The most important thing is what you do in the air

General Music Discussion
#1

Not necessarily how you land.

I been thinking about this a bit for myself, as its easy to focus on how your pick feels as you hit the strings, but the most important thing is what happens in the air between the strings, something thats hard to feel. I know this is basicly reiterating the whole of cdc in a way, but a different way, it’s a focus I don’t think is emphasised enough. As in the moment you don’t even feel the air part of the picking, only the hit n pluck of the string.

The air part is where practice focus needs to be. Any thoughts?

#2

I suspect that turning around is where the focus has to be, because that’s what sets your speed. Time in the air is wasted, the pick wants to turn around and go back to hit strings.

In fact, I wonder about this: If playing slowly, should (a) the pick move slowly, or (b) the pick move at full speed, except one waits before the return? I’m guessing that (b) would be correct, but I’m not sure.

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#3

Well turning around is in the air right?

Could you make a vid so I’m sure of what you’re saying

I would think its a mix from my own practice.

But the main concept I’m trying to get across is practicing the air time will help more than focusing on the picking. The picking is such a small part of the hands movement.

#4

Let’s see if I can work some numbers out. Let’s pretend that the stroke each way is one inch, and that somebody can do 16th notes with the metronome set to 200bpm. Hopefully this is right:

  • Time per half trip is 75ms (a round-trip would be 150ms, for two string hits)
  • Average speed over half trip is 1 inch / 75 ms or 0.758mph (we walk at around 3mph)

So the pick moves amazingly slowly, in some sense—much slower than one walks. The problem, I see, is that the pick is constantly turning around; and that, I suspect, is where the difficulty lies, in getting speed.

I’m not sure if the pick basically launches (in the sense of a twitch) to go in one direction, and then does that again, 75ms later, to flip around in a different direction… I don’t know.

Now, let’s prove that you’re right that the pick barely spends any time with the string: If it is in contact with the string for 2mm (say), then the amount of time to do that is around 2mm / 0.758 mph or around 6ms. So, it’s perhaps 8% of the time?

Now all of this is really approximate, but I think it points to the fact that turning around is where all the action is! (This assumes that the pick suddenly changes direction, but that’s not true, hence it will move somewhat faster.)

One interesting number that I would like to see from experiment (a Magnet video) would be “how long does it take the pick to turn around?” In fact, what I’d really love to see is the speed of the pick as a function of time.

In passing (I’m sorry that the post is getting so long!), a great Cracking the Code project would be to take a guitar pick (obviously a Jazz III) and glue a 3-axis accelerometer to it, and then all kinds of crazy interesting stuff would come out of it… however, I suspect that with the right software the Magnet already has all of this information ready to be extracted.

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#5

I think doing numbers is against the feel. Feel is random and fluid. Always changeing but always consistant. For me practicing without plucking is helping me in many ways.

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#6

Does Rusty feel the pluck when he hits the top half of the string? I suspect not, and that he adjusts the pick height for an effortless stroke. I try to copy him.

#7

When I read this, I was reminded of a quote by Lord Kelvin:

“If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.”

Do what you like, of course.

Let’s also not forget that music is math. The groove, the feel, the swing, playing straight, the chords, the notes…whatever…when boiled down all of it makes mathematical sense. Even though we can’t quantify it in the moment. Like it or not - the numbers are always present.

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#8

OK, this might explain. Let’s use a pen and paper to be the pick and guitar. We need 13.5 flips per second. Moving the hand back-and-forth that fast seems to want determinism and not random variation.

:sunglasses:

#9

but you can feel it if you’re not distracted by plucking.

#10

Not being difficult……I have absolutely no idea what that means.

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#11

Idk about that, there will always be mistakes, we are not robots, so in many ways you have to have a feel to sync back into the music.

I tried to explain it more here. like every move you make in the air determines how you land on the strings. Does that make sense? N why I’m wondering about practicing without the picking point of the pick vs the flat side to get a better feel of how the hand is moving without the plucking overiding that feeling.

#12

That sounds great, and definitely try it with different amounts of “depth” and more flexible picks… I think it is easily possible to get a minimal “pluck” feeling. Also note that YJM and Paul Gilbert don’t have points on their picks…

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#13

What do you mean? They have more rounded picks?

#14

Yeah here is what he uses,

#15

by point i meant the general picking point, not an acual sharp point of a certin type of pick.
I have a version of those picks and they have a point, vs the flat side you know? They have a curve, but still a main picking point, that will create a pluck of the strings. And in your mind that hit will overide the air time your hand is making. The set up for the pluck is not felt due to how hard the pluck is relitivly.

So if you take the pluck out you can foucs on where and what your hand is doing.

Like in the sweeping example I posted, using the flat side takes away the hits of the plucks, so your mind can foucs and possibly train the air time…

If you practice fully picking your mind can’t perceive the air time. And you only feel the picking, not what your hand is doing in the air prior to the picking.

#16

Yeah…I don’t get it. Flipping the pick around may glide more easily (similar to edge picking). But the tone created is way different. It’s not going to translate flipping it over.

PG and YJM use what looks like a 351 Fender style shape. Nothing special I can see. EJ and Petrucci opt for sharper Jazz III shapes.

The feel of the string (to me) is of the utmost importance. Both for accents and proprioception (the sense that lets us perceive the location and movements of our body parts in space. It’s why you can touch your nose with your hand without looking).

Your brain knows where the pick is in space. Otherwise you’d never be able to play in time. Not feeling the pluck removes an essential reference.

Like I said…I don’t get it at all.

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#17

This is in practice… not preformance. The point being to practice proprioception and increase it…

Idk how to discribe it better than I have. But different strokes different blokes I guess.

#18

Fair enough. Perhaps I’m thick, but I don’t see how practicing a pick technique not used in performance is useful.

#19

Idk if you’re being truly honest, as there are many techniqes in many sports that are used in practice and not on stage as it were…

Take for example Sprinting, something I used to practice a lot, you don’t deadlift up to 2x your bodyweight on the track, you do that in practice to increase your force on the ground, just like picking, you don’t move your hand with almost no plucking in a preformance, but it’s a totally legit method of practice to increase you picking ability from my experiance.

Tho ofcouse I could be talking nonsense lol Was on my mind tho n been practicing it myself.

I should preface all my posts with idk wtf I’m talking about. But I have ideas… ha!

#20

So let me ask you this. I assume (a very dangerous thing) that there are three important events picking: (a) turning around on the upstroke, (b) turning around on the downstroke, and (c) impacting the string.

So (c) can be a really big deal (thick strings, stiff pick, lots of depth), or something minor (skim the string). I have convinced myself that skimming the string is important for speed, although that could be wrong.

Your exercise seems to isolate the turning around part, so perhaps it’s a good way to go faster. In particular, I am guessing that you enjoy a serious impact with the string (unlike me, I run from that), so it might be really beneficial to get away from it while exploring the turning around stuff… do report back and comment about how well you think isolation works. I suspect it won’t do much for me because I strive to skim the string, but perhaps it would help me as well.

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