QUOTE (CathShadow @ Nov 6 2008, 01:36 PM)
Hey, well... My weeknesses:
My pinky sort of "clicks" if I move it at a certain angle, my left ring finger doesn't move all the way to the side by the fret...
I think the biggest tho: Barring, and also switching quickly without stopping :$
Thats the big ones atm I think
Pierre
Pinky seems to be a big issue for alot of people, i kinda know what you are talking about with the click. I posted in another thread the reason for my own problem, i broke my pinky when i was younger and never had it set, so it healed crooked. So it does some odd things, so my hand angle constantly has to change to compensate.
As far as your ring finger not moving to the fret posistion, it could be alot of things that cause this. It could just be you haven't stretched this finger enough to get used to fretting in that posistion. Or it could just simply be your playing on a guitar that has frets that are too big for you. For myself, although i like jumbo size frets for ease of chords, i find that my lead playing suffers because i am more comfortable with smaller fret size. The best for me is having smaller frets...ala Wizard II neck.
Barre chords take the most amount of finger strength of anything you can do on the guitar. This is just purely a strength and stamina issue. I would challenge you to just set aside time in your practice routine for just playing barre chords all over the neck perhaps towards the end of your work out. Just keep playing them until you feel the "Burn" in your hands and forearm. Do this every other day. Give your muscles a chance to get used to it. Don't overdo anything in your playing imo.
Its just like people who are body builders. They generally won't work on their arms for example every day. They will work arms one day, and legs the next...abs the next day etc. So it gives time for recovery to avoid injury. I think guitarists in general are guilty of overdoing certain things because they are determined to "Get it". And it can actually hinder you learning a certain technique because your muscles are fatigued.
Daniel
QUOTE (superize @ Nov 6 2008, 01:39 PM)
I belive i got a new weakness...
Earlier i wrote my weakness was legato. I have imrpoved that alot now.
My biggest problem now is getting my bends in pitch.... It is a real struggle for me but i am going to work on it and eventually it will work for me i hope
Getting your bends in pitch has a couple key factors. First is ear training to hear the note you are supposed to hit. A good excersises for training your ear is just sound a fretted note for example on the 9th fret, any string. Than move down one fret and bend up to that note. Replay the fretted note, move down 2 frets and bend up to that note.....etc. This will train your ear to hear the correct pitch.
Secondly is muscle memory for your guitar. Every guitar is different with respect to how much pressure you have to exert to bend to a certain pitch. As well as string gauge, hardtail versus trem system etc. Once you have trained your ear to hear the note your muscles will being to remember how much pressure to exert to hit that note. For me now its not even a matter of listening, it is a matter of just how much pressure i exert. I know my guitar inside and out and i know how much i have to push a string to get a pitch.
Daniel
QUOTE (Disturbed21 @ Nov 6 2008, 02:07 PM)
My weakness now is playing fast. Mainly playing cleanly when playing fast.
Oh and if I'm in standard tuning my fingers slip off the string during vibrato (I have been getting better at it though
)
Playing fast cleanly is a goal alot of guitarists have, i think the biggest issue here is how fast do you want to be. Having a clear goal of what is "Fast enough" is a good place to start. I would not consider myself a "Shred" player. That was never my goal though. When learning at my goal was to hit 13nps on average. Not really shredding per se, but good company in that average range...Randy Rhoads for example was a 13nps player.
Now of course some days will be better than others, on a really good day i can hit bursts of 15nps cleanly, and other days i really have to push myself for that 13nps range cleanly. At this stage in my life, i think really that trying to hit 18nps ALA Shawn Lane, with precision is unrealistic. I suppose if i had focused on that speed in the beginning i might get close or hit that mark, but you know you can't teach and old dog new tricks heh.
There are tons of threads, and lesson with theories on learning to play fast. I suggest you check them out and try out all the different methods and find one that works for you. Me personally i take the Shawn Lane approach. That is play beyond your ability speed wise...yes its going to be sloppy, but your focusing on cleaning it up. Imo in order to play fast you have to know what it feels like to play fast. Learning things slowly is not a bad thing, but i find that if i learn something i want to play fast at a slow speed and try to make it clean by slowly ramping up the metronome, that i don't hit nearly the speed i want. Think of it like this, lets say your a sprinter on the track. In order to get faster you don't walk around the track briskly to get faster. No, you push with all you have and clean up your technique as you go refining all your basic muscle movements so you can go faster.
Slipping off the string is a common problem when starting out, but this will fade with time so just keep working on it. Even now i still have times when i am not focusing i will have my finger slip off the string, especially when trying to do vibrato on a bend.
Daniel
QUOTE (opeth.db @ Nov 6 2008, 03:02 PM)
Just found this topic. Great discussions.
I think my weaknesses are not really mostly related to music. I have bad comprehension skills. I always have and have take courses to improve but not much improvements. Being 34 years old and having to read and re-read things many times to fully understand what one is talking about is a frustrating process.
Especially when trying to apply it to music. Learning something from scratch is hard for me which is one of the reasons I have avoided really understanding the theory behind the music. I also have problems understanding the bigger picture at times and creating a lesson plan that fits my needs just not knowing what to do or where to begin.
My goal here at GMC is to become a shredder. Watching many of the videos here of some of the instructors just seem to have that natural ability to do it. But then again im sure it didn't happen over night. Instructors that can easily look at something and tell you a key, what chord or mode they are playing in I think is incredible. I want to get there so bad but fail to understand where to start. I feel it may take me a lot longer to get where I want to be, get frustrated in the process as I know I will and just quit it as I have done in the past.
Its a frustrating process at times and hope to overcome it one day. Playing guitar nowadays is really the only enjoyment I have other than my wife, daughter and new son on the way.
Since I have been here I have learned the Pentatonic scale, different picking patterns and some new technique SMells has been showing me in the MTP. Great stuff. Unfortuanely, my thinking on this subject is that its one thing to mimic ones video, its another thing to fully understand why someone plays what they are playing.
I even sometimes I wonder if I have a goal that is just out of my reach to obtain.
Don't be discouraged, it is not an easy thing to accomplish, but if you set realistic short term goals and work on those rather than focusing on the end you can acheive alot. As i said in the post above, for myself i think at this stage trying to play 18nps like Shawn Lane is unrealistic pushing 40 years old here myself. I think though at least for myself, as i get older its less about speed and more about expression, a more mature thought process is involved. There are times i wish i could play faster, some guys here just do it with such little effort. But at the same time i feel like i can say alot more with a few well placed notes and silence than i can say with a million notes. When i was younger of course it was all about the "Flash" now its all about how can i say this phrase in the most meaningful way.
Daniel
QUOTE (Chokehold @ Nov 6 2008, 03:10 PM)
My Weekness really got to be 3-strings sweep picking. I practise it alot but it seems like i'm stuck (at 75 bpm)
I said in an earlier reply in this thread my thoughts on 3 string sweeps. I find for myself at least that 3 string sweeps take more precision on my left hand than say 5 or 6 string string sweeps. For myself at least i find i have to pay special attention to fretting the strings with the very tips of my fingers, rather than using more of the pads of my fingers.
With any sweep techniqe though its about syncing your left and right hands and having good muting skills to get it to sound clean and uniform. When i first started to learn sweep picking i started with 3 string sweeps. I broke it down to start with, i started with just sweeping the open muted strings, just to get the rhythm right in my picking hand, just up down, over and over again until it was smooth. I then would just sweep up, playing 3 strings with my right and left hand together in a simple pattern, i would keep practicing that until i could do it cleanly anywhere on the neck. Than i practiced sweeping down with the same patterns all over the neck until i could do it without thinking about it. It was only after i reached that point that i would do the up down sweep, ala putting it all together. Just break down the sweeping to its most basic components and just work on the tecnique to get it smooth. It takes a bit of effort, but not as much as one would think. Sweeping 15 notes at least imo is easier to learn than playing an 11 or 12 note descending legato pattern for example.
Daniel
QUOTE (Ajmurrell @ Nov 6 2008, 03:36 PM)
My main problem is probably my picking technique (and my shocking theory knowledge, but there is a cure to in Andrew's Theory corner
).
I've been taught the various picking techniques, but not in a strict enough manner and unfortunately my natural comfortable picking is all over the place. Switching from economy to alternate at seemingly random times.
I'll take a good example from some one of the GMC lessons I've been practising.
Piotr Kaczor's Arpeggio Etude - Around the Chord lesson to be exact.
I can play the entire piece comfortably at the 89bpm backing track speed WITH strict alternate picking.
I can also play the piece at the 139bmp backing track speed, BUT my picking starts to do whats instinctive and not what I'm trying to train it to do.
To be more exact, the first arpeggio starts with an up stroke, and I continue to alternate pick correctly untill the upstroke on the 9th fret of the G string which then moves on to 10 and 9 on the B and E. When I hit the downstroke on the 10 fret, I can't seem to stop my self economy picking up to the E string. So going D U U instead of D U D. This means when I'm hitting the notes going down on the E string - I pick on the beat with a downstroke instead of an up.
If that makes sense!
I can keep my picking strict at slower tempo's, but at higher ones my picking just instinctive goes back to what I'm used to doing.
Finding it very hard to kick out the bad habits, they've been used for over 6 years so hard to rectify!
I definately know where you are coming from, i would do the same kind of thing, for the longest time i couldnt figure out why i couldnt play simple 6 note patterns cleanly at speed with alternate picking, until i realized as you did that when i speed up i was using a lame economy picking kind of thing. At this point i started to really hone in on what the culprit was, i would speed up to the point of almost falling apart and anyalyze exactly what was falling apart. I also noticed i was doubling up a note somewhere when i sped up. I found that for some reason my picking hand wanted to add another note because i wanted to end on a down stroke. But if you do the math on the neck, if you play 6 ascending notes in a 3nps pattern for example that last note is an upstroke. When i would speed up i saw that i was actually playing 7 notes and was doubling up the last note in the sequence so i would end on a down stroke. Once i realize that this was happening the only thing i focused on was ending on an upstroke. I didnt think about any of the other notes at all. My whole attention was making sure that when i hit note number 6 that i am doing an upstroke. Now i still do that and it helps immensly, knowing what stroke i am going to end on and not worrying about inbetween. Focus on your end note pick stroke make sure its right, now for me its just a matter of adding it up. Like if i do 12 notes, i know that it ends on a downstroke...6 notes upstroke...3 notes downstroke....5 notes downstroke...etc. See if something like this can help you get it worked out.
Daniel
QUOTE (Paiva @ Nov 6 2008, 04:02 PM)
Right Hand technique, I need to get faster ( well I don't need I just want to be able to do some fast runs when improvising), I need more METAL (I'm focusing too much on jazz and blues I don't want to be limited when I'm just 14)! I already know the modes but I want to know them intuitively and I really need to know the chords that I should use in each mode. ( I will work a lot in my school break!)
Sounds like you have some good specific goals in mind, learning your theory at this point can only help you along in your goals. So good for you. If you run into any specific problems please feel to ask me, or another instructor thats what we are here for
Daniel
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