 180 bpm, but just once.

It’s not that I tighten up then, I think it’s more of a head thing going on. It just falls apart after some repitions.

What is your (meaning anyone around here) experience? Should I go on trying to raise the top speed or go back to some speed, where I can about play it forever and do that?

Steve Stine has this “3-Minute-Exercise” for palm-muting Rhythm stuff. Maybe that’s a bit long, but I don’t know.

Maybe someone more experienced can share some of his/her (although I didn’t see many women here :wink: experience on that.

Tom

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#2

Depends of what I aim.
Excluding the first couple of months (which is decades in the past), I don’t use metronome exercises at all to gain speed.
They might be of help if you integrate a new mechanical component, and need to build up strength and stamina, metronome progress can be pretty motivating then.
Currently I’m not preparing anything for stage or studio, but this’d be my approach.

  • Get technically everythnig down, put some focus on transitions (i.e. if you play scale part then sweep some strings and move back to scale, is the motion on the second scale the same as on the first) and accents
  • Break down to chunks
  • practice chunks with metronome at 100% and 110% speed
  • practice entire piece with metronome at 100% and 110% speed
  • for stage: practice with metronome to get back to timing (on hard parts) in case you blow it up

The chunk thing is basically to get ‘entrypoints’ in case of mistakes, probably chunking happens by itself, but if you are aware of them it should be easier to get back in.

All in all I don’t feel a difference between higher and lower speeds as long as they use the same motion (up to a point where I need to tend up which I try to avoid).
But I tend to be lazy when using different motions, so in general I’d prefer stamina, not to gain stamina, but to keep the motions right on longer parts.

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#3

I find that my playing fatigue tends to come from the fretting hand. My picking hand is a total asshole but I really have to push myself before I start feeling uncomfortable.

Ever since focusing more attention on keeping the fretting hand relaxed and touching the strings as lightly as possible I’ve noticed a massive leap in my comfort and even my hand synch. There are some things I dig a little too hard into like bends, vibrato and double-stops but overall it’s done wonders for me.

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#4

I really have to mix-in elbow with my mechanics once I get to about 160 bpm because otherwise, fatigue becomes a major problem after a while. I see a lot of other people doing this as well… it almost feels like a ‘cheat’, but it works.

However, the 3nps issue may not be related to fatigue… It’s a really common problem… Troy spends a whole video talking about it when discussing MAB.

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#5

Are you mixing in elbow movement with your crosspicking or does it become more of a Pickslanting type approach? If it’s adding to the crosspicking then how does this not interfere with the string tracking?

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#6

Interesting, this morning I was doing DWPS exercises, where I usually struggle to go past 180 (I tend to prefer UWPS). At some point I think I managed to include some elbow, which made the movement a bit bigger but strangely enough it felt easier - particularly stringtracking. With this movement I was able to do a couple of reps of (extremely musical) ascending chromatic 1234s at 200bpm. I hope I’ll be able to reproduce this, or all that will be left to prove it will be my words :slight_smile:

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#7

It does interfere with the string tracking… its sorta a give and take thing. I don’t think I could ever do it while I am doing 1nps lines. I don’t think I really use it for 2nps either. I mostly just use it for 3 notes per string and up. I really don’t slant much anymore.