What’s up everyone? I’ve been trying to learn the Small Mouse technique and really seem to be struggling with it lately even after putting significant practice reps into it. I figured I’d post my latest effort here in hopes that some of you can point me in the right direction. Any help would be much appreciated .
Small mouse attempt
This is too slow to offer advice. How fast can you tap on a tabletop? I imagine, quite a lot faster than this - that should be your goal rather than slow practice.
Unless you’re only interested in downstrokes, I’d recommend doing tremolo to start with.
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Thanks for the assist my friend. The reason I asked for help is because this is pretty close to as fast as I can do it right now. After I made this clip, I tried again just hitting the string with the point of the pick and I got maybe an extra 5bpm from it but this is basically the wall I’m stuck at. When Troy tapped the pick at 190bpm in the video, I was able to keep up with that. Just can’t translate it to actual playing yet. Is the form ok?
Are you referring to the table top motion test? If so, I got 225bpm on that.
No problem, and yes, I meant the tabletop motion test. 225bpm is fast, so there’s a pretty big difference when you try it on the guitar. Have you tried different hand positions? although there’s nothing wrong with your current setup, I would argue it’s potentially limiting and requires additional effort.
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This looks WAY more like tall mouse to me, for what it’s worth.
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Y’all… What is this mouse talk? Lol
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Ohhhh that’s right!!! I mean tall mouse thanks for the correction. Damn
What it do Pepe?? Haha Tall Mouse is the CTC coined term for this dart thrower up stroke mechanic where you hold the pick with three fingers. It’s in the picking mechanics section of the Pick Slanting Primer.
Yeah man I just can’t get the speed up on this. It was insanely awkward for me starting out. I’ve gotten more comfortable with practice but the speed secret isn’t clicking for me. I spent two hours today just messing with it every which way I could think of. Thanks for the input tho
That’s your cue to try something else. And at the risk of sounding like a heretic, I don’t think tall mouse provides a huge advantage to speed over flatter wrist forms, while it does make pick attack pretty weird. So if you don’t find it beneficial to use fairly quickly, I’d just try something else.
You have a flatter wrist form you show in your TC - what happens if you push the speed with that? For shits and giggles, try using a little bit of upward pickslanting, as I think that will smooth out the attack a bit (you can see you’re grabbing the string pretty hard). Really try to go fast - imagine you are sprinting, or if you don’t pick fast enough a tiger will eat you, or something. haha GO FASTER.
Side note: don’t include slo-mo in your vids - the site can add it in all on its own. Try to record at a higher frame rate, if possible.
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Have you managed to replicate that tapping on the bridge of the guitar? Once you make the small jump of table top tapping to guitar bridge tapping, picking on a string is only another small jump 
Check both of these videos out if you haven’t already:
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Yeah, I agree on this. I can hit 210+ with short mouse pretty easily, which is more than enough for me. Do what works as long as it’s “pretty fast” – the real speed comes, and nothing’s stopping you from tooling around with tall mouse etc. as you go.
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Great input here. Thanks for taking the time to explain it all to me. I gotta find that gear in my brain to make my hand move faster. I’m a self taught player that played with a locked wrist for many years so these new wrist motions are completely counter intuitive to me like playing lefty would be literally.when i first tried the motion it was womp… womp womp like slowly stretching the strings until they almost broke lol so it took some time just to get up to this.im gonna give that upward pick slant a go.My regular up strokes weren’t much faster because successive up strokes arent something I’ve ever worked on so I’m at square one with that across the board.As a big death metal fan, I was hoping this would be something I could use after seeing Troy and others demonstrate its potential.
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Appreciate this bro. I’m still trying to translate that knocking motion to picking the strings but the dichotomy occurs when I’m trying to pick a string because it requires diagonal motion rather than up and down. It’s not due to lack of trying tho so I’m gonna keep that in mind and stubbornly continue until something good happens.
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If I can give some actual advice instead of uselessly nitpicking your terminology like I did before:
Focus on making it feel good to play. Powerful. Easy. Don’t stress how it happens. Something something focus on cutting and killing the enemy, not on striking him with the sword.
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Well said. I appreciate the input and the clever analogy. I used the wrong term so it was actually a good thing that you pointed it out. Since I never really used my wrist before, at least not consciously… I’d equate it to a rusty hinge that maybe just needs some proverbial WD40 on it… just gotta break it in and get used to it. I’ve been stubbornly grinding on it and have been seeing incremental progress every day now.The big concern for me is that it sounds like most others are hitting 200bpm off rip and not having to grind on it like I am… but then again maybe those people are acclimated to deliberate wrist motion unlike me but I’m slowly changing that
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I think if you’re not hitting something like 180bpm sixteenths off the rip you might want to play with the exact angle at which you’re hitting the strings (along both the edge picking axis and the pickslanting axis). IMO don’t do this in any sort of analytical way: try to “listen to your body” and just see what feels good to do. This may seem like random trial and error but I think it’s fairly well established that your subconscious (or at least semi-conscious) mind is better at this than any analytical process any of us have.
And don’t grind it for hours at a time! Make sure you’re actually playing music too. Probably something like 20 minutes a day of fooling around with tremolo picking is probably more than enough. My personal experience is that these things take time measured in weeks to really dial in, and grinding more hours per day doesn’t actually do much to speed that process up.
Disclaimer: I am not a big kahuna around here, take everything I say with a grain of salt, etc.
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A quick scan of other TCs shows this is 100% definitely not true, so I wouldn’t worry about that. Just keep plugging away and constantly analyze what you’re doing, seeing what can be optimized. This is where owning a Magnet can really help, or doing whatever you can to get a good down-the-strings view.
Sometimes people get lucky - they don’t really know what they’re doing, but it works. Other times, people don’t know what they’re doing… and it doesn’t work. We’re at the point now where we have a much better understanding of how picking technique functions, so the whole “give it a shot and let the chips fall where they may” approach isn’t so necessary anymore, imo.
What’s the first step? To me, getting either a DSX or USX tremolo motion, where that escape is pretty obvious, and the pick is slanted enough in the correct direction that there’s no/minimal garage spikes - I don’t like the idea of zero-degree pickslant, unless you’re purposely playing trapped. This is where the Magnet, or whatever, footage is most useful - film the tremolo type you think you’re doing, and then analyze the video to make sure you’re actually doing it. lol If you are, great, but if you aren’t, something needs to change in the way the picking feels so that you can get the pick moving along the correct path.
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Thanks man. That’s some quality input. I’d say right now I’m right around 180bpm since I’ve gotten more comfortable with it but when I first began and for the whole week after, it was pitiful. I’m used to being a band guy and always playing writing riffs but since I’m not in one now, I just gave up music entirely for hours on end of strict rudiments and technique. I’m giving this a go cuz I’m sick of being stuck but I also recognize that bad habits are what got me stuck not lack of practice . I think you’re right tho because some days I really feel the burnout and it’s actually like I got worse.Btw you certainly know more than I do, so I’ll gladly take your input and factor it in the mix.
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Thank you for the good advice here. I only joined five weeks ago so this is all still a new world to be after years and years of being self taught. I’m currently establishing the tremolo like you said and switching to wrist technique instead of using my arm or whatever it was I was doing thatkept my wrist from moving much . On the Tall Mouse I’m using a downward pick slant which feels good after lots of experimenting . Being comfortable fwithout the garage spikes was a real headache at first until things got moving in the right direction.Thanks for fact checking me in regards to the success others are having with this right away. I was under the impression that if the speed wasn’t there immediately that I was doing it wrong or just not cut out to succeed without marathon practice sessions
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