Trying to start-with-fast

Technique Critique
#41

The issue @Yaakov has identified is that his fretting hand is currently so slow that there’s no hope of synchronizing it with a fast picking hand.

Working on hammer-ons and pull-offs doesn’t create synchronization by itself, but it creates a foundation of capability with the left hand that you can eventually begin to attempt to productively synchronize with high speed picking. And in the meantime it gives you an ability to play lots of cool legato and mixed picking/legato licks without first requiring mastery of “strict” alternate picking.

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#42

This is true as far as getting the left hand in shape, I would just note that (IMO) the left hand can be much more relaxed playing picked notes than legato, so not necessarily a “requirement” to be able to play a line legato for it to be successful picked. Hope that makes sense, lol.

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#43

I want to see those vid posts later this weekend, but wondering about @Pepepicks66’s point too. I tried working out of the Allen Hinds legato book from MI a while back; good material, but yeah, it’s physically hard work, relative to regular fretting. Maybe that’s a vote for just working on regular fretting to get the left hand going faster, rather than legato…?

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#44

Again, this is not an “either or” proposition. Balance is a good thing, and balance means including some “regular” picking and fretting in your practice, and also including some “legato”. Whatever balance is appropriate in your circumstance is something for you to figure out (or in a perfect world, your in-person or skype teacher to help you figure out).

In my experience, unless you are doing a bunch of crazy licks with abundant use of the “hammer-on-from-nowhere”, fretting difficulty for legato isn’t a huge degree more difficult than regular fretting (assuming you have reasonably low action on an electric guitar, with lots of gain on the amp). And in particular, if you are having difficulty, the Nassie video shows a lot of licks that involve picking one note and then doing hammers and pulloffs for the rest, which brings you even closer to the feeling of “regular” fretting.

#45

Do we need “tabletop style” tests for fretting?

We get a lot of YouTube comments from people saying their fretting hand can’t “keep up” with their picking hand. I’m never really sure if I should trust that face value. Maybe it can keep up just fine, and maybe they’re just playing the patterns wrong and really need chunking help.

On that front, we also get comments on the forum here saying “my synchronization is bad”. But when we look into it, sometimes synchronization is perfect, where the first note of each pattern really does start on a downstroke. So technically there is no drift. But you slow it down and you see one of the middle notes is simply being fretted wrong, held for two notes instead of one note. That’s not really a chunking problem, per se, that’s just a fretting mistake.

And so on.

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#46

That’s totally true for me. Just for fun I put the metronome on the other day and I could fret two-string 3nps patterns up to 160-170 sextuplets, which is 240-255 sixteenths. Way faster than I can generally pick. But I could only do that ascending with hammers. Descending with pulloffs is way more work. And at this point, I can’t turn off pullofs when playing legato. However when I’m picking, I’m pretty sure I’m not doing pulloffs, because it feels much less effortful.

That stuff is just memorized, way deep down.

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#47

I’ve always been fascinated with hammer-on-only technique, probably since it sounds much smoother to me (and effort-wise seems chiller). Pull-offs have always felt jarring to me and I just overall avoid them.

#48

I still have this feeling recently that “my left hand can’t keep up with my right hand”. (Funny thing, it was the opposite 3 weeks ago). I try to get over this obstacle by chunking, playing 4-6 notes in on fretting position and the first note or first few notes of the next position to make the shifts on the fretting hand more comfortable.

#49

Not sure how serious you are, but I almost brought this up in my original response.

And for simple, linear patterns, most people probably really can move their fretting fingers faster than they suppose. Most people can probably drum their fingers pinky-to-index as fast as they’d ever need for fretting. I find index-to-pinky drumming less fast/smooth; not sure if that’s universal or just me. Though like you, I find ascending hammer-ons easier than descending pull-offs. I suppose pulloffs are really the inverse of drumming. Reminds me of the bit where comedian Billy Connolly would make fun of the idea that the expression “I’ll take my hand off your face” didn’t sound like much of a threat.

In addition to the question of “how hard to press” when fretting, I think the main complicating factor for translating “drumming fingers” to fretting is sequence complexity: the Yngwie sixes pattern being a classic example that most people probably don’t have previous experience drumming on a table.

#50

I’m completely serious. I don’t trust anything people say any more without measuring it or filming it. I think some kind of finger motion test would be a logical first step for anyone saying they can’t fret fast.

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#51

Tangent: I’ve been expanding my jazz chord vocabulary lately, and one of of the things that’s kicking my ass is accidental muting in the wrong places.

#52

This man has clearly had enough “I can play 300 bpm 16th notes clean”

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#53

It’s actually more of the opposite! People saying they can’t do something when they actually can, because they never had a simple way of testing that. Just because of the line of work we’re in, we have a lot more interaction with the “I can’t” crowd. And that’s fine, this is not coming from a place of annoyance. It’s coming from a place of wanting better information to be able to help people sooner and more easily.

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#54

I’d like to add, Paul Gilbert’s experience that his left hand was developed far before his right does not seem to be universal. Andy Wood in particular has mentioned on several of his streams (and I believe in one of his interviews here) that he has never had a problem with alternate picking, but when he picked up electric guitar he had a terrible time getting his legato working. While I don’t doubt that having good, in time, clean legato technique can help with alternate picking, it is certainly not a prerequisite.

Also, to the point I think @Troy was making, from a raw speed perspective, I suspect just about everyone can tap their fingers on a table faster than is necessary for almost any musical scenario. Just as a very non-scientific test, I set my metronome to 200 and tapped all 4 fingers in my left hand in a row to give me 16th notes. Ignoring each finger being in time individually and just focusing on hitting the beat each time, I could do it without even thinking about it. No trouble whatsoever. And I am by no means a great legato player. But since I am a guitar player, I put my wife to the test, who is not. With about 30 seconds to get the hang of timing it, she could easily do it too.

The way I think about it, that is one tap per finger per beat. Even way up at 300bpm sixteenths, that isn’t hard in the slightest. Anyone can do one tap per beat with any of their fingers at those speeds.

With all of that said and my little non-scientific tests complete, I’ve come to the same conclusion as Troy: the issue is in the accuracy and coordination, not in the speed.

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#55

I’d agree with this generally, it seems that the fretting hand has far less barriers to entry than picking does - in general.

Part of me just thinks that a lot of people are considering ‘fast’ as being ‘fast as I can possibly go’ where as I see it as ‘fast enough to rule out an inefficient movement’ - there is a big difference. For me, I can say with some confidence that 200bpm 16ths tremolo is as fast as I can go and 160bpm picked clean is the ‘fast enough’ speed. Although lacking in the higher speeds and complex patterns, my fretting hand can reach 190bpm without too much trouble. So that gives me a window of 160bpm and 190bpm that I can realistically expect to have success at playing a synchronized line, keeping efficient picking. If you gave me a new pattern to learn I would definitely try at 200bpm semi regularly to get a sense if what it would be like, but a good chunck of time would be spent in that success window, playing random speeds within it (not increments).

I do a similar thing with licks where my fretting hand synch struggles, I play 3 times on each note of the phrase in triplets (converted so that I’m still picking at the same speed as before). This slows the left down, whilst not dropping the pick speed/efficient movement and string changes with same pick direction. Once I get that down, I would then play it as usual - feels better.

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#56

Right. Maybe I accidentally mislead in the OP, not sure. But just to be clear, I’m not claiming that anything physiological is holding me back. I think my left hand works like most people’s. It’s the training-in of coordination that I’m struggling a bit to figure out.

That’s why I brought up legato, wondering if a lot of players achieve success with that first, and then bring a pretty decent left hand with them to the work of learning to alternate pick. I take your point about Andy Wood. But just anecdotally, from what I hear/read, I kinda think PG is more the norm (i.e. legato before alt picking).

Be that as it may, I’m sitting here doing left hand “exercises” - something I had hoped to get away from, but I can’t see my way around (here comes that phrase…) ‘massive reps’ to get the left going.

I feel like someone’s gonna say, ‘no, just play licks or songs, anything musical; scrap the exercises.’ If anyone thinks they know a better way forward towards good fretting dexterity, I’m all ears. But one way or the other, my feeling now is that I’ve got to reach 16ths at 130ish with one-string fretting patterns (viz. w/the left hand) before I’ve got a shot at making USX work.

#57

I would practice all at these things in parallel, in the same session. Bit of legato, bit of tremolo and bit of trying them together in licks - make it an eclectic learning experience. It will stop things getting stale and also, if you go hell for leather with legato it can be brutal for your fretting hand if you’re not careful. Also, technically you will only be utilising half of your legato with picking (no pull offs).

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#58

I agree with @PickingApprentice that learning to play the guitar in te beginning is about playing a little bit of everything to get the feel for how the connection between both hands and the instrument feels. The basic sync between the hands, I have a feeling, is something that happens naturally when playing a lot.

Legato is often what players naturally learn first since it mostly requires focus on just one of the hands. You can simply get away with doing faster slurs with the left hand without too much worry about the sync of the right hand not being perfect. So it can sound good and fast quite early in the development. Even for players that haven’t spent a lot of practise time on legato specifically.

So I think that the left hand fretting control is something that often happens more naturally by simply playing a lot and the picking science is something that requires more active work since there are so many more barriers to overcome. This might also be re reason why so many players think that their picking hand sucks in comparison to their fretting hand.

Other than this, I think that syncing up between the hands doesn’t have to happen at fast speeds only. There should be a point of slow things down to realise how things really IS syncing up. BUT it’s also important that you already have found a good picking motion that you know is capable of high speed. If you can make sure that you use the same motion when practising slower (which is seldom the case) then slower practise shouldn’t be a problem. It’s when practising sync at slow speeds with a completely different picking motion the practise is detrimental.

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#59

My left hand is always struggling. Certain positions are fine and certain licks are fine and others simply tense up. Certain licks can keep up with my fastest picking speed and certain combinations just plain hurt. I suspect I’ve learned wrong and am constantly trying to undo playing with pain or too much pressure. But when i see the tom quayle crew just effortlessly moving through the legato runs, It makes me question if maybe i have hand damage that’s keeping me back…

#60

Yeah, that sounds spot on to me. And I take the point about doing a little of everything technique-wise; seems that one of the benefits would be left hand development, keeping a person out of the lopsided situation I’m in now.

I tend to be a piece-meal thinker, but what you’re describing probably makes more sense. Gonna try to mold my practice routine to fit that. Good call.