The Count's Hyper Picking

Technique Critique
#1

I’m not sure if this is helpful (or even that good!) but I recorded some tremolo stuff. The metronome was at 300bpm. I included the slowed-down example (no video, sorry! But it’s the same audio from the first video… just slow)
It’s a little inconsistent slowed down, which I’m not surprised about. However, if I were to ever use something of this speed in a song, it’d be more for an effect than anything, so the slight inconsistency wouldn’t bother me that much.

Interestingly I find this extremely difficult unless I clench my fist in the way I do in this video. No idea why, but it’s far more uncontrolled without doing that (but still possible at a push.) This speed is reasonably comfortable. I couldn’t do if for anything much longer than the first example, but I probably wouldn’t want to.
Anyway, would be interesting to hear your thoughts.

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Anthony Martello's Hyper-Picking instructional
#2

Wow! I hope this doesn’t strain your friendship with @milehighshred, but you’re hitting about about 20 notes per second on the second take. The first take is still about 18. That’s nuts.

With great power comes great responsibility.

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#3

Me and @milehighshred have always been in very strict competition :wink:

Thanks for the comments anyway Troy, glad you enjoyed it!

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#4

I’ve seen those, they’re pretty funny.

Now that you have this superpower, getting the left hand to link up to it is the name of the game. It’s almost impossible to play a single note tremolo to a metronome, and I don’t think there’s any real correlation in this take between the click and what you’re doing. It sounds like you’re just burning as fast as you can.

Does this work at intermediate speeds, or is there some switchover where the movement jumps from “Yngwie fast” to “Taylor fast” with a gap of however many bpm in between?

Either way, I’d try doing some synchronization practice at whever tempo your fretting hand can currently handle. That’s a thing you’ll want to record, preferably with video, so you can make sure the fingers line up with the pickstrokes.

Do you have a phone that can do slow motion? If not it’s worth budgeting for down the line. You uploaded these clips at 24fps which is a cinematic frame rate, not a video frame rate. The Euro video rate of 25fps is equally bad for filming practice - there just aren’t enough pictures per second to get a clear view of anything. The US rate of 30fps is slightly better, but anything musical really should be at 120fps or better to get a crisp picture of such rapidly moving objects.

Great job on this.

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#5

Hey, you sound like me :open_mouth:

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#6

My more intermediate speeds look pretty different (and feel pretty different) it’s still elbow based (apart from the sweep), my wrist feels pretty rigid but it’s not quite as tense and I don’t do the clenched fist thing.
Most of the hyper picking stuff I’ve never actually done to a click (which is why the examples show were probably me just going for it and hoping for the best! Haha!) It’s just something I fool around with occasionally so I don’t really know what the limits on it are yet. I can synchronise it with a few licks but like I said, not to a click… yet!
Sadly I’m still on the iPhone 5 at the moment, so no slow motion. I’m thinking of upgrading soon though because mine has really seen better days at this point.
If you’re interested I’ll record a few videos where I attempt to synchronise my left hand up as well. I’ve got a few ‘Rusty Rip Off’ licks I can do as a party trick.

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#7

I don’t think that’s tasteless at all - you’ve got some scale stuff, some interesting arpeggio flavors. It’s similar in style to the Jason Richardson stuff we were discussing.

Mainly what’s missing here is the accuracy component. The slow speed take of this sounds great. Can’t really tell what string switching technique you’re using for the scale stuff but it’s clean and in time. The fast speed is off by enough that I would avoid playing at that tempo for the time being so you don’t inadvertently cement the wrong behaviors.

Since this is a multi-part “monster lick” type of phrase, I’d take a look at each of these individually to see what needs to be done. The sweep stuff in particular really benefits from moderate speed accuracy type practice of the sort that Teemu discusses.

Re: the hyper picking stuff, it sounds like that may be a different animal entirely. Is there a way to use that movement, specifically, but just not at those speeds? Maybe it’s like riding a bike, where you just can’t go too slowly without falling over. Whatever the lowest speed you can use is, and still actually do that movement, that’s the speed I’d shoot for first if you’re going to try and work on hand synchronzation.

Edit: I’ve moved this into its own “Technique Critique” thread.

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#8

I agree, this was a little ropey. This was about a year ago and I did a lot of metronome work on that one to get it recorded for my EP. It’s a lot better now, I just haven’t done an updated video. But thanks for the comments!
As for the hyper picking movement, as weird as it sounds, I find it extremely difficult to do at a slow speed. It’s like it’s super fast or just a mess, probably because it’s not something I’ve done that much. Like I said, I’ve only really messed about but maybe I should try and refine it a bit to see if it could be used in a more musical context. I think the riding a bike comparison is very accurate actually.
I’ll get some more recorded for you tomorrow, probably only single string stuff. Anthony proved this is possible over multiple strings so I’ll have to see if I’m capable of that as well!
(And yes, good shout on moving it to a new thread, I kind of hijacked that other one!)

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#9

This makes some sense and it may not have anything to do with how much you have or have not worked on it. It may simply be that this is a technique that only works ‘fast’. Your experimentation here may help us figure that out!

Not really.

The string switching itself doesn’t sound that bad, given that there isn’t that much of it. It’s the hand synchronization that’s the most off. But it’s off enough that it’s hard to comment on accuracy at all since there really isn’t any. I mean, yes, any picking movement can be used to play on more than one string, even if you hit unwanted strings during string changes. But the Hyper Picking tape, as interesting and charming as it is, is another one of those examples where the left and right hands really have no correlation to each other. It’s basically tremolo picking while the left hand does things simultaneously, and then both hands sort of move to another string.

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#10

Dude!!! These hyper picking threads whip ass. I like the Steve Vai bar shake at the end of one of the battle rounds.

:bear:

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#11

You guys are rockets.

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#12

Thanks for the comments everyone. As promised here’s another video.

Example one is another tremolo lick. This is a comfortable speed and I can hit this with little effort.
Example two is tremolo again. This time I’m totally tensed up, tiny movements. It FEELS faster, but not sure if it actually is, so wouldn’t mind some thought on that. I don’t think I could make my arm move any quicker than this.
Example three is a one string version of the famous Gilbert pattern done in an old Rusty Cooley video. It’s a lot of fun and not too difficult.
Example four is three notes. Not much more to say! Could be more refined.
Example five is a two note trill.
Kind of ran out of ideas after this to be honest! If anyone has any, preferably single string licks for now, I’d like to try them out!
Would be interested to hear your thoughts.

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#13

Dude, these tremolo takes are absurdly fast. Remember you’re uploading them in 24 frame-per-second video files. Well, there is a whole stretch here, in the second take, where your hand totally does not appear to move at all. Meaning, it’s in the same spot 24 times per second, every time the phone shoots a picture. So that’s approximately 24 notes per second. Counting the audio in pairs of notes substantiates this, give or take a note or two. Crazy.

As I’ve mentioned, the whole “notes per second” thing is bizarrely un-musical as a way of thinking about picking technique, but there’s really no other way to evaluate this kind of rapid movement if there’s not a musical context involved. And it is indeed interesting from a purely biomechanical standpoint that you can move like this apparently pretty easily. How long did it take you to develop this? Was it always at this speed, or did it jump up massively over that period of time?

For musical purposes, yes, hand synchronization is your challenge here. The lick examples are not linked up at all. Which is fine. I would highly recommend doing something simpler that uses three-note per string fingerings, and using audible accents. Again, somewhat mechanical, but if your goal is to learn what “locked up” feels like, and what it sounds like, that’s our best bet on how it’s done at this point.

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#14

That’s pretty damn fast man :thinking:

@Troy Yeah I see the hand float still in the second take. That’s hitting a pick a frame. Son of a *****!

@TheCount how are you keeping the strings from grabbing on your pick and slowing you down? You using a pick made out of delrin?

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#15

Exactly. It’s like those videos of helicopters where the rotors don’t move.

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#16

24 notes a second? Wow, I didn’t think it was quite that fast to be honest!
As I mentioned in the Martello thread, it was kind of a jump. I saw a video of Rusty doing what I thought was the clench fist posture and copied it because I was messing around and stumbled across this weird twitchy moment that seemed to be usable. Looking back I can’t find what video I saw of Rusty so I think I just misremembered what I saw, because he doesn’t seem to ever do this. It’s got faster for sure, but probably not by much. The extra speed just comes from tensing up a bit more and making the movements as tiny as possible.
Like I said the first tremolo is comfortable for me. Yeah there’s some tension and I probably couldn’t do it for much over 10/15 seconds or so but it’s easy for me to switch that on. It’s also worth saying I don’t need to warm up to do any of this (not trying to show off! Haha!) I’ve had a guitar in my hands all day but it’s been lessons for kids, so not a moment of hyper picking involved (apparently ‘Jingle Bells’ is a more appropriate thing to teach…) I just came home and threw this together.
I’ll work on trying to refine some stuff with the left hand for sure. Thanks for the feedback as always!

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#17

Hank, the picks are 2mm Swiss Picks. I’m not 100% sure what they’re made of but they don’t bend at all and have a very sharp tip. I don’t know if it helps with it, but probably a little.

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#18

As in @milehighshred’s case, this is as fast as a human has been recorded moving in a laboratory setting. As in, ever, in the history of science. So yeah, this is fast.

Your “easy” take is about 19 notes per second, again give or take.

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#19

That’s pretty cool to know! I’d have never thought that. Very cool to know. Thanks for taking the time to analyse it. Time to get some serious synchronisation practice on now. Let’s see how usable it is!

For the record I managed to track down the Rusty video I picked up the movement from. I think he just curls his fingers in but for some reason it stuck with me as ‘oh Rusty clenches his hand up, I’ll try that.’ I’m not sure that’s what he’s doing, but hey, happy accident for me I guess!

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#20

Oh and I just found out my Dad has an iPhone with the slow-motion setting so if a slow motion hand close up would be of any use to you at all I can try and get something tomorrow or Saturday (far too dark to do now!)

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