this comes up a lot. i think i heard people talking about speed at least a half dozen times before in various other threads. anyway, this skill, like a lot of other things in life, requires nothing but TIME. anyone promising you a paul gilbert picking technique over night is a damn liar. there are no magic bullets for this. none.
heres the big problem. the way i see it, we don't improve in a continuous way. its more of a step function (for all you math heads out there). we go for long stretches not seeing any improvement what so ever, and then, out of the blue, whamo. except its not out of the blue, its a culmination of all that time woodshedding. unfortunately, this is the most vulnerable time for us. a lot of people get discouraged, and go fishing. when i get in to this kind of funk, i always have to remind myself, keep at it, stay with your routine, progress is being made.
i heard a lot of guitar players i admire say that alternate picking is the hardest technique to master. i believe them. thats why i made it my number one priority. its the only thing i do for two hours a day, every day (since 4/6/07). heres my routine;
- warm up (10 minutes) - mab speed kills 2 warm up routine
- three note per string major/minor scales and modes (30 minutes) - i run all modes through all keys. my most comfortable is 105bpm at 16th sextuplets. very clean, no mistakes.
- pavel's speed picking 1 - 4 and other sequences i devised myself (1 hour) - i can do these in my sleep now. very comfortable with fingering and smooth execution at 140bpm (except for 4, sextuplets at 105)
- whatever new i feel like working on (20 - 30 minutes) - the last two months i dedicated to curls. they are absolutely insidious. they are great, because unlike sequences, they require all string crossing techniques all the time (in/out and out/in). can do these comfortably at 130bpm. once i get them to ~150-160bpm i'll move on. (at this rate i estimate ~4 months).
here are the keys i discovered so far;
- it is absolutely imperative that you use some kind of timing device. my metronome and i are best friends, but others cant stand it, and play to a drum track. whatever, it doesn't mater, timing is everything.
- i heard mab say once, "you cant play fast until you learn to play slow". the first dozen or so times i heard that, it didn't click. one day it finally hit me. its all about muscle memory (thats why it takes time). do something upteen times slow, and the muscles will remember how to do it when you speed up. there are no shortcuts for this. stay within your limits. otherwise you are playing noise.
- relaxed right hand. it might sound counter intuitive, but the faster you play, the more relaxed your right hand has to be. there are countless examples of that. one that i keep coming back to over and over again is our very own kris. check out his pentatonics lessons, and pay close attention to the right hand. very, very fluid. thats cause its relaxed.
i figured at this rate, and given other alternate picking techniques i want to master (chordal picking, string skipping, pentatonics...), i will probably spend the first 3 years doing nothing but alternate picking just to get to where i wanna be (not to say anything about maintenance after). other techniques (legato, sweep, tapping...) will take about the same or less. i don't think i'll be ready to play real music for at least another 5 - 7 years. but hopefully, after a solid foundation, i should be able to play anything i want. at least thats my goal.
boris
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