Share Your Teemu Picking

Technique Critique
#1

Is anyone playing any of the Teemu stuff? I started messing with “Winter Madness” today. What a b*tch.

So @Troy lol, this is what is going on with my pick hand when I try to play this naturally. I have no idea what I’m doing at the moment, It feels like I am being forced to strict alternate pick. I hardly ever do that, it feels wierd. I’d have to spend some time watching my picking. I’m down a half step at the moment, sorry.

What do you and @Frylock think? What would improve this? If anything. I’m sure you guys will say the pick posture is a mess. Whatever man. Later :bear: :kiss: lol

https://vimeo.com/258340726

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#2

Excuse my ignorance but I haven’t bought any products from here yet :shushing_face: Therefor, I’m not familiar with what you demonstrate.
Is the special bit here that down-down-up pattern?
If so, I remember trying it many years ago as I got Reb Beach’s instructional video. I think it was him who played down-down-up :thinking: Anyway, that was hella weird. I couldn’t get it at all.
Is there any other benefit of this way of picking besides getting into this particular groove and having an ability to accent accordingly to the said groove?

#3

Hey @Medium_Attempt I was just trying to play a little bit of the intro song to the Teemu Mantysaari interview here on the site.

I guess I’ll analyze The up-and-down Strokes on the tab to see if I’m picking it like Teemu. When I’m playing fast I can’t tell when I’m alternating and when I’m sweeping. I think I do both. It takes a lot of concentration for me to alternate pick only.

I just thought I’d share. It’s a pretty cool song.

#4

In the video Teemu does say that there are repeated downstrokes and that the focus is to get every highest note on a downstroke, so it’s not gonna “work” with strict alternate; in other words, every non-palm-muted note is a downstroke. Consecutive downstrokes should be possible if it’s not faster (or as fast) than Master of Puppets for example which is nothing but consecutive downstrokes at 212BPM (with very few string changes however of course). Not easy at all of course, but within the real of what’s possible without needing one in a million picking superpowers.

Forgive me if I’m mistaken as I’m only going through it with this video and online tablatures.

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#5

When i got Teemu right in that interview, that’s kindof a individual flavour in his picking style.
And the music accents this flavour, I’d say it’s no wonder that it’s pushing for oher players.
So if you do it to push yourself, go ahead.
If you do it for the lick (which I really like) I would think about reorganizing it for your personal style.
In both cases you are a brave guy to mess with that one, hope you get it down.

… looking to forward to see drugged bears in Teemu mode :grin:

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#6

Hey, thanks man! Yeah, I like what Teemu is playing there. I think it will be a good thing to practice to help my picking hand. That’s mainly why I was bothering Troy with the post. So he can tell me “this sucks” “fix this” and “I can’t tell from the camera angle, but your flip flopping” before I get too involved learning the song. I know you’re busy getting the new interviews ready @troy reply whenever you get back on here. It’s all good. Teddy will be shredding some Teemu riffs next @theGuyFromGermany :bear::guitar:

@Lukhas you are right, he is double downstroking sometimes to accent on the down. There are a few spots where I am more comfortable sticking to the alternate picking and accenting on a upstroke when necessary . I guess as long as I am picking everything it’s all good?

I will work on it when I can. I’ve been pretty busy lately. I like them dom 7 or maj 7 arpeggio sections Teemu was doing also.

#7

I’m pretty sure Master Of Puppets is at 224 BPM.

#8

It lines up very well at 212 in REAPER though, and not at all at 224. So it really is around 212.

That said and to stay on topic, I do not know what the BPM of that “break” before the solo of Winter Madness is. I assume it’s not faster by listening to it, but I do not know exactly what the tempo is.

#9

Could you tell me what REAPER is? I got 224 from Guitar Magazine For the Practicing Musician which transcribed it.

#10

REAPER is a DAW like Logic, Cubase, Nuendo, Pro Tools, etc.

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#11

I bet the tempo of Master of Puppets fluctuates a great deal, Lars didn’t use click tracks so the song probably gradually gets slower as he’s getting fatigued.

#12

Well it’s easy to figure out: load the track with the correct time signature changes (there are LOTS of them) in your favourite DAW and see if it fluctuates. :yum: I seriously cannot hear it. As for Ulrich, he’d be in the studio so it doesn’t matter if he’s tired: it’s not as if he had to nail it at 100% in one take. Fluctuating and inconsistent tempo is very audible on a recorded track, so I’d be very surprised if MoP wasn’t recorded with a click. Impressed even, considering that Rasmussen said they recorded with a click as soon as “For Whom The Bell Tolls”.

But anyway, that’s kinda off topic.

#14

Sorry for the delay, we’ve been editing. This looks and sounds fine to me. I don’t see anything wrong with it per se, it just looks a lick you haven’t really worked on, which is understandable.

There are definitely repeated pickstrokes in these patterns but they’re in groups of twos (if I recall) and that’s usually a little less fatigue-y than non-stop repeated pickstrokes. I haven’t worked on any of these, or the downstroke thing though.

Brendon Small is another one who is great at metal rhythm stuff, and he does it from a uwps orientation which is cool. You can check out the clip on that thread - the repeated downstroke is basically a little circle.

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#15

Hey, thanks for the reply Troy. I figured you are busy with 2 interviews worth of material. lol.

Yeah, I hadn’t worked on it. I just started messing with the tabs and realized “I can play this”. I’ve never picked in that particular way before. So I was just throwing that video up to see if there are any mechanic/picking issues with my picking. I’m insecure with my right hand as always. I guess it looks good. I just need to learn the solo then.

I start with the easy solos :rofl:
:bear:

#16

Apparently, neither the metronome or hand synchronization are my friends. :rofl: To be quite honest, besides those sequences that really, really grab my ear, I’m not too interested in Wintersun’s music overall.

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#17

Hey, that sounds pretty good for a starting point Lukhas. This stuff isn’t easy to play at all. lol.

:bear:

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#18

I spent more time trying to get the phone position right than actually playing it since I wanted to upload something, so it’s a bit sloppier than I want. The repeated downstrokes are just glorified sweeps; something that is fine by me. The hand and the fingers tends to lock up at these speeds (210 BPM), but since I’ve never been able to incorporate extensive finger motion in my playing, I’m not too surprised: I just let the weight of my picking arm go through the string. At least there’s a good thing in finishing ahead of the Guitar Pro metronome: speed shouldn’t be an issue ultimately.

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#19

I haven’t worked on this so I don’t have much to add. One thing is that you seem a lot more comfortable on the lowers strings in this than the upper strings, so I wonder how much your string-tracking is changing your hand position as you move to the higher strings. Maybe find a comfortable arm position for the “high string” parts first and see if it still works for the lower strings?

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#20

Talking about me? Then yes, I do think my string tracking isn’t good enough overall, not just in this instance. It’s tougher especially when ascending and even more when sweeping in the ascending direction. The plain strings are a bit of an uncharted territory to me and switching from the lower strings to the high strings a feeling I’m not getting accustomed to. I suspect suspicious string tracking (almost a tongue twister) is among the suspects, but not the only reason.

The picking motion doesn’t feel the same when playing a three note per string scale ascending with economy picking than when I do it descending, and I don’t get a good feel for which string I’m on or if I am on the right string at all when ascending. That’s probably why the latter part of the lick is faster than the click as it was way easier for me to economy/sweep pick while descending, which is featured in the last bar or two of the clip.

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#21

I think he hit the reply to my post @Lukhas but either way, the riffing on the upper strings is a bit of a left hand finger twister. This is also the area with the trickiest picking. The lower octave section is pretty much “straight forward” and consistent picking wise. (double downing for accents)

In the video above, I was just looking at the tab playing it right after I decided to mess with it. I am playing that section up to speed now. Tracking could be a small issue, but I think it has more to do with the right hand really having to jump around on the upper strings. There is a spot where you have to alternate/cross pick across 4 strings in the upper string riffing. And, with the jumping around in that section, you have to decide if you want to straight alternate pick it, or sync the accents with the downstrokes.

Teemu is doing both, double downing for accents, but making up on accent exceptions.

So the upper string section hold up will be deciding how you want to pick it… if you don’t want to play by Teemu’s idiosyncrasies… Straight alternate pick the upper section. It works fine.

:bear::kiss: