I’ve been playing for about 10 years consistently and never been able to be “fast” - I’ve did Cracking the Code endlessly a few years back, never really broke through and got disheartened and probably way up in my head.
Recently, I discovered how much relaxation helped me speed up and felt inspired to give this another go after deciding to try to play fast (and clean up the mess). I had a few good days where I was going quick but messy and couldn’t clean it up. This fired me up to give it another go - I went back through the primer and I believe I’m an upwards escape player based on what feels right, creates the least tension. For example, 2 note per string pentatonics with downward escape just feels wrong - and so does starting a new string on an upstroke. Having said that, I wanted to re-do my tremolo to get a reassessment and then made a few videos trying different things where you can see how I break down.
My own suspicion is it just looks like in many instances that my “angle” into the strings (and out) is quite shallow. I tried doing rest strokes to get the idea of digging down into the next string w/a downstroke and coming out evenly - but I don’t know if that’s showing up in my faster playing or I switch to something else.
Any feedback would be so greatly appreciated - I’ve been at this for awhile and feel very committed to any amount of practice but I’ve just never had the lightbulb click - I thought I was getting closer because I can get it moving fast without much strain - but the thing is a mess and if I slow down the tempo - I’m not practicing at the faster speed to bring out the clunkiness to clean up AND might be reverting to a less useful technique.
Here are the 5 videos I put together in the hope that they give a good comprehensive look at what I might be messing up at - all shot on the magnet:
#1: My tremolo picking (mostly relaxed arm with not a ton of tension)
#2: Chromatic Scale (1-2-3-4) patterns up and down
#3 Pentatonic 2NPS scale up and down
#4 3NPS Play Example 1:
This is a 4 notes on the B string that then jumps to a 2 note phrase on the G string.
#5 3NPS Play Example 2:
This is a 6 note phrase on the G string that pops up to the B string for a downstroke. (I’d like to extend that phrase into something else but I think I’m focusing just on hitting that accent note on the beat and I just sort of stop there or become a mess)
Thanks!