String Hopping Bach

Technique Critique
#1

Hi guys, I guess like many people here I realised recently that I string hop (in fact I was alerted to this fact by the recent appearance of Troy’s video on the topic on youtube). I use this Bach piece as a warm up every morning, and have done for over a year. It is a difficult piece and I use it as an alternate picking etude, I think I saw Mike Stern play some of it somewhere, and although I’m not playing it fast here, triplet eighth notes at 120 bpm, it’s still sloppy as you can see and I rarely can play it without stopping at some point, obviously my picking motion is inefficient. Anyway, I am quite eager to take my playing to the next level - ‘genuine’ alternate picking that is. I can just about manage a succession of four 16th notes at 140 bpm tremelo, since I’ve seen that that is the test to develop a smooth picking motion.

1 Like
#2

Hey there!

Musically speaking this is great, but as you already pointed out the picking appears “hoppy”, i.e. mechanically inefficient and unlikely to become faster without changing the motion.

What we usually recommend in this case is to show us what it looks like when you do tremolo picking on a single string as fast as you can, no metronome.

Give it a shot and we’ll take a look :slight_smile:

#3

Ok, here’s my tremolo:

So, I managed to get 9 iterations much faster than I would normally, which I’m already feeling better about. However, I’m not sure whether it’s in a tempo that would be regarded as fast. I found that in order to loosen-up I had to think like I was performing a strum… perhaps acquiring good technique is like trying to find an optimum level of tension and looseness… just a thought.

#4

Hey James! Thanks for signing up. The Gm Presto is a classic. And yes, that’s totally stringhopping, which only makes sense because the Presto is basically a stringhopping magnet - it’s all arpeggios, the whole damn thing. On the flip side, one of the nice things about stringhopping, if you can call it “nice”, is that it’s often easy to see, once you know what to look for.

The tremolo is on the right track and light years better than the stringhopping motion. But it’s not quite smooth, and you’ve still got way more untapped speed and smoothness you can access.

Have you checked out the sequence of lessons the stringhopping YT lesson came from? You can find that here:

This is our best advice for this issue, collected into one hour-long set of relatively brief, easy to digest videos. You’ve got tests of hand speed, tests of different common picking motions. The nice thing about this is we do these tests on a table, so whatever confusion exists from holding an actual guitar, we sidestep that at first. Along the way, you’ll also learn what a few very common picking motions feel like when done rapidly, which should give you a hint about how the motions should work on a guitar when you take the next step and do the tremolo.

If you can take a look at these, and record some tempo numbers on the tests, that would be a helpful diagnostic. Also let us know how smoothly and easily you can do those motions. Because if you can do them smoothly, you can probably do them on a guitar too.

#5

Hi Troy, thank you for your response. I have been working today quite a lot on my tremolo at 150+ BPM, since this is identified as the first step towards a nice smooth and quick picking technique. However, I wonder what happens to the string hopping - does it gradually metamorphose into good alternate picking? Or perhaps it remains for lower tempos, part of a repertoire of picking techniques? Thanks for pointing me in the direction of the Testing Your Motions videos. This is sort of a relief for me because even though over time (since I returned to using a plectrum - May 2019) my picking speed improved albeit gradually, I would often feel slightly sore in my forearm/wrist area, or burnt out, even though I picked from the wrist, which is all I knew as ‘correct’. But I do wonder to what extent - if at all - string hopping is related to a more smooth, efficient picking motion, or whether it’s mostly been a waste picking in this way. Ok, lots of questions there, I don’t expect all the answers. Thanks again. :slightly_smiling_face:

#6

Hi James! Lots of really good players still use stringhopping motions at slower speeds where it doesn’t matter as much. But even then, they’re generally not as “hoppy” looking as what you’ll see when you have players who get stuck with stringhopping as their only or main technique. The kind of stringhopping you see from players like Andy Wood still looks a little flatter and more semicircular, rather than V-shaped, and I think this makes it easier for them to transition to the more efficient motions as they speed up.

As to your other questions, take a look at the lessons first. I think you’ll have a better sense of the landscape of how things work, and what to do next, after you watch those. While tremolo may still be the first hands-on step, it can be a huge help to know which motions are available, and what they feel like when done rapidly and correclty. This way when you do the tremolo, you’ll know if you’re getting the same smoothness and motion appearance as you do in the tests.