The Lazy Sloppy Zebra or "Transition Time“?

Playing Technique
#23

The thing is, I’m not making a blanket argument that it’s necessary to maximize pure mechanical efficiency. And it could well be that striving to squeeze out every last pico-watt of efficiency might have a negative tradeoff with coordination and accuracy. My larger point in all of this wasn’t to argue against using rest strokes, only that it is a mistake to characterize them as “more efficient” and use that as a justification for using them, not that there is no justification for using them.

Part of the reason I “couched” my statements in my earlier posts is because the inter-string distance isn’t 3 inches or 12 inches. If it were, the difference in efficiency would matter. But with the real-world spacing of about 11mm, I’m not at all convinced that it does.

Quoting one of my earlier posts:>

Before continuing, I think it’s worth mentioning that I’m not even claiming that it’s necessarily even desirable to make the smallest possible movement in most “alternate picking” situations. I think @Troy has done a good job of making the case that until you start talking about really extreme speeds, people tend to overestimate the value of “small movements” in alternate picking.

I’m not even disputing that the exercise might have value. I just think that if the exercise has value, it’s for reasons other than the “efficiency” explanation that Rick gives.

#24

It is how it works and a pendulum is not a good example because a longer pendulum stroke moves faster than a small pendulum stroke because of the forces of gravity and momentum. However, when picking, the speed at which you move the pick is not dictated by gravity; it is dictated by the speed at which your muscles move the pick. Your muscles have control over how fast they move the pick. You can pick very slowly or very rapidly by adjusting the muscular force used to move the pick.

An analogy would be driving a car. The car’s speed isn’t dictated by the force of gravity either, unlike the pendulum. The car’s speed is dictated by the amount of gas you give it by pressing down harder on the gas pedal. Giving the car more gas is similar to giving the pick more muscular force by choosing to use more of your muscular force to move the pick.

Giving a car as much gas as you can give it (flooring the gas pedal) is roughly equivalent to moving the pick by using the maximum amount of coordinated muscular force you possess. So then, whether flooring the gas pedal, or using the maximum coordinated muscular force you possess to move the pick, small distances and large distances are still performed at the same rate of speed (maximum miles per hour the car is capable of or maximum speed at which you are capable of moving the pick; in essence, the greatest amount of muscular force you can put into the picking motion is analogous to flooring the gas pedal. So, once you are moving the car or pick at top speed, the variable in how quickly you can finish the movement in dictated by the length of the movement (more miles for the car or more millimeters for each pick stroke.

#25

If 11mm is the maximum pick movement possible since at that point it becomes a rest stroke, and instead someone uses half that much motion per pick stroke, the potential for the amount of time the 5.5 mm pick stroke will take is only half as much time as it takes to move the pick 11mm.

If we were comparing moving 3 inches to 6 inches, again, the small movement is only 50% of the distance needed to travel that of the 6 inch pick movement. The percentages are the same! Yet you claim if the difference in distance were inches instead of millimeters, it would matter but not if the distance in the two movements is millimeters and not inches… Objectively speaking, the variable dictating the difference in time it takes to make a large movement instead of a small movement is the greater the percentage of distance (wasted motion) that the large movement demands!

#26

I really don’t want to argue about the examples but that’s simply not a good view.
The car would be a good example if you’d drive just in one direction.
But that’s not the case, you have to break and accelerate in the oppsosite direction.
That’s why i used the pendulum as an example, that is the EXACT situattion, without adding energy from outside, which is probably desirable because that means efficiency.
And the pendulum proves that the range has no impact on the frequency, unless you change the movement by adding energy.

I’m pretty sure the real situation is way more complicated than a pendulum, and especially when adding tension to the system there are a lot more variables involved, but from a physical point of view and targeting an efficient and relaxed mechanic, it makes no sense to try to control the range of motion, the same is for strength, which has only impact on tone.

I know that still the tiny motions are tought as the formula to speed up. But i guess the reason for that is that the second irrelevant variable is taken out, which is strength.
True is: a fast motion is small
False is (or better can be): a small motion is fast
That’s physics we know since Newton.

The whole reason to post all this stuff is simply:
If you try to keep your motion small you risk to invest your energy against the fluidity of the underlying mechanic and that doesn’t make sense.
If you pick faster and the range gets smaller everything is fine, if your way to trigger the faster motion is trying to tighten the range, that’s fine too (as long as it feels good).
If you can’t find a way to pick fast, range is NOT the variable to focus on - and that’s the whole point.

Edit: (after a smoke and thinking about the car example)
The car IS a good example if you describe the entire situation.
If you accelerate and break and then accelarate in the opposite direction.
I’d say the natural way to do that faster is simply to do that faster, which means you reduce the time between swapping the direction. Excluding extreme situations you’d simply ignore the distance the amount of gas and all other things, just change gears as fast as possible.

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#27

Ah but that depends on which model you trust, mine or yours? :wink:

Experimentally, however, it does seem that the rest stroke disappears at uber fast tempos (e.g. see magnet footage of Batio and Rusty Cooley - IIRC) - so I concede that my model (energy used only to stop motion/change direction) may be slightly off!

#28

I’m going to use the car example for this, the way you described it since you said it is a good example if you describe the entire situation.

So, the guitar is an analogy for the pick. After all both the car and the pick have to accelerate and brake and then accelerate in the opposite direction. Then you said “Excluding extreme situations you’d simply ignore the distance the amount of gas and all other things, just change gears as fast as possible.”

Let’s examine that with what is hopefully a rational perspective. If you exclude distance as an important variable in how fast the total round trip can be accomplished (from one end of a one kilometer road to the other end, braking by the end turning around and racing all the way back to the original starting point) then the road could be one half a kilometer long and he time for the trip from the start to the end of the 1/2 kilometer and then back again to the starting point should take just as long as the car on the one kilometer road because after all, you said “you’d simply ignore the distance” and earlier when talking about the pick you said “range is NOT the variable to focus on.” I’m sorry but that simply isn’t logical.

#29

Hehe it seems we’re getting closer now.
In one way you’re right, a fast motion IS small.
It’s just about cause or symptom, and the tiny motion is a symptom.
And probably in the psychological part of this your example is better than the pendulum.
Imagine a line on the road you want to cross by driving forth and back - maybe with one axis, to keep the size of the pick and the string close to even.
Now if you do that you would simply change gears as fast as possible (extreme would be that you are so fast that you don’t cross the line) and the result would be a small distance.
Now if you turn that around and you change gears in order to hit some range lines the risk is high that you change gears inefficient in terms of frequency cause you aim the range lines instead of the gears which dictates the frequency.
If you aim a low frequency you’ll probably don’t use the breaks and that results in more distance, still that’s efficient. If you aim higher frequency the distance gets smaller automatically (unless you have endless amounts of horsepower). In both cases the distance is the result of the frequency.
So the case that you have to travel the long distance simply never occurs, in the perfect scenario you always travel excactly the distance that is required to hit the frequency.

That’s all I want to say all this is not about the distance at all, it is exclusively about aiming the right thing.

#30

I would agree that it’s counterproductive to focus on small movements, but that’s solely from personal experience. For example, if I put my picking hand in front om me and rotate it as fast as a can (I’m a using rotational picking movement) the speed doesn’t increase if I try to make the movement smaller. This makes me think that at least MY top speed isn’t dependent of movement size.

Saying this I can observe that when I reach my highest playing speeds, my picking movements get smaller and I’m not using rest strokes at that speed. But that seems like it’s more a question of comfortability than increasing of speed. It takes less energy to use small movements but it’s doesn’t affect my speed.

#31

No. There is a minimum energy required to displace the string on any pickstroke, even if there were no “wasted” movement. The “wasted” component of the movement experiences far less resistance than the string displacement component. I would argue that the minimum energy cost to displace the string is much greater than the cost of moving the pick through 11mm of air. There’s an energy penalty for moving the pick those 11mm, but it’s a small incremental cost over the primary cost of the movement: the displacement of the string itself.

When the amount of “wasted” movement is increased to absurd distances for illustrative purposes (e.g. 6 inches, or 152mm, etc.), it’s easier for people who doubt that an inefficiency exists to recognize that the “wasted” movement has a cost greater than zero, and that it increases in proportion to the amount of “wasted” distance. But at 11mm, the cost of the “wasted” movement is small enough relative to the minimum cost to displace the string that this “inefficiency” isn’t a significant limiting factor on real-world performance until we start talking about extreme Rusty Cooley type speeds that many people aren’t worried about.

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#32

No. The distance is the variable. It is dictated by how quickly you can finish the movement. (Edit: And the force applied, of course - those are the two things you can control.) You just described how it works perfectly in your previous paragraph!

#33

I think I have to disagree with that view. Surely there is not much energy needed to accelerate/deaccelerate the pick. But we are not moving the pick in the first place but the hand holding the pick. I estimate a human hand to weigh something around 300 grams (sorry, I’m european). And the string has to be deflected by only 1-2 mm to ring.

I even think energy is the wrong measure here, force is much more important. For traveling a longer distance (e.g. 10 mm) at the same frequency as a shorter stroke ( e.g. 5mm) you obviously need more (mean) speed. And to reach that higher speed in the same time you need more acceleration and thus Force. So smaller movements, same speed mean less force or higher speed at the same force.

Limiting factor IMHO is the space the string needs to ring you have to clear. Also the way the pick has to travel on string changes is given by the string distance.

#34

You have to get the string to vibrate with enough amplitude to produce a note at the desired volume. You are essentially stretching the string away from its resting position and letting it “snap back”. The energy to set the string in motion has the come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the muscles you use to pluck the string. The energy cost will be lower for quieter pickstrokes (which will also subjectively feel like the string is “resisting” less), but is still there in addition to the energy it would take to move your hand an equal distance through only air.

#35

That’s why it doesn’t make sense to try to control the distance.
The force or strength to put in the motion is individual and in the end pretty small.
Troy i.e. plays pretty big ranges even at pretty high speeds and alyways states it feels effortless to him.
You can see in a couple of videos that the motion gets smaller when he pushes it to eleven and i bet he’s not even thinking about it.
Force only applies in a tension system, what changes the speed is the distance to the rotation center.
Still I don’t know how the body applies that to the motion, but in a repetative motion force you add in one direction needs to be added in the oppsoite and slows down the turnaround, it doesnt speed the frequency (and doesn’t slow it) it just speeds up the speed of the motion.

#36

Yes, in the first place. At the moment you hit/pluck the string I think the energy will be taken from the kinetic energy of the pick/hand. Smaller movements, as I explained, means you hit the string at lower speeds. As I did not fully understand what makes a pick stroke “softer” or “harder” I can’t tell if that makes a difference. Is it the travel speed of the pick, is it the depth, that the pick dives into the string plane or is it, how tight you grip the pick or all of the above. Maybe @Troy can give some insight?

Still I’m convinced smaller movements enable you to pick at higher rates (“faster”). The unrealistic robot movements, that @Troy is referring to are the “constant pick speed, immediate stop”-movements that are used to demonstrate technique. That “immediate stop” would require infinite force at higher picking speed and is thus unrealistic. This is also why practicing slow does lead to “wrong” technique for playing fast.

#37

Bingo, that’s basically what it is about. Without that robot-stop it is simply, the faster the repetition the smaller gets the range, we all agree in that.
Just you don’t need to force the motion to be smaller than it wants to be - that’s all.
Size results from frequency not the other way round.

The string thing is not related to speed (just in tone a little), the basic variable is the displacement of the string, that can be done pretty much at every speed. It’s hard to get that in the equation, because the energy you put in comes back partially with the snap.

#38

It’s the other way around. Higher rates create smaller movements - for a given amount of muscular force. We’ve covered this here:

https://forum.troygrady.com/t/picking-speed-vs-motion-size-explained/

I understand it’s a bit of a brain teaser for people, but if you really ask yourself how you control movement size, you’ll realize it’s not directly. You control size by either pushing harder or less hard at a given picking frequency, or by changing direction slower or faster (i.e. changing your “picking speed”) at a given level of push.

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#39

OK, so we agree in the fact, that range of motion and speed go hand in hand with each other. But why not get it right from the beginning? Not by playing small strokes at low speeds, but maybe concentrating on small movements when learning to speed up.
I’m quite sure that I made very large momvements when I started, that held me back from playing faster. Of course my small movements could have evolved automatically, but I’m sure “relearning” for smaller movements let me progress faster. At least back then.

Tom

#40

I think what your’e getting at are two different things here. Learning the actual movements, and playing fast. They are not the same.

If you go around pushing really hard at moderate speeds, you’ll make giant uncontrolled movements. This will not feel natural and will not look natural. It will make it harder to learn how to actually make realistic controlled picking movements. This is true for complicated movements like two-way pickslanting and crosspicking, but probably also true even for “simpler” movements like one-way pickslanting movements. If you’ve never done these movements before, they are all pretty weird!

This is probably what you and most players are referring to when they talk about making “small movements”. Not pushing crazy hard, so you can make a more natural movement. Where this logic breaks down is by assuming there is a connection between “pushing less hard” and “playing fast”. There is not, it is the opposite.

When you speed up, you have to apply more force. And to reach your maximum speed, you have to apply lots of force. We know this because we measured it in a lab, and John Taylor clipped the inputs on the EMG machine with the amount of force he was putting out at top speed. The reason his movements are small at that speed is the crazy frequency at which he is able to turn on and off the muscles on each side of the joint. It it is not because he is “pushing less hard”, and it’s not because he practiced “small movements” when he played at more moderate speeds. It’s because he learned how to do extremely rapid, sprinter-style on-off joint movements. And to do that, he had to put out tons of force and switch rapidly.

Ergo, I think this whole “movement size” thing could be simplified by just replacing the term “movement size” with “muscle force” or similar. When you’re learning, use a moderate amount of force, so you can make a movement that feels smooth and natural. You are not concerned with making the smallest possible resulting movement, because that’s irrelevant. You are concerned with learning what graceful picking movements feel like, and at moderate speeds, those are produced with moderate force.

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#41

In the end it’s just the simplest approach to go.
Find the right trigger to get the speed you desire.
If that is the range of the motion and the picking feels good that’s just fine.
You get faster by playing faster, it’s that simple.

The only reason to come up with this was to avoid that robot-motions (didn’t know we have a term for that).
It’s the best example where the smaller motion does NOT end in higher speeds.

I’m not sure if that is correct in general but my approach is always to let the body find out what’s good and what’s bad, just if the body doesn’t find a way I use logic to give a hand.
I personally am not able to control single muscles or joints to me it’s all blended together, to get the ‘right’ motions appear it’s still a lot trial and error.

#42

Yes and no. Of course this is the way the mechanics work. And the rate at which you can alternately contract your “muscle pairs” (being german english, you know what I mean) finally decides about the rate of picking. That is a control issue. And if you apply enough force, you can do that with wide movements also. I’m just convinced, that this force is: a. limited, b. lets you fatigue more early and c. you loose precision if you have to apply to much force.

Of course youre right that with learning to play fast, the movements will become smaller. They have to. But getting rid of string hopping would also be a necessity and this seems to not happen unconsciously for all people, so my suggestion would still be to try make at least smaller movements on purpose.