My Alternate Picking Is Bad, Noticed some strange movement of my thumb Options

[Skalde]

Hello,

While practising alternate picking I noticed that my thumb of my picking Hand(left hand, because I am a lefty) is making some strange moves. It goes up and down and I can't stop it. I guess it slowes me down a lot, but I am not sure.
When you watch the video you will probably see what I mean. Can you tell me please if I should completly relearn my left hand picking motions or should I go on with this 'bad habit'? I feel comfortable picking this way but I assume that I won't get really fast with it.
I also noticed that when I am playing on one string I am not doing this movment. I can play this way 170bpm(16th) a single note. But as soon it comes to picking more strings than one my thumb is jumping around
 AP.WMV ( 926.31K ) Number of downloads: 140

I am sorry for the bad quality of the video. My webcame was very cheap and looses some frames.
Please tell me what I should do about this. I am very confused at the moment.
Skalde

This post has been edited by Skalde: Jul 28 2008, 09:07 PM

[Ivan Milenkovic]

You are anchoring your picking hand on the bridge/strings too much, you should pick more from the wrist of the palm and not from the root of the thumb. I think there is the problem. But don't worry, just start practicing right away what I've told you and you will already start to transfer in a matter of weeks with a good focused practice.

[TheOldOnes]

Skalde - I know exactly what you are going through as I have played like this for many years and only started recently to address the problem. It started out because I learned by watching (not closely enough) several players really minimize their right hand movements when playing rhythm. With noone to show me differently, I anchored my right hand and went from there. The problem I had with it was more to do with my rhythm than sound as I realized I was very inconsistent particularly when alternate picking and switching strings.

The good news is this can be fixed easily enough although I still find I sometimes default to this practice when I learn new riffs. There are a number of lessons here than can help out with this problem - one I have found that has been particularly effective was Trond's 'Picking Exercise' but I suspect there a many lessons here that will help out.

For those unfamiliar with the problem - some players use their whole arms to move the pick while others use their wrist (probably the more acceptable practice). For myself and from what it looks like for Skalde, we do neither but rather use our thumb and forefinger only.