Ok, thanks dude, you may well be right, it may actually be a mental thing because for years I have known I have trouble with this lick and others like it where you have to go back and forth. I have found that a problem in the past, when playing in the band if I had a lick I had messed up before I would get very anxious before playing it and over think it.
Well I’m not necessarily limiting the playing of this lick to thumb movement @Pepepicks66, but as thumb movement is something I am trying to develop then yes, any visual aid would be useful please.
By the way thanks everyone for the help and advice it’s really great and useful.
I hope I can put the good advice to use and get some good results on video to post after a while.
Well no! That’s the thing, you’re absolutely right in that is the trickiest part of the lick and what makes the lick deceptively tricky. There are two back to back instances where you have to cross over a string in order to hit the correct note, so you are constantly playing jump rope with a string on consecutive changes. This is where your general picking mechanic will influence how you play it. It really has nothing to do with finger thumb movements - that’s just a little added bonus you can throw in for that last little bit of picking speed on a single string.
Hopefully I can get something up for you in the next couple of days. I have an animal study I’m helping take down tonight so I may be wiped after work, but the gf is working all this weekend so I’ll have the time for myself.
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Hey thanks @Fossegrim, no rush no worries, thanks for the help.
Time for myself always seemed like the dream to me, until everything changed so that all my time is for myself lol. There never seems to be a good balance.
Most of my time is spent either worrying about health problems I have no control over or worrying about making my landlord happy. The other sliver is either spent asleep, or trying to figure out where exactly that wrong turn was taken.
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Probably the simplest version would be two strokes on D and one on G.
No fretting, just the picking hand, that gives the alternating, alternating picking. You could do this easily n mindlessly watching TV or something.
This kind of defeats the purpose. He’s trying to get better at strict alternate picking.
That is alternate picking. It’s as alternate as you can get.
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I got you, I misread and thought you meant just hammering on while watching tv.
I would try it with two fretted notes though just so you associate that coordination.
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Recorded it! you can see the additional swing with outside picking assisted by some finger extension I think.
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Cool cool.
I’ve gotta confess I’ve gotten a bit dejected and stopped working on my picking and playing fast this week. I’m sure a lot of my problems are left hand problems but I know my escapes are umm… faulty and I don’t know if I can ever fix them after playing like this for so long.
I’m listening to a lot of Pink Floyd and trying to convince myself I don’t even need a fast left hand or decent escapes to sound great. As soon as I start listening to Vai and EJ and JP again though I’ll be back in the room.
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I feel the same, I can play my own stuff fast but other peoples is really quite hard. It gets very frustrating when you just can’t nail someones playing. But then most people can’t.
I think guitar is a good excersice in trying to be happy with yourself and what you can do.
I’m happy just soloing over a slow backing track and attempting to play the melodys in my head. I’ve really nailed the sound thats there most the time, it’s just EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Forever.
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Haha that’s exactly what I’m hoping to achieve, I was thinking about recording a long abstract piece, so I have some thing to represent my madness filled mind of the past year when I picked up my guitar again.
It’s an ego thing I think, wanting to play other people’s amazing music to prove to yourself that you are good enough and more likely to prove to other people that you are an amazing player just like Vai or Satch, which is really a damaging and frustrating frame of mind. Unless you really are amazing and can learn and play anything quickly, but I’m certainly not in that category.
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I feel that. There were at least a couple times in my playing that I was considering ditching picking altogether and just doing legato stuff.
I’m sure you can. You just have to take many steps back (which might require a good amount of “pride swallowing” and discipline) and commit to never reverting to “bad habits”, even if that means you can’t play what you used to for a little while.
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Agreed there really no getting out of that part. The couple of steps back may feel pretty bad at first but sometimes are necessary. Not going back and correcting them is probably the biggest reason progress stalls.
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Thanks for the encouragement guys I did feel like I was making progress with the anchoring thing and I almost got some traction with thumb movement to help with escape motions.
However when I play my V the pinky anchoring on the body technique falls apart, as I move down the strings, obviously because the gap between the strings and the body is greater on the V than the Strat. I also find my trailing pinky brushing the strings as I move down to D and A strings causing noise which is no good. Anchoring on the bridge seems weird, seems like I am picking too high up but maybe I just need to get used to it.
My playing style is loose and sloppy, and… well I sort of don’t wanna lose that, but to get faster I have to tighten up. So I was thinking about using the metronome more. I haven’t seriously used the metronome for 30 years and maybe it will help me to become more accurate and iron out some of the bad habits I have with escaping and left hand movement and sync.
I personally would recommend economy picking. It’s much faster than alternate. I put in quite a bit of time practicing alternate, but it’s just to much work, and stresses my wrist to much.
Now I play fast runs with economy and also use alternate for slower stuff. It’s a nice blend. It really works for me.
You don’t need to tighten up much, just like how Marty Freidman is very loose yet can shred.
I’m sure you’ve already tried before, though I can see it really working for your current picking. It’s paid off for me way more than alternate.
I acually find alternate picking everything to be way to digital, it lacks character to me.
Just to be sure what exactly do you mean by Economy?
You mean Yngwie style or EJ style down sweep to change strings ?
Years ago i had a habit of doing the opposite upstroke sweeping to change strings going down from B to G for example but it never seemed “fast” to me, very smooth and nice but I could never speed it up properly.
It’s the same for the down sweep thing, which I have been working on recently, I can’t seem to make it work fast but that might be a left hand sync problem as well. My brain just isn’t used to doing it fast and the left hand doesn’t fret the next note in time with the sweep.