Your Speed Limit

Playing Technique
#1

There exist several different motion mechanics for alternate picking, all of which can be very effective and all of which have been used by guitarists with elite level picking speed. For the purposes of this post I’ll use the wrist motion mechanic as an example to illustrate my point.

Consider wrist deviation for example. It describes moving the wrist back and forth in a certain way. Any healthy person can move his wrist back and forth with wrist deviation ( or wrist flexion and extension if you prefer to use that as an example), but there is a limit to the speed he will be able to reach at which point, no greater speed will be possible. Sufficient practice of the right kind will result in a guitarist being able to move his wrist back and forth faster than when he first started practicing. If you were to take a hundred beginner guitarists who all used the same wrist motion mechanic, and they all practiced in an efficient way for a sufficient amount of time they would all improve in speed until they reach a point at which it would become impossible for them to generate any additional picking speed using that motion mechanic. Why is it then, one might ask, are some of them able to generate so much more picking speed than others if they all practiced in a highly efficient manner for a sufficient amount of time?

The answer is they all had a certain genetic potential for the amount of speed with which they were able to move their wrists back and forth. Along the 100 guitarists in that group you would find that their maximum potential picking speed would lie along a continuum that would range from fairly slow to very fast. You could train 100 men to be sprinters and again, with a sufficient amount of practice of the right kind, they would all reach a speed at which they would find further progress to be impossible, i.e. their genetic potential would have been reached.

The only way to find out what your genetic potential is, is to use one of the accepted motion mechanics for high speed picking and then practice your picking technique in an efficient manner for long enough until you are unable to develop any additional speed. Your “speed limit” might be 16th notes at 140 beats a minute or it might be 16th notes at 240 beats a minute. What the cause is for there to be such a wide range in top speeds from one end of the continuum to the other could probably be best explained by a competent exercise physiologist or perhaps a neurologist. Basically, it is at least partially dictated by the top speed at which neurological impulses are sent and able to travel along your central nervous system and also by the ability the muscles in your hands, wrists, and forearms to carry out these orders sent out by the brain when they receive the neurological impulses sent. No matter how fast your central nervous system is able to send commands to your muscles in the form of neurological impulses, your muscles still have to have the ability to carry out these commands.

Just as people’s central nervous systems vary with the speed at which they are able to send impulses to their muscles, their muscles also vary with regard to how fast they are able to contract and relax. That’s all a voluntary muscle can do: contract and relax. They create muscular force. That’s what they’re for and that’s all they’re designed to do, Different people will vary in relation to the number of muscle fibers they have within a particular voluntary muscle, the types of muscle fibers present in those muscles, and the ability of those muscles to grow in size and strength which is what affects the speed at which they can, in this instance, move your guitar pick.

When you have reached your genetic potential regarding the development in your ability to move a guitar pick back and forth, you will have reached a level of speed at which you cannot develop further picking speed. That may end up being dictated by having reached your central nervous system’s limit in it’s ability to increase the speed at which it can send neurological impulses to the muscles responsible for moving your pick back and forth. It may be that while your neurological limits have not been reached, the muscles which are responsible for you being able to move your pick rapidly have been developed as far as your genetics will allow. I doubt you’ll ever be able to find someone who can verify which of those factors resulted in further progress in picking speed for you to be impossible and it probably shouldn’t matter to you. Whatever the cause may be, you’ve then reached your limit for developing greater picking speed.

#2

One remark : for back and forth motion it’s not really ‘speed’ but instead frequency that is involved. I’ve read an interesting post from @Troy about that.

#3

Was that honestly the main thing you got out of reading that? I’m a little skeptical considering it wasn’t meant to even be a significant part of it (choosing the word “speed” instead of something else) at all, but in case I didn’t make that part of it clear, I’ll try to clear up any possible misunderstanding of that aspect of the post.

The word frequency has more than one definition but since you’re obviously not talking about the frequency of a vibration, I’ll address your concern with speed vs. frequency with the definition of frequency you’re using being “the rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular period of time or in a given sample.”

I chose to word it this way: “The answer is they all had a certain genetic potential for the amount of speed with which they were able to move their wrists back and forth.” If it makes it more clear to you, I have no problem with typing it this way: “The answer is they all had a certain genetic potential for the frequency with which they were able to move their wrists back and forth.” I could also have typed: “…move their picks back and forth.” I wanted to emphasize the problem with progressing further was that they reached a point where their muscles weren’t capable of moving the pick back and forth at a greater rate of speed." That uses both rate and speed in the same sentence.

As I type this it really seems that you’re just trying to bust my balls and not genuinely confused about what the word “speed” meant in that context but if your reply was genuine in nature and not just an attempt to make things difficult for me just for the sake of it, then I apologize for thinking that.

#4

Sorry, I didn’t meant to be sarcastic. I do believe the precision frequency vs speed is important in the context of the discussion you started. Because the speed of motion (say: you move your arm as fast as possible) is not what brings you ‘speed’ in the sense of bpm wrt to alternate pickstroke. It really is a frequency issue (as well as a drag issue or lack thereof, but that’s another topic which has more to do with the quality of motion, and the material, shapes and angle of the devices involved, especially the pick)

#5

I didn’t necessarily think you were being sarcastic; it seemed you were playing a game of semantics. Now I see you’re not intentionally playing a game of semantics and I appreciate that. Where we disagree Is I don’t think using the word “frequency” instead of the word speed in this context is even slightly important. Frequency is "the rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular period of time or in a given sample.” Frequency and speed in this context are tied together. By increasing the speed at which one moves his wrist back and forth, and making sure no other variables are changed besides that one, he increases the frequency at which he is picking notes. He may increase is from playing 16th notes at 100 bpm to 150 bpm. I’d describe that as a 50% increase in his picking speed. If you want to say (according to your most recent reply) that it’s a 50% increase in frequency that’s your business but it’s not something I would do.

I’m curious about something. By using the word “speed” instead of “frequency” did that make the post confusing to you or make the point which I was getting across unclear to you? After I replied to your initial response and attempted to clear up any misunderstandings by writing a variation of what I initially wrote in which I used the word “frequency” did that actually get my point across to you better or in hindsight do you see that the way I initially worded it explained the concept to you just as clearly?

#6

I doesn’t confuses me. But when you write :

that is (to me) a confusion of speed (or strength) vs frequency.

#7

OK, I’ll explain. A muscle exerting force against a certain amount of resistance will have a maximum speed at which it can perform the task. For example, suppose you take a guy who has never trained before and you see how much he can bench press. You find out his max is 100 pounds. So with 100 pounds on that barbell, he can perform 1 repetition but very slowly. It will probably take him about 3 seconds to do it. Then you rest him a few minutes and decrease the weight to 50 pounds. It’s only 50% of the maximum weight he can bench press so he can slam that barbell right up there in about half a second. Then you train him for a few months.

After a few months of training his maximum bench press is now 200 pounds. It takes him about 3 seconds to just barely bench press that 200 pound barbell. That’s the same amount of time it used to take him to bench press 100 pounds. So you rest him a few minutes and decrease the weight to 100 pounds. That’s 50% of his new max. How fast do you think he’ll be able to bench press 100 pounds after 10 minutes of rest? It will take him about half a second and we can predict that because we’ve already established that he can bench press half of his max in about half a second! As strength increases, speed increases!

I posted “the ability of those muscles to grow in size and strength which is what affects the speed at which they can, in this instance, move your guitar pick.” You replied “that is (to me) a confusion of speed (or strength) vs frequency.”

You want to be able to alternate pick notes at a higher frequency than you can now? You accomplish that through a sufficient amount of practice of the proper type. One of the results of that practice will be that the muscles which enable you to move your pick with the wrist or whatever motion mechanic you’ve been practicing will now be stronger. We’ve established that as muscular strength increases, the speed at which they are able to exert force against a certain amount of resistance increases! So if you’d like to use the word frequency, you can say that (as long as all other variables, such as resistance, are kept the same) stronger muscles will enable you to alternate pick notes at a greater frequency than you could before. Whereas before the frequency (rate) at which you could pick was 16th notes at 100 bpm, now the frequency at which you can pick is 16th notes at 150 bpm!

Just don’t forget the context. An increase in strength increases speed when all other variables are kept the same. I’m not a neurologist or an exercise physiologist so I can’t tell you how much improvements in the speed at which your central nervous system can transmit the signals originally sent from your brain to the muscles responsible for enabling you to move the pick with your particular motion mechanic will account for your increased speed after several months or several years of practicing. That will be responsible for a certain amount of your improved picking speed, increased muscular strength will account for a certain percentage, and improvements in the efficiency of your technique will account for the rest. One thing more efficient technique will accomplish is decrease the amount of resistance against the pick. Decreasing resistance allows you to move faster (all other variables remaining the same). That feeling of the pick being “stuck” in the strings when you’re a beginner is resistance against the pick! As you improve your technique the pick stops feeling “stuck” because you’ve learned how to articulate a note while minimizing the amount of friction the strings cause. Less friction from the strings results in less resistance against the pick and therefore being able to pick faster than before.

#8

But I think here (in picking) what we want to increase is not necessarily the force with which we push the pick up or down, but the ability to alternate frequently between two muscle groups that generate movements in opposite directions.

Anyway, whatever the details it may be true that different people may have different ceilings in the specific athletic ability required for picking.

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#9

There is no question that different people have different limits for how fast they can become at alternate picking . I wrote the opening post for some people who may be wondering why it is that they have reached a speed limit short of having matched what perhaps their favorite guitarist has accomplished despite putting in the requisite number of hours of the necessary type of practice. If people all had the same genetic potential for activities which involve voluntary muscular force, Olympic levels of speed for sprinters, swimmers, cyclists, etc would be achievable by any healthy person.

If you have any doubt that different levels of muscular force are required for different tempos, and that as we increase the tempo of a particular phrase or lick we are increasing the level of force we apply, then how else would you suggest we vary the speed of our playing? When we set a metronome at a particular setting, in order to match that tempo we apply the exact level of force necessary so that our picks move at the speed necessary to play a particular sequence of notes at that tempo.

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#10

I know I am being a bit pedantic sorry :sweat_smile:

I mean that what we want to do is rapidly invert the direction of the applied force on the pick, yet we may not have to push very hard in either direction.

Just as a crazy example: I may be able to push the equivalent of 50kg both with the upstroke and with the downstroke, but if it takes me one second to invert the direction of that force, I still won’t pick fast! Conversely I may be able to exert a push equivalent to 50g with the pick, yet if I could swap between “upstroke and downstroke muscles” 20 times per second, I would pick uber fast (spoiler: I can’t :slight_smile: )

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#11

No problem; I enjoy the discussion. You’re right about the the turnaround between one direction and the other mattering. You don’t want to waste time changing directions but once you’re going in the direction you want to go, the faster the pick is traveling, the sooner the pick will get there. One’s importance doesn’t negate the importance of the other. They’re both important.

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#12

@Acecrusher

I doubt this too. A beginner can do a relatively fast downstroke or upstroke alone, the challenge is in controlling that strength and alternating the upstroke and downstroke quickly. It would be like saying that you would need strong legs if you wanted to train to walk as fast as possible, and that by “fast” you would mean “steps/minute”. That would be very different that training for sprinting, where you need to strong legs to cover more distance per stride.

#13

That’s a fairly vague response. Do you doubt the central concept that we each have certain, but differing genetic potentials for developing alternate picking speed and once one has reached his the limit imposed by his unique genetic potential, no further increases in his alternate picking speed are possible?

Based on your post I’m not sure that you’ve really grabbed ahold of that concept yet. If you have though and you don’t agree that these limitations are specifically based in our neuromuscular systems, that’s fine; it’s of lesser importance to us as guitarists. Still, if you find it interesting at all you might want to take a look at this portion of the original post which you might have initially overlooked, since I think it gets to the gist of that idea pretty succinctly and I’m not sure what there is about it that you may doubt:

What the cause is for there to be such a wide range in top speeds from one end of the continuum to the other could probably be best explained by a competent exercise physiologist or perhaps a neurologist. Basically, it is at least partially dictated by the top speed at which neurological impulses are sent and able to travel along your central nervous system and also by the ability the muscles in your hands, wrists, and forearms to carry out these orders sent out by the brain when they receive the neurological impulses sent.

#14

I would agree that there is a limit to how fast one can alternate pick and that genetic factors may play a role in interindividual variability. I think though that “strength” is just a minor component the alternate picking motion.

Think about this: to start from a dead stop, you need to generate force to accelerate your hand, and then you need to counteract that force to stop the pick before doing the opposite stroke. If you muscles were to generate too much force, you wouldn’t be able to stop the pick as quickly for the next stroke. This is why I think that alternate picking is all about coordination.

#15

What @tommo said (and again) it’s a frequency issue. If analogy is to be made this topic has more to do with bird/insect wingbeat frequency than weightlifting.

How can you be so sure that the limiting factor(s) are genetic ? It surely is if you compare different species (again: see wingbeat frequency, not all birds or insect species are equal). But talking about human beings asked for that specific task of alternating pickstroke, do you have any proof that genetic is the differentiating factor between individual ?

#16

There is no specific study on guitar players that proves this, if you’re asking for that level of proof but if the level to which a guitarist can develop his alternate picking speed isn’t limited by genetic potential it would be the first field of highly skilled physical ability discovered so far that isn’t. Alternate picking would be the first one discovered where if you just practice correctly for long enough you can become just as good at it as anyone else, even those few at a world class level. To believe that might be the case requires a level of naivete that I certainly don’t have.

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#17

Call me naive if you want. Fair enough. What I find naive myself, is to think you can compare back and forth motion frequency to weighlifting and muscle building.

I beg to differ and think that this mechanical topic is more complex than it seems in the first place and involves a series of factor (some of them could well be genetic, but who knows what ? )

What I think is that there’s much more to it actually. Factors can be broken down into 3 categories (maybe more, I don’t know) : quality of motion, drag, and strain.

Take ‘quality of motion’ for example. What can you say about this ? Is there any study that tells which specific motion has the best efficiency to reach maximum frequency of alternate pickstroke ? And if so: is there any hint that genetic is necessarily involved ? What about the possibility of making your muscles work asynchronously, in a sense that the change of direction (backward motion) is anticipated and overlaps the forward motion ? Is that possible for humans, ? For which muscle(s) ? Can this be trained ? Is this genetic ? … well, I don’t know (but I know, I’m naive …), and I doubt you know.

And even before that, what about strain ? (which from a practical standpoint of playng the guitar is probably the most important here). What about the faculty of some individuals to minimize strain for a given motion ? Is it trained ? Genetic ? Are other factors involved ?

#18

I don’t think the question is wether or not there is a limit and that genetics influence it, IMO it’s obvious that it IS a factor. The question really should be: how important are genetics in regards to speed limit. If we train 100 guitar players to there genetic potential, how large will be the deviation from the average. However unless we were able to train a group of guitar players to their absolute limit we can’t know that. We’d also need to have them use the same technique otherwise we wouldn’t know if differences in speed would be due to different technique or not.

My guess would be that genetics would make a difference but it is a smalle one.

In most sports where strength is a factor, muscle mass, fiber types distribution, anthropometry do make a significant difference. Nervous system is also a huge factor for strenght/explosiveness.

Now for picking speed, muscle mass IMO is irrelevant. Anthropometry, well it’s really only the hand an forearm involved. Would it really make a difference? One could adapt his pick grip, size, thickness, string gauge, string spacing, and guitar body to his anthropometry.

The only 2 things I can see that could limit someone could be maybe wrist joint anatomy. The most important thing obviously is the nervous system. We do know that explosiveness in sports is limited by nervous systems and that genes influence it. We would need to know if it is the same for picking speed.

The last factor which is muscle fiber distribution, I would be surprised that a fast twitch dominant individual would pick faster. a slow twitch dominant would probably be better at building stamina.

#19

I stated in my OP that we all have a certain genetic potential for alternate picking. It is not a question. Regarding how important genetics are to someone’s development of alternate picking speed. that would depend upon where his genetic potential lies along the continuum I mentioned here:

“The answer is they all had a certain genetic potential for the amount of speed with which they were able to move their wrists back and forth. Along the 100 guitarists in that group you would find that their maximum potential picking speed would lie along a continuum that would range from fairly slow to very fast.”

If one happens to be near the end of the continuum where those of the slowest alternate pickers are, genetics would play a relatively large role; perhaps a huge role in the development of his alternate picking speed. If one happens to lie near the opposite end of the continuum, the role of genetics in that player’s development would be far less significant. That player’s main limiting factor will lie in his level of motivation.

Motivation is something that could make it difficult conduct an accurate study of this type. If the players in the study aren’t equally motivated to put forth the requisite effort, the results of the study wouldn’t be as accurate as we’d like. I suspect that for players who are among the slow end of the continuum we’d see more lack of motivation, maybe not at the beginning, but as time goes on and they see considerably less than the results they’d hoped for while they see some of the others making tremendous progress, their motivation could very well drop.

Notice I had all the guitarists use a wrist motion mechanic, rather than giving them a choice among that, forearm alternation, elbow movement, etc. That’s precisely for the reason you brought up: we wouldn’t want differences in speed to be a result of their motion mechanic. It might be interesting, and certainly more expensive, to simultaneously conduct a second study in which elbow motion is the primary motion mechanic.

I appreciate that you think that the nervous system or CNS, is the most important limiting genetic factor. That’s what I think as well. I wrote: “No matter how fast your central nervous system is able to send commands to your muscles in the form of neurological impulses, your muscles still have to have the ability to carry out these commands.”

Of course it logically follows that muscles can’t carry out commands which they haven’t yet received.

You brought up muscle fiber distribution which i did not explain in detail, although I touched upon that general subject when stating “Different people will vary in relation to the number of muscle fibers they have within a particular voluntary muscle, the types of muscle fibers present in those muscles…”

While I didn’t bring it up in detail, I would not be surprised if a fast twitch dominant individual would pick faster. We see this all the time in athletic contests which require great acceleration and speed over a short period of time (anaerobic exercise). I didn’t bring up muscle fiber distribution because I don’t think it would turn out to be a big factor in potential alternate picking speed and I thought it’s something beyond the scope of detail I should include. I did want people to finish reading the post! Had I gone into that I’m not so sure too many would have. I’m not sure too many people read it all the way through as it is. For instance one of the replies criticized me for comparing alternate picking too much to “weightlifting and muscle building.” Did you see anywhere in my OP where I even mentioned weightlifting? I used sprinters as an example right here:

For those who may not have any background in what we’re discussing here, sprinting, which was just mentioned, is a highly trained ability in which having a majority of fast twitch muscle fibers makes a great deal of difference in what one’s ultimate genetic potential will be. The longest sprint is the 400 meter dash. You may ask why is there no “one mile dash”? The answer is because it’s physically impossible to sprint, to run at that level of speed, for that long! You can run extremely fast or for an extremely long time. You can’t run extremely fast for a extremely long time. The human body wasn’t made to do it.

People who are runners and who have predominantly slow twitch muscle fibers tend to do better in endurance type runs rather than sprints. I’m contrasting high-intensity (anaerobic) exercise with low intensity (aerobic exercise). Well, guitar playing uses such a relatively small amount of the musculature that it never gets to the point that becomes anaerobic (without air). Show me a guitarist who is bent over and gasping for air after the end of a fast guitar solo and I’ll show you someone in dire need of a trip to the emergency room!

So, seeing as how fast twitch muscles are of great benefit in anaerobic activity but guitar playing never becomes an anaerobic activity, I honestly can’t say with any certainty that having a predominance of fast twitch muscle fiber in one’s muscle fiber distribution would help. It’s possible it might help and it would be interesting to know for sure, but I doubt scientists will be getting around to that subject anytime soon. There are plenty of scientists out there, and they do plenty of studies, but keep in mind just as their are good guitarists and bad guitarists, good doctors and bad doctors, there are good scientists and bad scientists. There are good studies and bad studies. Approach any study you may read with that in mind and don’t be afraid to question the results of scientific studies. At least make sure the study was even done! I’m not exaggerating.

#20

You should have brought that up to begin with when you first replied to my OP or article if you want to call it that. If you had I didn’t compare it to weightlifting. I did make a brief reference to sprinters when I stated that if you made a study of 100 sprinters and charted their genetic potential on a graph you’d see their various speeds marked along a continuum that would range from very slow (relatively speaking ) to very fast, just as you’d see guitar players from such a study having potential alternate picking speeds along a similar continuum ranging from fairly slow to very fast.

Instead of bringing that up ( possibly because if you’d taken the time to fully read and understand it, you would have seen I didn’t bring up weightlifting) your reply consisted of one remark claiming what I was writing about was not really “speed” but “frequency” that is involved. Considering the subject matter of what I wrote in my OP I questioned whether you’d really thoroughly read or understood what it was that was the central point of my OP. So I replied to you with “Was that honestly the main thing you got out of reading that? I’m a little skeptical considering it wasn’t meant to even be a significant part of it (choosing the word “speed” instead of something else) at all, but in case I didn’t make that part of it clear, I’ll try to clear up any possible misunderstanding of that aspect of the post.”

Then I proceeded to explain about the function of voluntary muscles, their purpose, and also used an example in which someone, after undergoing some weight training, was able to greatly increase his speed in the task of bench pressing 100 pounds from 3 seconds down to only half a second during a period of around 6 months of weight training in which his maximum bench press increased from 100 pounds to 200 pounds.

I thouhg tit would be clear to everybody that my purpose for writing about that wasn’t to teach them about weight training or to tell them that guitar playing is just like weight training, but to illustrate the following: A voluntary muscle is capable of one thing and that is to produce force. That’s all our voluntary muscles do and that’s all they’re designed to do. So, when a muscle increases in strength, it is then capable of producing more force than it could before. As long as the resistance against which your muscles are working remains the same, an increase in strength will result in an increase in the speed in which they can contract. Muscles are what give us the ability to move. Muscles are our engine. We are able to move a guitar pick against a string (resistance) and to thereby articulate notes through muscular contractions. As we practice alternate picking over months and years, the muscles which are responsible for moving our guitar picks increase in strength and that enables them to contract more quickly than they could before since the resistance (the guitar string) has remained the same.

I don’t think anybody honestly thinks I was trying to tell them alternate picking is just like performing a bench press. Since you hadn’t fully understood all of my OP, I looked for another way to get the idea across to you, one that would hopefully get the idea across to you more clearly. Had I known you’d find my effort to find another way to get the points I made in my OP across to you so “naive” I wouldn’t have bothered to spend that time on you. At this point I’m contain this post in case somebody finds it helpful to more fully understand the subject of my OP.

In trying to be helpful and generous with my time and effort, what I wanted to do was illustrate in an objective way, a way that could be precisely measured, that increases in the strength of muscles allow them to produce more force and enables them to contract against the same amount of resistance with greater speed than they could before the gain in strength occurred. Maybe somebody else found the example of the increase in strength through weight training which resulted in greater speed against the same resistance after months of training to be helpful I hope so. Looking back at my OP, I still think it gets my central point across quite well without getting so involved in physiology that it would have gone beyond the scope of what’s generally of interest to guitar players. The central point that we all have a unique genetic potential for how much the speed f our alternate picking can be developed. The details of why are of less importance to the majority of guitarists. They’re primarily concerned with whether or not different people have different potentials for how fast they can become at alternate picking and the answer is yes. Yes, you have a genetic potential beyond which you won’t be able to pick any faster but you won’t know what that potential is until you put forth the requisite effort in the form of the proper type of practice in a sufficient amount.

The article, or OP, was intended for anyone who is interested in the subject but particularly for people who have practiced for years in an effective way and despite seeing good progress from the time when they began, have seen that progress dramatically slow or stop over the last few months or even years. If they honestly believe they’ve practiced in an effective way and have as efficient of a technique as they think they can develop and despite that, their progress in developing alternate picking speed has come to a halt, it would be helpful to them to know about this concept. Rather than go through what might feel to them like banging their head against a wall, they will be better off using their valuable practice time to work on other things, or to use it for writing songs, rather than continue to pour hundreds or thousands of hours into something in which they’ll see little or no additional progress.

By the way, I see you’re still insisting on using the word frequency. Upon finding the definition for frequency in a dictionary you’ll see ( and we’ve been through this already) that frequency is defined as “the rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular period of time or in a given sample.” It’s also defined as “the rate at which a vibration occurs that constitutes a wave, either in a material (as in sound waves), or in an electromagnetic field (as in radio waves and light), usually measured per second.” I don’t think you’re referring to that one so I’ll go with the first. “The rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular time…” Just out of curiosity what is it about using the term “alternate picking frequency” instead of “alternate picking speed” that is of such major importance to you that you can’t or quite literally won’t use the term “alternate picking speed”? Nobody else who has replied to me so far, and in fact, nobody else in any seminar I’ve attended or who has written a magazine article on alternate picking which I’ve read minds using the word speed or for that matter ever used the term “alternate picking frequency” as far as I remember. Frequency describes the rate at which something happens. Speed is defined as “the rate at which someone or something is able to move or operate.” My goodness! I’m glad we’re now all aware of the implications of using the term “alternate picking speed” instead of “alternate picking frequency”!