String skipping DSX lick - falls apart on me if I co much faster than this

[eric_divers]

In the picking itself. I don’t mean to imply that it’s a problem, of course.

[Drew]

Ah gotcha - I think it’s something i do a little while trying to push picking speed, though honestly I don’t know if it’s really helpful or if it’s just a psychological thing.

[Pepepicks66]

@Drew

So, I’m not convinced it’s this. Watched a few Paul Gilbert videos this AM before work, as some of his runs (and in particular parts of Technical Difficulties) pose a lot of the same tracking challenges, and his arm angle isn’t perceptibly more gentle than mine yet he makes it work. Unlessthere’s something I’m missing…

In my first response to you, I said this:

@Pepepicks66

Unless you have the ability to play equally well at different wrist deviation angles and use your wrist for string tracking, you’d have to rely on “pushing” your forearm down / up for string tracking.

Which I think would reconcile both of our thoughts.

I won’t be around a guitar for a couple weeks, but I’ll try to just get screenshots of PG and whatnot:

The above is PG playing on low E. Notice the amount of wrist radial deviation, as well as the thumb joint “retracted”.

The above is PG playing on high E. Wrist is noticeably more ulnar deviated, and the thumb is “protracted”.

Rewatching your original video, I see no change in your wrist deviation or thumb, and the string tracking is noticeably from your forearm pushing / pulling.

If you wanted to approximate PG’s technique / forearm angle, I think you would need to be comfortable performing all tracking at the wrist / thumb. You could experiment with this by playing some trem notes or something on low E, and jumping to high E, and back, without allowing the forearm to noticeably push / pull.

[tommo]

TC received and added to the queue

But I thought I wanted to address this point publicly, because I noticed several other people making it:

@Drew

I know start slow and slowly increase speed isn’t reallt rhe CtC way

There isn’t really a unique “CtC way” that will solve every technical problem. The idea is always: what is the issue that you are trying to address?

If the issue is that you want to play a 200bpm metal riff with a lot of 16th notes, but your current motion maxes out at 180 bpm, the “start slowly and gradually speed up” method will do absolutely nothing for you. No amount of repetition of an inefficient motion will make it efficient.

What you’d need to do is find a new motion that can comfortably do 200bpm from day 1.

If however you are happy with your current motions / speed capabilities and you want to memorize new vocabulary / new patterns, or you want to work on your timing at different tempos, then sure, playing with a metronome or drum beat at low/medium speeds may help.

TLDR: so it’s very important to ask yourself what you are really trying to address, in order to avoid the rabbit hole of endless repetitions that do nothing (ask me how I know!)

[Drew]

@Pepepicks66

Which I think would reconcile both of our thoughts.

paying attention to it, it certainly feels like I’m sliding my arm up and down the face of the guitar. But, from a practical standpoint, i also don’t know if this is something I can easily change - raising the guitar would increase the angle here, but this is already about as high as I can go before bending in the first 5-ish frets of the neck feels uncomfortable. And lowering my upper arm, thereby making my forearm less perpendicular to the strings, feels very awkward and basically means sort of shrugging my shoulder down, which I can’t imagine is ergonomically a good thing to hold for long periods of time, or lends itself to efficient motion.

@tommo

TLDR: so it’s very important to ask yourself what you are really trying to address, in order to avoid the rabbit hole of endless repetitions that do nothing (ask me how I know!)

Very sensible! I’ll check out what you posted in a bit, for now its a wildly unseasonable 66 degrees out so I’m going to slip out on my road bike over lunch!