Translating table tapping speed to tremolo

Playing Technique
#22

I experienced the exact same thing, and you can see that big time in the first clip, and a little bit in this most recent one. This is totally normal, and it’s where the learning comes in. If you somehow remove the strings from the equation by covering then you’re not learning to get the right pick depth and learning what it feels like when you go through the string with smoothness. I don’t know that there’s any way around that other than doing it. It’s going to require a bunch of attempts until one of them works.

If you want to do the motion in the air right above the string you can totally do that. I did that, and you don’t need cardboard. Just extend your wrist a tiny bit higher so you’re picking the air. But again, you’re still going to have to lower that pick into the string and touch it, even if you freak out when you feel it. Doing it right once, at tapping speed, is the critical step.

Why are you working on this, is your table tapping speed faster than you can currently pick?

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#23

Table tapping, my speeds were a close match to yours in the video…I haven’t had an opportunity to check myself with a metronome, just tested alongside the videos. Before, with tremolo, I noticed that, even when starting with a wrist motion, at higher speeds it will turn into elbow motion, and then at even higher speeds it goes into the spasmic hyperpicking thing. Wrist motion on the table feels super smooth, would better facilitate string crossing in either direction, and I can do the motion (on the table) at speeds far beyond what I’d ever need on guitar, so I’m trying to add it to the arsenal (hopefully).

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#24

Here’s my first attempt. Translating to the string proves very difficult for me, but my fastest tapping burst seems to be a couple of bars at approximately 280 BPM.

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#25

Great test. You’re doing it. This issue you’re having with getting it on the string is the exact same thing I experienced at first, and this is what I think the problem is. Notice when you do your hyper tapping, the pick is going almost straight up in the air. Not completely straight up, but steep diagonal. This is 1:00 wrist motion. It creates a very vertical DSX path from this arm position. When you try to put it on the string, you start moving horizonally and it slows down massively. You’re changing the motion. You need to keep the 1:00 motion because that’s what the tap test is telling you is the fast one.

This is why I switched to the three-finger grip, i.e. because it lets me use a more EVH-type arm position. When you use that position, your arm will be turned, so the pick won’t be going as straight up in the air any more, it will be a shallower escape path that is more horizontal. But it will still be 1:00 wrist motion. The trailing edge is just what allowed me to rotate the pick in my grip to get the upward pickslant to match the diagonal motion. Once I did that, I could do it on the string without the slowdown, just sloppy at first.

I’m not saying this faster type wrist motion can only be done with that arm position, just that you need to match the motion the wrist is making with the pick attack / slant or you won’t be able to get through the string. You will feel the resistance, and you will try to change the motion to one that has smooth attack, and that might not be the fast motion any more.

TLDR what I’ve noticed here is that if you slow down massively when you try to put it on the string, you might be changing the motion. If you see the slowdown, there’s no need to work any more on that, it’s wrong. You’ll know it’s correct when you don’t have to change the motion or slow down when you get near the string, and it might require a form change to do that based on whatever wrist motion you are using.

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#26

Great advice @Troy. I’ve just been playing around with it and I’ve definitely gotten closer to being able to apply it to the string, either with a heavily pronated DSX form or a three-finger grip.

For fast picking I have found a pronated DSX motion is what comes naturally to me, using the thumb-side of my palm as an anchor/pivot point. This is the only way I can achieve a consistent fast motion at present.

With my current form, I find it a challenge to pick on the lowest string, as my thumb-side palm has remain in contact with the body at a steep angle (depending on the bridge type) to maintain my current level of speed.

I’m uncertain if this can be translated to a form that would enable pinky-side palm muting? However, as soon as I try to lift the thumb-side of my palm, the speed drops dramatically.

#27

So I tried to use the phone to tap against and failed miserably- my brain cant cope!.I don’t want to be offensive, but it felt and looked like I was having some sort of episode/seizure
Anyway, instead I just tried to hit 8th note downstrokes at 210 bpm as if the phone was there- not being too bothered if I air-balled the string. After a few bursts I managed to pretty much feel like it was there (or there abouts) and the buried the pick a bit more to make contact for both up and downstokes. Results were better than expected so I bumped it up to 220bpm and did similar. I then just played tremolo without thinking about it I could sustain a couple of bars.

Quite surpised considering 200 bpm is a bit hit or miss for me usually.
Had a bit too much tension than I would like but I expected as much.

I find it interesting that focusing on 8th note pulse, when I get it is better than the usual quarter note group of 4. I have found this to be true before with triplets -feelin in 3s seems to be more dependable than 6s, even with a nice 6 note chunk like decending 6s

#28

Is a reasonable rule of thumb here “you can probably tremolo at least twice as fast as you can downpick?” Downpicking requires muscle reuse, if I recall the consensus correctly, and thus it seems it should be less efficient than than alternate picking at twice the speed.

One of the things I’ve definitely noticed for myself is that calibrating a metered tremolo is easier if I start with downpicking eighths for a bit before trying to alternate pick sixteenths.

Edit: the reason I think this is relevant here is that I’ve noticed that when applying the above algorithm, I can pretty consistently hit 240ish bpm 16ths trem picking after 120ish bpm 8ths downpicking. And “remembering how” to do the trem picking seems related to actually performing the downpicking.

Not that I ca really do anything musical with that trem picking, but it’s there :smiley:

#29

I’ve personally thought that you should be able to alternate pick at least twice as fast as you downpick, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a rule that I’ve heard around here.

#30

Yes, its the unreasonable reasonable rule of thumb! What I’m doing is very innefficient and not the motion I do when doing a tremolo, but it seems to push my hand into being very engaged - ‘over-egging the pudding’ so to speak so that when I start picking the string, my usual picking motion comes in and it feels easy. The question is - is this just a more relaxed version of my usual motion, or have I blended them, thus tweaked my motion?

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#31

Sorry for the confusion, but the fast motion in your clip already goes up in the air on a diagonal, and your arm is not pronated. If you were to try to turn your arm toward pronation, the pick would go even more vertical, basically straight up and down. The only way that would not happen is if, in addition to pronating your arm, you also changed the wrist motion to be a different one. Is that what you’re doing? And you’re saying that’s also “hyper tap”-fast? If so post a clip, that would be interesting to see.

#32

The eighth-note pulse is definitely how I keep track of this. Although, notably in my case it’s not the downstroke, it’s the upstroke, because that’s how I’m starting this. But really, what is a downstroke or an upstroke? The way I’m doing this, the upstroke is the trapped stroke so it feels just like doing a downstroke rest stroke with USX.

Either way, to your point, feeling an 8th note pulse may be the way that these really fast motions are timed, at least at first. Any picking speed you can think of, even 300bpm, is still slow enough to feel 8th notes pretty clearly.

But the pulse itself is not enough to achieve these kinds of speeds. There is definitely some change to the motion itself that enables this. Were you not able to move at 220 prior to this, or you never really tried?

#33

Short answer is no, I couldn’t.

Longer answer:
I do try 200+ regularly enough to know that I struggle from that point onward! :rofl: 220, I’ve never really managed to do with any degree of consistency. That being said I have recently lowered the bar of what I consider acceptable as a tremolo - if approx 80% of it is in time then I consider it achieved in raw speed terms - stops me obsessing and keeps me trying different speeds.

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#34

If you’re able to go faster than prior, it may be that the tapping (virtual or otherwise) is helping you idenitfy better / easier motion, as it seems to have in my case. By all means keep experimenting.

When you say “in time” do you mean trying to reign in the motion so that it synchornizes with an external click source? Because if that’s the case I agree that it’s not super relevant and often counterproductive if it causes you to do weird tensing up or intentional slowing down to stay in synch. This is really about achieve maximum smoothness by feel, not trying to play along with a song or something.

Evenness of time is also kind of a moot point. Super fast tremolo doesn’t usually vary much in speed.

#35

7 posts were split to a new topic: Tremolo tests, with and without metronome

#37

Are you saying you can actually do the hyperpicking motion? I gather you have no immediate death metal plans, but that’s a very cool skill and is useful even in atmospheric indie band and classical tremolo situations.

#38

@Troy, apologies for the lack of clarification.

The points in my prior post were mainly with regards to my conventional speed picking form, not hyper picking. This is demonstrated in the video below, albeit pretty rough and quickly recorded.

I hope that clears it up a bit. Skip to the end to see the sharp pronation on the lowest string I mentioned.

#39

I assume that’s what it is. I’m not exactly sure…it feels more like a shaking or vibration thing…there used to be a ton of tension in the elbow when I’d do it, but now not so much. It’d be nice if I could get it to cross strings smoothly. I could do some black metal with it, but I just look silly in face paint and cold, snowy weather really messes with my asthma.

#43

I planned on doing just that at some point soon. As for its speed? If I can get the pick aligned to the string right, it’ll go too fast to decern notes, definetly too fast to synchronize anything. I rarely have the metronome out, so I cant say exact speeds. The superfast stuff is sporadic. Lately I’ve been trying to use more of a wrist motion, which was also default DSX, but trying to get it to play 3nps. I kept swiping on the USX motions. Yesterday, I decide to turn the arm so the motion becomes USX, and now I can play it without swiping…like its easier for me to transition to the single dsx from usx than it is to go from a primary dsx to usx. Id forgot how awesome it feels to just have something finally work.

#44

@Troy
I think there’s a very important experiment that needs to be conducted. How long will it take you to find a smooth tremolo with your left hand :smiley:.

#45

I’m a dummy, and don’t know how to operate our forum! Which experiment are you referring to?