World's Slowest Picker

Introduce Yourself
#1

I’m a career beginner with the guitar. I bought my guitar a little over 20 years ago and have been playing it on and off since then. I’m on one of my longer stretches right now, having practiced almost daily for the past year. However, an old frustration brought me to this site…slowness. I saw Troy’s YouTube video about starting at a fast speed and was hopeful that I might be able to glean something from this site.

I just did some testing with a metronome to give myself a gauge of where I’m at. I can currently pick individual 8th notes at 140 bpm before things start to fall off the rails. I honestly spend most of my time strumming chords, but I am similarly slow in that arena. I have had a veteran guitar player friend tell me that I am a lot of time and effort away from any reasonable amount of speed. I’m hoping that there’s some mechanical adjustment that I can make to help me get into a reasonable range of speed. I’m not even looking for a level of speed on par with the true masters. I would be quite happy to play 16th notes at the speed of an average pop or rock song.

I’ve started looking over the material and experimenting, but nothing has clicked yet. With that said, it’s still early (a few days in). Hopefully I will find some hidden gems in there that will help me get over the hump. I do think that I am a heavy user of string hopping after watching some of the early videos.

5 Likes
#2

Welcome, thanks for joining! Glad you found our site, and hope it’s helpful as you continue to experiment with the motions :slight_smile:

I’m guessing you can move your hand a LOT faster than that — sounds like you watched that “starting with speed” video (also in the wrist motion section of the Primer). Another thing to try would be what Troy calls the “table tap test” to gauge your raw speed.

Also a number of good discussions if you search on the forum, for example:

Ideally if you try the motions at much faster speeds, you’ll be able to get a better sense of the general feel when they’re working, even if it’s quite sloppy to start. Let us know how it goes!

#3

Thanks for signing up!

We hear variations of this kind of statement all the time: “fall apart”. What does it mean? Fast and sloppy is good. It is the first step. So if you by fall off the rails you’re referring to sloppiness, then you might be right on track.

The first and most important step is to find any motion you can do quickly. As Brendan says, if you can do any rapid arm or hand movement whatsoever during everyday activities, then 140bpm eighth notes is probably way below your actual picking technique capabilities.

3 Likes
#4

Thanks all, for your feedback. I tried the table tap test, and can get to about 250bpm before I have problems staying on beat. I’ll continue to try out the different motions and see if any of them can be done at a faster speed. I’m starting out just with playing a single string/note as fast as I can to see if anything sticks.

#5

thanks for that, Troy. I’m feeling sloppy, too. When I try using a metronome to figure out how fast I can go accurately, it’s usually much slower than my right hand can actually pick.

do you advise continuing to practice fast passages sloppily as close to tempo as we can?

#6

250 is craaaazy fast. You can tap 8th notes at 250? What motion are you using for that?

Either way, that’s great. Because if you can do any motion at that speed, then short of an injury you’re not telling us about, it’s unlikely that some kind of inherent physical speed limitation is an issue here. Just find a motion that you can do fast on a guitar. That’s the first step. Doesn’t matter what it is. Find one that’s easy and go from there.

#7

No that’s just a test to make sure you can do a fast motion. It sounds like you already passed that test. It’s like standing up on the surf board. If you can’t do at least that, then there’s nothing to “work on”.

Once you have your efficient motion, you can start to use it to work on phrases at lots of different speeds to make it accurate. To do that, you need to know what kind of motion it is. Is it downstroke escape? Upstroke escape? Because that determines what type of phrases you can or can’t play with it. Once you know that, you always want to use your efficient motion, not a bouncy / inefficient one. That’s why if you try to go super robot slow, it’s going to be hard to tell if you’re really doing the efficient thing or some other thing.

Again, the word “practice” is super vague. “Sloppy” is super vague. Hand synchronization? Hitting wrong strings? Learning to do a new picking motion the very first time (i.e. standing up on the surf board) is one type of challenge. It can only be done medium fast or better. Learning to be accurate with that motion is a different type of challenge. You can do it at different speeds but not robot slow. Learning a new piece with a picking motion that you’re already good at is yet a different challenge. It too can be done at different speeds depending on what you’re trying to do, i.e. memorize the fingerings, or learn a picking pattern you’ve never done before, and so on.

Just try to be clear in your mind what you mean by “practice” and “sloppy” because the terms alone don’t really tell you much about what problems you’re trying to solve.

3 Likes
#8

This probably seems elementary to a lot of folks who’ve achieved high levels of proficiency with the instrument but realizing there’s more than just the “Did I get it right?” outcomes when it comes to practice is a HUGE piece of the puzzle.

Being able to take a known efficient and useful form of picking and apply it to a piece or phrase knowing that it fully or is at least partly compatible and why that’s the case… that seems like it should be scrolling on a high visibility chiron on every page once you log into the website!

1 Like
#9

really helpful.

I quickly determined that I have been UPS/DSXing forever. And that I’m really not good at DPS/USX.

good to know that you recommend picking a motion / orientation and sticking with it.

right now, it seems like I can take most any phrase that I played DPS and simply flip it - start on a the opposite direction first stroke and go from there.

1 Like
#10

I think I see what you mean here. I specifically think I have trouble with hand sync the faster I get. Weirdly, since I’ve been devouring content here, I’m finding I can actually pick faster than I can fret notes when it had been the other way for years!

What helps with hand sync?

thank you for replying, Troy!

#11

I developed hand synchronization using the little repeating Yngwie-style single string phrases because the first pickstroke is always the same. I understand that’s not super exciting musically, and if anyone has better ideas I’m open. The basic concept with hand sync is you choose a “landmark” note in a pattern which is always the same pickstroke and focus on only that, ignoring the others. It’s usually the first note, and it’s usually a downstroke although it doesn’t have to be. If that note is locked, then the in between notes are locked. Eventually the whole pattern becomes a recording that plays on its own.

In slow motion I appear to accent those notes, and the pickstrokes are actually bigger. Although you can’t always hear it. But that must be how I memorized the chunk / recording.

2 Likes
#12

After the latest response regarding the table tap test, I went back and analyzed it further. I am using an up and down motion with my palm facing down. My fastest speed comes with the use of the elbow. If I try to isolate the motion to the wrist, I max out at around 190.

1 Like
#13

Then try some elbow picking! The Brendon Small “riffs” interview has some nice thoughts on that. He makes it look so easy, like you watch him do that simple motion with his arm and you think, I gotta be able to do that. I haven’t had a lot of time to sit down with that, but it’s on my list.

190bpm is still pretty fast. Keep in mind I don’t really go much faster than that myself. I just keep adding more motions I can do at those speeds over time.

Anything that’s working is worth experimenting with to see if it can be useful.

1 Like
#14

ah yes! I remember watching the bit about chunking. really helpful!!!

unnecessary other stuff I feel like typing more for myself than anyone ----->

I’ve always thought of myself as limited when it comes to speed. Much of this site has been really validating! It’s given me some vocabulary (DPS and UPS) and made me aware that many of my habits are actually GREAT for speed — I unwittingly adopted UPSing as a by-product of simply trying to keep the strings from ringing out with my right thumb as I played.

My goal isn’t to be Vai fast - I just want to write / play cool stuff cleanly and accurately and joining this site has been the best thing I’ve done for technique in the last decade and possibly ever. I wish I’d understood the mechanics I’ve been employing all this time from the outset!

Thanks, Troy!

1 Like