What motions are going on here?

Technique Critique
#1

Hi. I’m mostly wondering what motions are going on here.
I can’t really tell, regardless of having seen the videos on how to tell, heh.

I’ve included 3 different licks in this video.

  1. I’ve been playing around with this for about a month. This feels the easiest by far, and it feels like stuff is going well, and that I can achive greater speeds with time with this. Can reach around 150 bpm with triplets.

  2. This one has been a bane of my alternate picking for 9 years. It’s from a Dethklok solo, (Brendons picking is sexy.) But it doesn’t really feel like I’m doing it right, can’t put my finger on what is wrong, even after all these years. Somewhere around 130 bpm triplets max speed on this one.

  3. This one I’ve now spent 12 months on, practiced this about 320 days, but feels awkward still, gets awkward after it starts going reverse. A max speed of ~130-140 bpm 16th notes.

Ignore the metronome, I needed some noise to distract myself from the fact that I was filming.
So, am I doing things right? Is any of these motions good for high speed sexy sounds? Are they all the same? I’ve tried to see for myself, but an error occours in the mind, that says “hey, play the smoke on the water intro instead, that’s fun.” and so, here we are. :slight_smile:
Thanks for your time.

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#2

Hi. Can you post a video of your fastest tremolo? This motion doesn’t look efficient for me, and when you try to play along with the metronome, your speed is much slower than the target, it’s off the beat constantly.

#3

Thanks for your reply :blush:

Here is a video of a tremolo.

No, like I said, I just put on the metronome as noise to distract me from the nervousness of filming. (This is probably not a ideal approach, but seemed to do the trick for the take.)

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#4

Does that motion look more efficient? :upside_down_face:

#5

Definitely. Can you give a try playing cascading sixes, changing strings only after a downstrokes? Something like:

D----------------------------10-12-14-10-12-14- 
A----------10-12-14-10-12-14------------------- etc...
E-10-12-14-------------------------------------
#6

Looks like the first riff has a very awkward string change mechanic, I hesitate to call it “string hopping” but that’s kinda what it looks like compared to the other two riffs.

The motions in the other two look good, I think the last riff is the best to cycle over and over and speed up to see where things start to break down (the second riff seems to be a longer pattern that doesn’t loop easily from what I can tell). Something that helps me with that one is to “start” the riff on either side of the pattern, so either 2 notes per string going to 3, or vice versa.

Also, I’d recommend to not turn on the metronome unless you’re really focusing on playing in time. I think it does way more harm than good to play it in the background (even if it’s for recording anxiety) and ignoring it.

Edit: if you want to focus on string changes, practice the Gilbert variant of the last riff (1 note per string to 3 notes per string and vice versa).

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#7

Like this?

#8

Yes, but you can use the sequence to play the notes of a 3nps scale. For simplicity and to practice the picking, you can stick to the 10-12-14 fingering on all strings.

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#9

Thanks for your reply. :slight_smile:

No, the metronome was kind of a spurr of the moment thing, I felt the anxiety come on, and then reacted, this is not something I normally do. :slight_smile:

Well, it’s good to know some movements are looking good at least :slight_smile:

Yeah, the second riff is from a taken out of a solo, so and it does not easily loop, parts of it can be made to loop though.

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