Is Alt Picking An Athletic Endeavor? |
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Is Alt Picking An Athletic Endeavor? |
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Oct 23 2011, 12:37 PM |
Hi James, to answer your question.. in a way, yes. You don't have to train ruthlessly like an Olympian would but the thing with picking faster is that, in order to pick faster you have to... pick faster.
Of course, it's not just as easy as doing it in one go.. but playing something perfectly at a slow tempo for aeons will just mean you're good at doing that task. Like pushing down on an accelerator in a car, if we keep our foot on the pedal at 50mph the car won't all of a sudden start gaining speed, we need to input the action to accelerate. There's 2 main conflicting pieces of advice in guitar playing that I can think of, which can confuse people. 1- Relax... of course, being relaxed as possible during our playing is the ideal goal but taken to its extreme, if we relaxed completely we wouldn't be able to put any effort into anything at all and we wouldn't move In our quest to remain relaxed we can sometimes forget that we still need to put in some physical effort to progress. Our muscles need to work harder to make gains in performance. Recognising this means we have to identify the 2 extremes ..too relaxed and we make no gains at all because we're not pushing anything. We're asking it to keep operating on the same comfort level that it is. Too much effort and we tense up, using too many muscles and too much force. The best way it to make sure you can easily identify the difference between natural muscle fatigue (should have a burning sensation, slightly aching, not too unpleasant) and pain/tension.. if you notice your elbow tighten up and the forearm muscles tightening up and hurting then chances are you're trying to compensate for the lack of wrist speed by using your arm. 2 - Wait until you can play something perfectly all the way through, before moving on and bumping up speed (by as little as 2 to 5bpm) In many ways this advice makes sense but in reality you need to consistently push beyond that speed in order to make gains. If we waited to play something perfectly all the way through for everything you learn before moving up a few bpm we'd all be here until armageddon. I do agree that perfect repetion is the key to learning something so that is why I advocate doing a minimal amount of reps at a higher speed that pushes you. Pick a higher bpm and do a few bursts of it, as clean as you can and as relaxed as you can. This is where each person will have to trust their own instincts and feedback their body gives them. It has to be a combo of pushing yourself at higher speeds and marrying this up to your lower speed repetitions. Somewhere in the middle it, it complements each other and will lead to better speed and stamina. Also, another thing I recommend is ditch long picking exercises. All these do is use up your time and stamina. Mostly, our hurdles are with a particular motion, for example, crossing from outside of a string to a lower string or something like that. Make the licks smaller so they focus on the area you want to improve instead of working your way through a long lick only to mess up at the problem area. Once you start to feel like you have control over these problem areas then you can work them into longer pieces but until then, you're just wasting stamina and brain power. I personally wish people would stop teaching that way but that's just me.. You might not have seen them but it's worth having a listen to what I talk about in my stamina school video, even if you don't practice the exercise. https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/ls/Stamina-School/ I hope all that makes sense. My ideas on alt picking may not be popular to people who are used to the old school way of doing things but I think it's time the guitar community realised that we're not all built like Yngwie and Paul Gilbert and that humans in general learn better when fousing on small tasks in incremental steps, not tackling massive things in one go. |
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Oct 23 2011, 12:59 PM |
Hi James, to answer your question.. in a way, yes. You don't have to train ruthlessly like an Olympian would but the thing with picking faster is that, in order to pick faster you have to... pick faster. Of course, it's not just as easy as doing it in one go.. but playing something perfectly at a slow tempo for aeons will just mean you're good at doing that task. Like pushing down on an accelerator in a car, if we keep our foot on the pedal at 50mph the car won't all of a sudden start gaining speed, we need to input the action to accelerate. There's 2 main conflicting pieces of advice in guitar playing that I can think of, which can confuse people. 1- Relax... of course, being relaxed as possible during our playing is the ideal goal but taken to its extreme, if we relaxed completely we wouldn't be able to put any effort into anything at all and we wouldn't move In our quest to remain relaxed we can sometimes forget that we still need to put in some physical effort to progress. Our muscles need to work harder to make gains in performance. Recognising this means we have to identify the 2 extremes ..too relaxed and we make no gains at all because we're not pushing anything. We're asking it to keep operating on the same comfort level that it is. Too much effort and we tense up, using too many muscles and too much force. The best way it to make sure you can easily identify the difference between natural muscle fatigue (should have a burning sensation, slightly aching, not too unpleasant) and pain/tension.. if you notice your elbow tighten up and the forearm muscles tightening up and hurting then chances are you're trying to compensate for the lack of wrist speed by using your arm. 2 - Wait until you can play something perfectly all the way through, before moving on and bumping up speed (by as little as 2 to 5bpm) In many ways this advice makes sense but in reality you need to consistently push beyond that speed in order to make gains. If we waited to play something perfectly all the way through for everything you learn before moving up a few bpm we'd all be here until armageddon. I do agree that perfect repetion is the key to learning something so that is why I advocate doing a minimal amount of reps at a higher speed that pushes you. Pick a higher bpm and do a few bursts of it, as clean as you can and as relaxed as you can. This is where each person will have to trust their own instincts and feedback their body gives them. It has to be a combo of pushing yourself at higher speeds and marrying this up to your lower speed repetitions. Somewhere in the middle it, it complements each other and will lead to better speed and stamina. Also, another thing I recommend is ditch long picking exercises. All these do is use up your time and stamina. Mostly, our hurdles are with a particular motion, for example, crossing from outside of a string to a lower string or something like that. Make the licks smaller so they focus on the area you want to improve instead of working your way through a long lick only to mess up at the problem area. Once you start to feel like you have control over these problem areas then you can work them into longer pieces but until then, you're just wasting stamina and brain power. I personally wish people would stop teaching that way but that's just me.. You might not have seen them but it's worth having a listen to what I talk about in my stamina school video, even if you don't practice the exercise. https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/ls/Stamina-School/ I hope all that makes sense. My ideas on alt picking may not be popular to people who are used to the old school way of doing things but I think it's time the guitar community realised that we're not all built like Yngwie and Paul Gilbert and that humans in general learn better when fousing on small tasks in incremental steps, not tackling massive things in one go. Wonderfully stated Ben we can make up a 'AP Philosophy' essay together |
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Oct 23 2011, 03:30 PM
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I feel a lot like you James......I've been working at AP for almost 2 years with a lot of gain in accuracy but ZERO gain in speed. Very frustrating........
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Oct 24 2011, 04:53 AM |
It took me some time to develop my alternate picking. I trained a lot every day with metronome and drum loops different technical exercises. I also used to jam a lot using that technique. I always recommend "Speed and Accuracy" by Vinnie Moore for AP technique. It includes really useful exercises.
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Oct 24 2011, 02:24 PM |
I'm with Ben and Shawn on this one :
-------------------- Ibanez 2550E
LTD EC-1000 VB Roland Cube 30W |
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Oct 24 2011, 04:07 PM |
Alot has been said about this topic already, but I just want to add that I think you play very cleanly already it sounds very professional to me. What Azzaboi said about the two kinds of players is basically true, however I'm on the other end, being able to play very fast from the moment I picked up the guitar, but now working hard to fix all of the mistakes that came into my playing by doing so.
The trick you could imply would basically be to sit down with the guitar, and play VERY, VEEERY slowly (like, a quarter notes @ 60 bpm or something) and play a basic scale or excersize. Try to REALLY concentrate moving both of your hands as LITTLE as possible (like only a few mm away from the strings). Yes, this will be incredibly boring, but do this half an hour a day for say, 2 weeks, and you're sure to notice a lot of difference. Then, put it into your practice routine, and for the coming 2 months, practice the same thing for 5 minutes. To vary things a little, on random intervals, put the metronome some 10-20 bpm's above your playing level and play fast bursts. You can also just play random notes, but keep the beat going while you practice. Also, watch this video and see for yourself how little Ynwie moves his hands : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwp4jN6TGYM...feature=related This post has been edited by djohnneay: Oct 24 2011, 04:07 PM -------------------- |
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Oct 27 2011, 12:50 PM
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Laney is beautifull
Your tecnique is good and clean, just push it up a bit , ( use your wrist ) |
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