QUOTE (Eat-Sleep-andJam @ May 8 2008, 08:04 PM)
Weaknesses.
Well Ive always had a good vibrato, and bending . Thats the good part. Im decent at writing lyrics and some other stuff.
Now the Bad.
A problem Ive had for a looooooong time is Alternate Picking.
Its not so much a problem as it is an error in my technique. I orignally thought I was doing Alternate Picking when was really doing some odd form of Economy Picking, If not just Economy Picking. Standard Alternate Picking 3nps runs should be D-U-D, U-D-U
I was playing D-U-D , D-U-D
Its annoying to go to your weekly guitar lesson and the one mistake you consistantly make is a "Double -Down Stroke"
I have never been good at sweep picking, never invested the time it would take to learn it efficiently. I have the time. But my lack of progress stops me from doing it well. Id practice is for 3-hours one day, and be like " Well I Still suck at this, and go watch t.v "
Sometimes when Im practicing I wish I had a little robot to pick out all my mistakes. That way not only would I be knowing what Im doing wrong, but It would help me find ways of correcting it.
Any inventors interested ?
At first glance all my fast speedpicking with inproper technique and my not so smooth legato runs look flashy and appealing to my none guitar playing friends ( And they actually sound clean suprisingly ! ) Yet any real guitar player would suck the lies right out of me and be like " A HA , YOU CANT ALTERNATE PICK NOOBIE !
"
And thats when I would go whine and cry in a corner, because after all thats the truth.
I cant play to a backingtrack to save my life .
At higher speeds I get lost with the metrnome, I can never find a reliable metronome and I really have never done well playing with the metrnome.
Time Signatures confuse me .
Im bad at Theory but I guess I am making steps to improve that.
I suck at memorizing scales. Anything but the pentatonics seems very foriegn to me .
Im semi-decent at improvising. However all of my Improv. vague resembles the last improv. I feel like Im trapped in the Pentatonic Sea and the boat sailed away a long time ago.
I dont have the patience to learn full songs. Either theres never a reliable tab or Im not trained well enough to learn it by ear.
I cant read music, It looks scary.
I think I covered everything
As far as the AP thing is concerned at least you have figured out the flaw, unlearning bad habits is harder then learning a new technique. Just keep plugging away at it you will eventually undo the damage..
As far as sweep picking is concerned i found the best way to learn sweep picking is in two steps.
At first just practice what your right hand is going to be doing picking wise. I would suggest just clicking away on a metronome at a decent speed and just play open strings muted on the top 3 strings of the guitar. Now sweep your pick back and forth on those three strings until you can get the "clicks" of your pick to be even, uniform and clean. Keep increasing metronome speed until you reach a point where you are comfortable speed wise. Now for the left hand right hand integration.
This is the very excersise that i did for a long time, starting at the 14th fret G string and sweeping 14th fret G string 13th fret B string 12th fret then back down those three notes. I kept doing this till i could do it anywhere on the neck flawless at speed with smooth uniform tones.
After this when i could do it without thinking much about it i added on the Top E string 15th fret so it looked like this
E------------12---15---12-----------------
B-------13-------------------13-----------
G--14-----------------------------14------
D-------------------------------------------
A-------------------------------------------
E-------------------------------------------
The picking pattern is D-D-D-U-U-U You want to end the top of the pattern with an Up stroke on the 15th fret then pull off to the 12th and U-U-U. Then just starting the pattern again. Practicing this over and over again till i could do it quickly and cleanly. Making sure i kept string noise to a minimum or none exsistant by "rolling" my fingers as well as good palm muting.
Then i started this process over again adding a 4th string i just started with the picking hand again open strings muted sweeping up then down on 4 strings till i got the clicking of the raked notes smooth and even, then going back to 4 string sweep pattern this time. I did this pattern
E----------------15--12---------------------
B-----------14------------13----------------
G------13----------------------14-----------
D--12-------------------------------15------
A---------------------------------------------
E---------------------------------------------
Just like in the previous section you want the top note to end on an Upstroke and pull over to the 12th fret and down the other direction in an X-shape
Its not very musical but it gets your fretting hand and picking hand to start workinging together.
after this i just kept adding notes and strings, obviously you only have 4 fingers to work with so you have to start barring notes and using more musically sound patterns but i think you get the idea. Work with a little then slowly add more until you can do big patterns. After that its a matter of knowing what key your playing in etc and making sure your shapes conform to the posistion your playing in. That part of it comes later though just learn the very basics at first.
I to get lost with a metronome at higher speeds to some degree your not alone in this. My problem is hearing certain rhythm elements when i go faster for example physically hearing 32nd notes at like 110 BPM i can't feel it unless i work very hard. Normally when working at these speeds i will double the metronome speed to 220 cause i can hear 16th notes much easier, and 16th notes at 220 is the same as 32nd notes at 110.
And i know the frustration of the "Pentatonic blackhole" most guitarists go thru this pentatonic rut, just try to ween yourself off of it by learning some things that arent pentatonic in nature, work on some lessons by David Walliman or Muris, most of their lessons even the easy ones are non- penta in nature you have to start moving your fingers in non pentatonic ways to get out this rut.
Daniel
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This post has been edited by Daniel Robinson: May 9 2008, 02:33 AM