Should I change my picking technique?

Hello, I used to post here a long time ago. My problem was in my picking hard, I couldn’t pick fast due to stringhopping issue which prevented me to play a simple tremolo faster than 110bpm 16ths for more than 10 years, I tried to slow down, learn the wrist motion which is seen as the most efficient type of picking motion, gradually increased the speed by practicing with a metronome but unfortunately it was a waste of time.

I took lessons from 3 guitar instructors (including Anton Oparin) and I couldn’t even least a simple tremolo picking despite practicing for over 2 years religiously, I used to play from the elbow before quite well but they insisted on learning the wrist motion because it’s easier and faster. They even said that my wrist motion was correct at slow tempos and they told me to stay at those tempos for longer in order to ingrain it in my muscle memory, but as soon as I reached 110bpm 16ths everything fell apart, for some reason my hand refused to adapt to wrist motion and reverted to stringhopping.

The only advice that helped me was the one that Troy Grady suggested (to whom I’ve very grateful) - find a motion that only works at fast tempos and the only one that works so far is the elbow motion with my fingers anchored.

Here’s my current progress.

Do it sound sloppy? Sorry for the poor lightning and bad angles, I hope that it’s possible to see anything. It’s one of my better attempts. I can rerecord with better lightning/angle if necessary.

It doesn’t feel comfortable or stable but it’s the only way I can do it, it propably even looks too tense and erratic and yes it’s very inconsistent to the point that it takes several attempts to play a single phrase, even playing a tremolo is quite tedious, I can only last 15 seconds max, unfortunately I forgot how I used to play from the elbow 12 years ago. I’m wondering if I should adapt to the current technique, practice more or does it look too broken and inefficient.

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I think I’d say to work with what you’ve got in the videos. It sounds really good to my ears. There’s literally nothing wrong with elbow technique.

Instructors that tell you that you have to use one particular technique and that it’s better than all the rest are… suspect, in my opinion. I do not trust them.

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Thank you for the reply, glad to hear it’s not as bad as I thought, I’ll try to work with it, at least I’m not practicing wrist picking at 80-100bpm/16ths for like 2-3 years like I did before. I wish I never took any of those lessons because not only it wasted my time (I’m especially dissapointed in Oparin’s guitar course because it turned out to be another run of the mill guitar instruction ala “start out slow, gradually build up the speed, only use your wrist, hold your pick this way, just move your pick straight” etc, I saw many other students stuck at playing tremolo at slow tempo for months due to unmet requirements in terms of hand position/motion) but I even forgot how I used to play from the elbow and back then it felt way easier because I wasn’t conscious about my actions and I didn’t feel anxiety about doing something wrong which still has a paralyzing effect on me.

I personally do think that not everyone has the ability to learn a certain motion even if they devote their whole life to it due to different body size, proportions, nervous system attributes etc. I’m simply not to built to learn the wrist motion ala Gilbert so I need to try something different.

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I disagree with this! HOWEVER, I don’t think there’s any reason to force yourself to learn something that doesn’t feel right when you already have something that’s working. Now, how to build endurance (which is a matter of optimizing your technique, not building muscular endurance!) is something I don’t have a prescription for. Others may have better advice on this. But you sound quite good to me.

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It looks and sounds great but what you say here worries me a little. It should feel easy and be consistent, I’ve never been able to get elbow going for the same reasons!

Have you gone through the picking tutorials in the primer? I’m not sure if they were around 8 years ago so it might be worth checking it out:

I think the tabletop tests are probably your best starting point. They’ll answer this question for you.

But I agree your elbow technique sounds great.

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Yeah, tap tests to tutorials to sync to identifying escape to string changes