I’ll preface with ive never gone to the extremes I’ve seen members here go to, I will when I get my magnet! For me if I can focus on the one and land every measure I give myself the benefit of the doubt. I’ve never done the slo mo recording software quantized review. One, I don’t have any real recording software and two, this isn’t a sport haha. But for me I honestly watched the CtC free video series on YouTube. The yngwie portion was totally eye opening as far as pick slant. That was an overnight “aha” moment. Then I joined masters in mechanics. Read all of that material, experimented with the things I was learning and scoured this forum for anything that could help with my issues that arose.
I’d say the six ultimate things I learnt that got me from 170bpm 16th feeling like light speed to 300bpm 16th in a little under a year (after over a decade of prior playing and six years of daily playing) were as follows.
-
Actually have a practice routine, break stuff down into etudes. (Something I had never done)
-
Actually focus on the right hand (something I had NEVER done)
-
Practice with a metronome (something I had never done)
-
Learn and Accept the fact that I’m an UWPS elbow motion USX no matter how much I want that gorgeous wrist motion to be my primary mechanic
-
Stick out my pinky finger and get fancy with it (I don’t remember which member mentioned this but it literally melted my tension away immediately for my mechanic)
-
When I get to the upper most level of my picking ability flex into the tension and accept it so I can relax everything else and kind of “vibrate” (bis tris elbow area)
There are so many more though. Im honestly just obsessed. My main priority in life every day after making sure my family is healthy and loved is to improve technically as a guitar player. It’s my passion and I’m obsessed. There’s no secret, I play the same patterns literally every day, when issues arise I go at it like an equation needing solving and when I reach a new level new problems arise and the process repeats itself. Two steps forward one step back. Ad infinitum. When I get bored or things get stagnant I write some new patterns or learn a new song. Today I spent two hours working on gallops. I got up to 240bpm 16th note gallops creating unique rhythmic patterns to the metronome. (I find it very hard to keep tension down with gallops these days… new problem to solve!) It was a BLAST. My wife doesn’t get it, my parents don’t get it, my coworkers don’t get it. But it’s what I love to do.
