thank you so much again for helping. Between yesterday and today I have put several hours now but I just cant seem to find an angle or swivel my pick to where I dont feel any resistance. I know you said perpendicular to the path but even when it seems it is exactly that, I just have these “garage spikes”. I have also re-watched the trailing edge pick grip videos but still no progress. Ill send a video of what it looks like right now
Thanks for doing this!
Is that a fresh Tortex Jazz III? Right out of the bag, those have a really square edge on them. They don’t feel smooth until they start to wear. A regular red nylon Jazz III with the bevel will feel smoother.
But let’s step back a moment. My concern is that you’re doing the movement correctly in the first place. No sense in fussing over the details if the basic motion isn’t there.
Here’s an even simpler way to try this, with table tapping:
You start with the three finger formation, and place the arm and hand flat on the table. In the resting position, you can feel the three fingers touching the table, and the entire right side of the palm on the table. This will set the forearm at a 45 degree angle with the table top, i.e. supinated.
When you tap, the motion goes diagonally, from upper right to lower left (on the screen). It looks like a bird pecking at the table, on an angle. Adjust the speed slider on the video down to 25% to see the diagonal motion. You shouldn’t have to force it. This motion feels the easiest when going diagonal. It should not be going straight down at the table top.
When you do this, you really want to go for it, like you’re playing some kind of video game that involves hitting that spot on the table. It should feel fast and a little bit spasmodic. You can tense up the muscles in your forearm a little if it helps, but nothing above that should have tension. No upper arm, no shoulder, no motion from there at all.
The more force you put into this, the larger the motion will get. That is another thing you can experiment with. It will burn more fuel, but you should be able to do this motion fast and large, and also fast and small. Or anywhere in between. Some picking motions need to be fast and large at the same time. Cory Wong’s strumming motion is a good example of this, where he hits all six strings very quickly. It is similar to the motion in this test.
Give this a shot and see if you can get the spasmodic bird pecking thing happening!
So this is what I have so far. I couldnt get it without any upper arm and shoulder movement but it doesn’t feel too tense
Looks good! That’s around 220bpm if I line the taps up with a metronome. And even though you start to slow down you still keep it up for more than 10 bars.
Also, the motion looks much larger than your guitar picking motions which in this case I think is a good thing. It means you’re succeeding at doing something different. Does this experiment feel different than your last video clip on the guitar?
If you do this exact motion with a click at 180bpm, does it feel easier and can you do it for longer? If so, it’s working.
If you can translate this to the guitar you will have something new. It should look and feel pretty similar to this. You should see the same path and the same large-ish motion, and you should be able to focus on the taps to keep time at any speed you want. Try it with a red Jazz III and swivel the pick around in your grip to see if you can find a spot where the attack feels smooth.
still a work in progress trying to translate the motion over to guitar but I believe its looking better now that I know what the motion should feel like. Still working on finding the path of least resistance. At 180 I can do the hand motion (table test) for a very long time and I really don’t feel much tension! One thing I realized doing this was that I’m better able to isolate my wrist doing the DSX motion with my regular pick grip. I included a video of that as well.
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Nice one! You’ve got a solid dsx tremolo going now, in two forms! I’d suggest using this same motion (keep the video for reference) and apply it to phrases where the last note on a string is a downstroke before switching. You don’t need to train both motions, unless you really want to. I’d probably go with the second videos setup, but that’s just me.
Start with speed to be sure it’s the same motion and you can break bigger phrases down in chunks, maybe just covering two strings at a time. Whatever feels manageable.
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thanks! I have been working on this for a bit and I think Im getting it up to around 195 bpm. I cant tell exactly how many bpm but using the tap function on my metronome it seems to be fluctuating from 187-198bpm. The only thing I’m a little worried about at this point is the arm movement. Nothing feels too tense, and as Troy explains in the primer, I am sure the more I do it, the faster I can get it. This is an attempt I recorded just now
I wouldn’t worry too much if the arm is getting involved at very high speeds. You do see that happening with many players. It’s fast, smooth, not too much tension, so it passes the test!
I’d move on to applying this motion with phrases that match and getting the two hands working together.
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ok cool, I’ll get working on that. Thanks!
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@Troy hey Troy sorry to bother again but any chance you can recommend any skype teachers that are familiar with your work? Just dont want to be practicing the wrong thing and forming bad habits. I feel like I have just been doing that for too long
You may necessarily need anyone familiar with “our” work, per se. This idea of experimenting with motions and making sure they are working, I would like to think any good modern teacher would generally be on board with that. Personally I mainly know the people we have interviewed, like Teemu Mäntysaari and Martin Miller, who I think both still do teaching. But there are great people on here as well. Jake Estner is a great teacher, I don’t know if he still does online stuff. I’m probably forgetting tons of people!
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hey @Troy out of all the motions, elbow seems to give me the most speed. I tried avoiding it in the beginning only because I felt as if I was way too tense with it and would get fatigued easily. After spending this week focusing on the motion and revisiting the videos you on elbow players like Vinnie Moore I think I got something going. I think this video is around 210 bpm if I’m not mistaken. The only thing that gets me is when crossing strings on a downstroke (since this is a DBX motion), I still sometimes get caught swiping the next string. Sometimes I swipe, others I don’t. It really is 50/50. I’m wondering if that comes with time and if this is normal in the beginning with an unfamiliar motion.
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This looks and sounds awesome! Definitely your best result yet. I would also point out that you’re doing this for 40 seconds straight in this video, which is a test of fluidity in and of itself. If there’s something wrong with the motion, you will start to feel tension way before that. We get the “elbow feels tense” thing all the time, but great players do it and claim it feels very relaxed. If you’ve figured out a way to get it to feel easy then that’s a good start.
Also, elbow motion and wrist motion often occur together, probably because they can move in similar planes. Vinnie does lots of wrist stuff intermingled with his elbow motion and so does Bill Hall. We spent a lot of Bill’s interview talking about the interplay of these techniques. My guess is that choosing elbow as a default is just that — a starting point. Over time you learn to augment with other motions as the phrases require, and eventually they blend together to feel like “one” overall technique even though at the level of the motions there is mixing and matching.
You can check out the Brendon Small interview for his thoughts on what “easy” elbow motion feels like, and of course the Bill Hall interview as well where we talk a lot about it. In fact, if you feel you want a second look at this from someone who actually plays this way regularly, you could reach out to Bill for a consultation. I think he does teaching, not sure, but he’s a super nice dude so worth a shot.
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Finally something I can work with! lol. Thanks so much! Ill watch those interviews now and reach out to Bill Hall.
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Easy for me to say this after verification from Troy, but I browsed this thread and noticed your deleted comment, checked out what was there and clicked through your video and I thought “wow. that’s a good elbow tremolo. I wonder why he deleted this comment??”. Lol! Glad you got the new comment up with the video as well as Troy’s thumbs up.
Good luck on your future progress! No matter what happens next, you’ll know exactly what a fast, smooth picking motion feels like.
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haha I originally deleted thinking I could get a faster attempt but figured this was pretty good. Thanks a lot!!
Hey guys! Just a quick update on my picking. Wanted to know if I am on the right track here. Changing strings through a DSX motion still feels a bit foreign to me. Also, I think it looks a little better now but when I first introduced changing strings with DSX, it seemed like I would swipe through the next string sometimes. I’ve messed with positioning and more upward pickslant to eliminate that. I think now I may very slightly graze the next string from time to time. These videos aren’t clean playing by any means, but again, just wanted to see if anybody had any tips on areas I can improve. Thanks!!
I think the playing is pretty good. Sounds clean and synced to me.
Sometimes you may be a little ahead of the click. Like, your slow single notes to lock onto the click are on, but your scalar phrase is rushed and starts a little early. Syncing to a metronome is a separate skill. If right now your goal is to work on string changes and get them feeling good, it may be best to save the metronome for a later stage. You can keep it nearby to spot check tempo to make sure you are playing near your target speed. But trying to keep up with it may be causing you to play differently than if you were just focusing on the pattern.
I notice your picking angle changes a little on the high E
as compared to what you do on the other strings. It is like you are reaching down to the E via some supination. It is possible that could make your trajectory a little trapped and account for that feeling that you aren’t clearing the string.
Great work though!
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I just noticed the change of angle on the high E. Ill definitely try working on that later. Im guessing the rest will probably sound smoother as I continue getting more comfortable with the DSX and upward pickslant. Thanks so much for having a look!
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