Hey,
I presume that a lot of people struggle with pure 16th notes at around 120 to 140 bpm. My picking hand is heavily influenced by Paul Gilbert and while it is very inconsistent (on some days I need to warm up for like forever to get to my max level) I have days where I can get 16th triplets to 150 bpm or even a little bit faster. 16th triplets on around 130 bpm work well with string changes, even with that notorious Paul Gilbert lick. I do think I don’t practice enough, so I can not get it consistent, but that is another story.
Lately I really get into Technical Death Metal like Vale of Pnath or Necrophagist. Being a huge Necrophagist fan for years now, I finally started practicing Stabwound because I really like the song. There is a lot of alternate picking at 120 bpm 16th notes, which is fine on one string most of the time, but it is fairly difficult because they alternate between the A and G string for example. I have a really hard time getting this consistent without tensing up in my arm. I would like to get into this playstyle but at the moment I am very overwhelmed by the pure amount of technique which is hidden in this style of music.
And then there is this guy, who plays this already hard song even faster, and I don’t have any idea how I could ever get my picking to this level:
What I do at the moment is practicing it at the regular speed, but only small sections of this (a few seconds long) and focusing on being as relaxed as possible. But I don’t know if I should rather focus on precision and slower speed. I get the sections I practice in isolation mostly free of mistakes.
What I also struggle with is the descending sixes lick in Technical Difficulties by Paul Gilbert. I would say that I use two way pickslanting, but this pure upward pickslant is really hard to do. Picking is still kind of a mystery for me.
If you wish, I can provide you with some video footage, maybe someone here has an idea. But for now I would love to discuss the technique related part of those tracks.
Edit: Also, I found that anchoring my right hand seems to simplify things a bit, but I haven’t found a way I really feel comfortable with that.