I feel this happens me often enough that I can’t be unique in this and I’m curious what thoughts others have on it.
Typical scenario for me : I’m working on something with complex picking, trying to do it a specific way (pure alternate picking with swiping for example) and when I’m playing it to a click it follows my plan up to a certain tempo, then I go a little bit faster, and it’s like my right hand rebels and says ‘no dude, I got this, I’m going to sneak in some economy picking in a few places to make this easier at this tempo, why you working so hard anyway ?!’
I’m pretty sure I did this completely without awareness in the past, but these days I am aware I’m doing it… but I still do it!
So I’m left in a conundrum - do I :
A - slow down again, go back to ‘the plan’ and play it the way I think I should play it and hope that eventually get it to the tempo I want it to get to (seems a long way off some days!)
B - trust that my ‘body intelligence’ knows better what to do and just let it do what feels natural.
The issue with B is that the playing doesn’t sound as metronomically clean as my ‘slow and specific’ method or I wouldn’t even question it… but I wonder if I persisted with it could I eventually clean it up to where it does.
I know many great players don’t even have a good handle consciously what their mechanics are doing, they just let the music dictate the mechanics that work for them, whereas others are more analytical.
I know in my own playing I find I can pick up the 'Yngwie style ’ DWPS/economy way of picking much more easily than say the Steve Morse stuff but I’d like to have a bit of both as I like the rhythmic precision of the strict alt stuff… But often my body just doesn’t seem to want to cooperate! So I’m left wondering should I just follow the path of least resistance or keep pushing and hope I can get it!
It’s a puzzler, and often quite frustrating! Any thoughts on this appreciated!
Cheers,
Brian