Right Hand Speed Options

[fire]

Hey guys

today i have an issue that is not often discussed in the web: develloping speed. As im not (yet) a shred got but want to be able to play kind of fast stuff i did a lot of metronome practice and eventually my speed increased.
But i noticed that at a speed of ~145 bpm (16th) its my right hand that cant play faster.

Its not the coordination (with handover-legato technique i can play a lot faster) its simply that i cant move my right hand any faster than 150bpm 16h notes. So as there are many discussions about coordination and lefthand speed i found very less info to this topic.

has anyone ideas how to improve the right hand speed?


cheers

[rockztar]

take a look at Toni´s Tremolo lesson , think it will help you

[Bogdan Radovic]

Check out Danilo's hands Synchronization lesson series..
When practicing speed you are developing both hands...Try relaxing a right hand more , and just continue practicing...Maybe you did hit a wall now , but I'm sure right hand will develop speed in time..Also you may want to experiment with pick holding positions etc...

[Ivan Milenkovic]

You just hit a wall mate, don't worry, keep practicing and what is very important NEVER play sloppy while practicing. While practicing always play every note exactly how much it lasts, from click to click, there can be no pause between two adjacent notes. AS you go faster, this pauses will naturally try to increase as well, but it is your task to keep them at minimum in order to keep your playing precise.

[fire]

thanks for the reponses but you didnt really hit my problem and as i reread my post i left it unclear so its my fault:

the problem is; in fact i cant take an open string, or picked at any fret, go with the metronome to 160beats and play 16ths. its not any coordination or stuff, im simply physically not able to move my right hand faster Oo

any idea ?

[Bogdan Radovic]

thanks for the reponses but you didnt really hit my problem and as i reread my post i left it unclear so its my fault:

the problem is; in fact i cant take an open string, or picked at any fret, go with the metronome to 160beats and play 16ths. its not any coordination or stuff, im simply physically not able to move my right hand faster Oo

any idea ?

Well its normal...NOW you can't do it , but I don't think its your physical boundary ! Just practice playing at comfortable level (even on open string) , than hit a faster beat (increase by 1 or 2 bpm at a time) when you hit a wall and can't play it right back off a little to comfortable zone and play a little then increase the bpm once again...And so on..Once, you will hit the eureka moment when you last except it ! Just be patient and you'll make it!

[leedbreak]

thanks for the reponses but you didnt really hit my problem and as i reread my post i left it unclear so its my fault:

the problem is; in fact i cant take an open string, or picked at any fret, go with the metronome to 160beats and play 16ths. its not any coordination or stuff, im simply physically not able to move my right hand faster Oo

any idea ?

Trust me my friend you are not alone. This is the most common problem for me and many.

In a nut shell. If you can gain one bpm a week you will be a super star in 2 years, you will put all these GMC instructors to shame and make them look like they are the beginners. LOL Not really beginners but here is what I think I am finally realizing.

MOST players are never willing to play the same thing for a week just to gain a single bpm. This is why out of every new guitarist out there, only a fraction of them will ever make it to jaw dropping speeds. They are just not willing to do what it takes. I myself stumble all the time with, do I have what it takes. It is not hard to get pretty good, but it is to get great.

On muris’s Cm etude it is heart breaking to think that it has taken me 8 months to go from 90 to 110 bpm. And I still have days where I just can’t hit it.

But if I am willing, and as of now I am, in 8 more months maybe the 130 will be mine and in 8 more the 160 will be mine. SOOOO, since the 8 months will go by any way I might as well get better.

And it works like this. If I make it to 160 I will be one of the few who can since I will be one of the few who was willing to play it 20000394859043032049595 times


I feel one must pick a piece on music to take on the journey to master. IF we ever do this then all other pieces will start to come easier.

There simply is nothing someone can say that will help you pick faster, your wrist moves in a slightly different way than the next guy so his advice may even hurt you.

But again I must stress, are we willing to do what it takes?

Also most of the time the gains maybe to small for us to see, since we hear it all the time. Some weeks may not show a speed gain but it will be cleaner.

I have a friend I see like 2 times a years and he always has good things to say about my growth. I love it when he comes to visit.

GL and remember 1 bpm a week and you will see huge gains, over time.

This post has been edited by leedbreak: Aug 8 2008, 09:11 PM

[Oxac]

about this speed thing. If you have the accuracy, great! now you need to build up your physique, just like lifting weights etc. If you lift a big bottle of milk, you will need the right technique to avoid hurting yourself but!! you still need to be able to lift it, right?

Let's say every guitarist has 2 limits, one lower one higher. The higher is as good as you can play on the best day, perfect weather, temperature, feeling, warm up, just the right amount of coffeine in your blood. THe lower limit is when the temperature sucks, the weather sucks, you're starving etc.

Playing slow over and over again, gradually increasing speed will increase you accuracy which will make your sucky days days where you still can play like a god.

Practising fast and increasing your strengh will raise your upper limit. I mean, you can NEVER go faster than the frequency of which you can pick. You need to raise that frequency and that is done as a WORK OUT,

I know this is wierd examples but who gives?

[Ivan Milenkovic]

A agree with everybody else mate. Speed just takes time, don't rush it - it will come, just keep practicing and take it easy. Brain must rest in time to time from new stuff.

[Ian Bushell]

Also agree with everyone! Just keep on going:)

Try this out along the high e string: all played as 16ths, try and play it at least twice through without stopping each time.

e|-15-0-0-0-14-0-0-0-12-0-0-0-11-0-0-0-|-12-0-0-0-11-0-0-0-8-0-0-0-7-0-0-0--|


e|-5-0-0-0-3-0-0-0-2-0-0-0-3-0-0-0-0-|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-|


1.Start really slow eg 70/80 BPM
2.Move the metronome up 2 units at a time until you reach a comfortable speed
3.Push yourself two units faster, then slow back down one, over and over
4.When you reach top speed, slow down 20 BPM or so and repeat step 3

It takes a while but it's something that works well for all my students here at home!
There's not much fret stuff but really focuses on building up the right hand:)
In the space of twenty minutes i've seen some beginner students take this up to 180 bpm AMAZING!

You can apply this to any lick/riff. You won't be playing at like 400bpm tomorrow. But it should help break the barrier for you!

[Fsgdjv]

thanks for the reponses but you didnt really hit my problem and as i reread my post i left it unclear so its my fault:

the problem is; in fact i cant take an open string, or picked at any fret, go with the metronome to 160beats and play 16ths. its not any coordination or stuff, im simply physically not able to move my right hand faster Oo

any idea ?

Just try to do some random tremolo picking. Just uncontrolled super fast playing on one string, one note.

[Marcus Siepen]

Guess what, I also agree with the others. Developing speed takes time and a lot of practice, and from time to time you will hit a wall like now, and you will think that you just can't get any faster, but trust me, you can! Just keep practicing and don't give up, speed will come for sure.

[Jose Mena]

Hello there

I agree with what everyone says here, for me developing speed took time, On some days I would play for 8 hours straight, at the time I wasn't playing with a metronome, but rather trying to imitate Yngwie Malmsteen's licks which made it much more interesting. I don't think I could have practiced for 8 hours playing over something that wasn't interesting musically.

My advice would be to practice with cool musical ideas, and like everybody has said before, start slow and increase speed little by little. Another thing to look at here is the position of the right hand, and how you are holding the pick. I have seen that the fastest players obtain their speed picking from their arm, not the wrist or the fingers.

Your arm can move back and forth much faster than the wrist or the fingers, I use the arm for the speed and control accuracy with wrist and fingers when changing strings. I place my hand in different ways depending on what sound I want (muted or open), but the speed always comes from the arm.

I hope this helps

[fire]

thanks for all the answers - im gonna keep practicing for sure

@ian (or anybody else who knows):

to you pattern; (or any other pattern and those push it with the metronome-things) - what speed is "comfortable" i cant get on with this expression. Is it where every muscle is relaxed, where i can play it without mistakes but with little tension?

and: should i push only up without tension, or is it normal that every speed about "comfortably" speed is made with tension?

cheers

[Oxac]

Okay, this is my personal philisophy and you are welcome to steal from it as much as you wish. (it also includes a little bit of science)

I'm going to explain why this is going to work in the long run, give examples on how it's used in other forms.

There's a syndrome that's called savant syndrome, it origins from french and the original meaning was something like smart idiot. Per example, "rainman" our favourite Savant. What can he do? read 2 pages instantly and remember 100% of it.Remember series of numbers etc. Calculate what day the 25th of october year 2640 will be in a second or two.

To understand why this is possible we need to take a quick look at the brains anathomy. It consists of two halves, the right and the left. The left one is the one keeping order of everything, sorting out unnecessary details, finding connections and relations between different things. The right half of the brain skips all that, it processes all of the details it gets from the left brain, it does things, create things, however it can't sort out what's relevant.

What "Rainman" has is (according to some scientists) or rather lacks is to process everything with the left half of the brain first.So, instend of seeing letters and put them together as words he sees 2 pages as an image, exactly like when you look at an image.You don't go, okay that pixel is red, dark red, light red, white etc. and then come to the conclusion that it's a fox. You see the image and get: oh, it's a fox, a rabbit some trees, grass etc. That's because you're "reading" the picture with your right half of the brain.

So an experiment was made. There's a way (dunno how) that you can calculate what day a certain date will be. At first, it took a long time. Then he got rather good at it, he learned the tabells and formulas and was able to do it. It still took a while though. After a while, he just "skipped" the whole x times hmm and then add aahh etc. He just knew it, exactly like you know 5 times 8 is 40 or like you can look at 3 trees and without countng them realize that it's three trees... His right half of the brain had taken over the proceedure.


This is exactly what happens when you "open up the fretboard", you instantly know what note your at, in which scale you're playing. When you without thinking about it, are playing the right lenght of the notes. When you without thinking about it adds vibrato to your notes.


What can we use this knowledge for? Well, what's called muscle memory is simply the right half of the brain taking over the proceedure. So what we want to do is use the Left half of the brain to teach the Right half of the brain the technique we want to have. So that you get the (according to you) perfect tone and attack. How do we do it? Slow. Real slow. Practice every exercise untll it's automatically perfect.

That rasises your minimum limit when playing so therefore you should always play with the technique you want to have.


Then there's your maximum capacity. This is your stamina and your strengh. That is trained by exercising your muscles, like lifting weight.

So to be as efficient as possible you should play a lick untill you have taught your right brain to play it perfectly at slow speed, medium speed, fast speed. Then when you can't play faster because you're limited by your stamina and strengh. Then you should play at that speed for a while, raise a little (fail) go back some bpm and make sure that it's perfectly played. Raise again. When you notice any tension or loss in quality, SLOW DOWN! Don't train yourself to play sloppier. Clean it up again, raise the metronome and work out. This will combine your accuracy and strengh/stamina training and it will enhance your playing. When you've done this with 5 licks your maximum capacity will have raised a lot! Also your lower limit will raise. Every time you do this you will train your right half of the brain. In the end the right brain will take over ths proceedure and.... you get it.

My philolsophy, not a prooven fact. Also a lot of scientists debate about the right half/lieft half thing I told you about.

This post has been edited by Oxac: Aug 11 2008, 09:54 PM

[Oxac]

also, regarding Rainman: He's fiction but he's based on a real person whos name I just can't remember.

[fkalich]

with all do respect, the only ones who understood your issue here recognized that you problem is, you don't know how to tremolo pick.

it is a different mechanism, you have to get a feel for it. it is a voluntary tremor, that can be performed with sets of opposing muscles. I have never heard anyone with guitar who understood this, but here is a description for violin

http://ep.physoc.org/cgi/content/abstract/58/4/357

It is hard to tell you how to do this. It is more a feeling you have to get. To me it feel like your opposing muscles are in a state of tension and alternately relaxed at rapid speed. In fact, I think that is what physiologically goes on in tremolo picking. I would try to play like a mandolin, you know, that real fast play. This song comes to mind, real old, but this reminded me of it, I like this song, obscure as it is. You can hear some fast tremolo picking though out on mandolin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FPx0orM_uM...feature=related

Practice real slow stuff, I mean you say on a note for a long time, not metal. Like in this song. Move to metal later after you get the feel. I play the German National Anthem like this sort of for fun. Something like that, where you hold notes a long time.

[Oxac]

my tremolo picking has the exact same motion as my slow playing. I "roll" my wrist back and forth. Works really good.