When your hands act like they know better than you ?!

Playing Technique
#1

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

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#2

@milehighshred has a free metronome book that might give you some ideas about how to approach your conundrum.

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#3

Thanks. I’ve been reading that recently. Maybe it’s that I’m jumping up speeds too quickly, I’ve been doing it in 5bpm increments but might need to go down to 2 or 1 maybe when it gets into the challenging territory !

#4

Yes, my guess is falling back a bit and crawling back up by 1bpm, but he will definitely know.

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#5

I would need to see what it is you’re working on. Sometimes people try too much stuff at once. They try too many notes per click. Perhaps the issue is you need to work on something that focuses solely on what’s giving you trouble. If your goal is solid alternate picking, and eliminating accidental economy picking, then playing things that allow you to focus on your picking with very little fret hand movement can help a lot with this stuff. If you end up trying to think about too many things at once, you’ll be in trouble!

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#6

Hey thanks for replying!

Yeah… this was interesting. I said 'ok I’ll record it at a tempo that’s comfortable, 130 bpm should be fine (goal tempo is 160, 8th note triplets)… and I quickly found that it wasn’t clean at that tempo so I went back to 120, and yeah that’s still not super clean when I put a microscope on it like this.

So I guess I need to put in more work at even slower tempos and really lock in the feel of it.

I’ve uploaded a clip of me playing it at 120 in any case, to see if my mechanics make sense for it. It’s weird piece, it wasn’t written for guitar (piano originally) but it’s a piece from a game I played for hours (Dark Souls III) trying to defeat the final boss so it’s etched on my brain and I’d love to be able to play it .

Here’s my tab for it.
Screen Shot 23-12-2024 at 14.39|394x500

In the video I also included a couple of simpler outside picking things I’ve been woodshedding to try to help, a lot easier on the left hand for sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCb6x1FOwTU

Interested to hear what you guys think, is my approach solid and I just need to be slow and diligent with the metronome practice or is there something else I should consider ?

#7

First thing I notice is your rhythm is slightly off. If you can’t keep the rhythm, it’s already game over.

I would break this down one bar at a time, and work them up each on their own. Play the first bar, and end on the first note of the second bar. This will help with transitioning into the next part, and makes it much easier to keep the timing solid VS ending just before the new beat.

Start at 60, just like the eBook says, and work it up in 5 BPM increments OR LESS. I like going up in 1 BPM increments when I’m reaching my limits to make it easier to get just a tiny bit faster.

After you get each individual part PAST the goal tempo (10 or 20 bpm faster than needed is good), then start doing two bars at a time. Add in small pieces until you finally have the whole thing.

I’ve got a few videos on my Patreon that goes over how to break things down in order to build them up to speed. You can check those out for free for one week, plus all the other lessons that are up.

Here’s a link to the different lessons on this subject: https://www.patreon.com/collection/224369?view=expanded

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#8

Hey that’s really helpful, many thanks. Will check out the patreon for sure, just signed up for it now.

Cheers,
Brian

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#9

Awesome! Thank you :slight_smile:
When I have the time to start making new lessons I can do one on this riff you have in question if you still need any help.

#10

Hey thanks, that would be really cool to see how you’d approach it.

I’ll attach the GuitarPro file here if it helps.

Cheers,
Brian
SKG_Riff_BrianHorgan.gp (13.8 KB)

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#11

Kinda off topic to your question but good to see some Dark Souls fans here :grin:

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#12

Ha, cool! I think the Venn diagram of people who like to play complicated music and challenging games is pretty healthy. I know Dean Lamb from Archspire is a souls player for sure :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Brian

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