Hello there, i'm working on my hand every day and i really need some advice. Having work with metronome, relax hand, very slow speed, tried all different angle and pick position etc. 2 years with thisbut every day it's like i have to begin from the start, can't really figure out how you are able to play one single note fast and consistently. Any guess on what could be wrong with me? thanks in advace
I'm very consistent with my routine and i've achieved improvement in bending, vibrato, legato and also sweep. But playing a single note lets say at 130 bpm (16th note) its possible for me some days (not every) after some hours of right hand training. Every day i start alternate picking my up strokes isn't working well and i feel my right hand really struggle to cross the string. First I start with stretching and then playing 8th note. Then i reach 60 bpm 16th note but i feel i am struggling crossing strings. Eventually after having playing 2 hours in the morning, a little in the afternoon and 2 or more hours in the evening i feel my right hand is confortable with single note picking. Next week i start my first job, i won't play so much and i think things will go even worst
Forgot to mention: crossing strings and adding note its not a problem for me (adding notes help me to stay in time), my biggest and unexplicable problem is right hand movement on a single string, once i get to a speed playing one note i can easily play a scale on multiple string at that speed! isn't it weird ??
Maybe you can shoot a short video of yourself practicing AP at a tempo where you start having problems?? So everyone can have a look and try to diagnose the problem and then maybe the instructors can direct you to a good exercise to overcome your problems? What do you think?
I haven't reached blazing speeds yet, but I can tell you somethings that have helped me improve my speed.
I stopped focusing on outright speed. Instead, I have been focusing on efficiency, precision, and feeling. Instead of using my practice time to see how fast I can pick, I've been training my picking hand to pick as efficiently and as precise as possible. I try to make the picking motion smooth and clean. Essentially, I try to make the pick swing like a pendulum. When I'm playing slow, I can see what I'm doing wrong. I notice I'm wasting a lot of energy with erratic movements and unnecessary tension.
My goal is to make it smooth and relaxed. So my advice to you is to forget about the speed, and focus on the feeling. It seems counter-intuitive, but it has been working for me. Just my two cents
I see that you have a camera and can make vids. Great! If you can make a quick vid and post to youtube, I"m sure we can help you work through it. Without seeing the problem it's really hard to tell. But try things folks are mentioning to see if any help. Your playing in these vids is quite good! You are playing side saddle of course, and are using a dull pick, but these honestly should not stand in the way of single string work.
2 years is more than enough time to play single notes on a single sring with consistent speed. I'm sure it's something small. Post that vid!
Ah, the old alternate picking riddle again !!
I've often said that before you can get a good picking technique everybody should be able to develop some way of getting a good tremolo picking motion on one string, one note.
(By the way, people often think tremolo picking means something else, like a different technique, but it's not. It just refers to picking one note as fast as you can but the technique is still alternate picking.)
There's some different things you could try, all of which have helped me out with finding my picking style.
1. Find your 'natural' picking position. Look at your hand when you're playing rhythm, riffs and things like down strokes. This will be the most natural way that your hand / wrist / forearm has chosen to move. One thing you should notice is that most people allow their wrist to be floppy and lean outwards a bit more. ( You never really see anyone playing rhythm guitar with their hand absolutely parallel up against the guitar body because it restricts movement and your forearm and wrist just don't rotate that way. The only person I've seen play like this is Stephane Lucarelli in his videos but guitar height / sitting down can make that possible)
If your hand position looks different from that when you're picking fast then that's a good clue that you're not going with your body, you're going against it. This may not be true for everybody but it's good place to start.
2. Concentrate on the strong beats of a bar by accentuating the quarter notes.. 1, 2, 3, 4 These will be down strokes. If you make a bigger effort to make these guys stay in time with the metronome it kind of gives you more energy. I think it's a psychological thing because if you use mental strength to concentrate harder on those quarter note beats, you stand more chance of staying with the count instead of drifting away and slowing down.
3. As an opposing technique to the previous one, try concentrating on the tip of your pick. Let it rest 'on' the string. Instead of thinking of big pick strokes that go up and down, think instead that your pick tip moves directly from one side of the string to another. All it does is move over the string itself and rest on the other side ready to come back. It's hard to describe but it's like you've got to concentrate the energy of your pick 'on' the string and not allow it to escalate into bigger strokes that take you further away from the string.
At slower speeds this is easier. As you get faster it will try to make you do bigger strokes but your job is to keep them small, even as you increase speed. The very act of doing this really works the forearm muscles. First try it without a metronome and then when you feel this working, start doing bursts of it against speeds that you previously thought were impossible. The key is not to aim for endless endurance at first but to give you the feeling of playing fast and to know you can build on the stamina from there.
4. This is perhaps the weirdest and hardest to explain. Have a look at my post here, post 10
http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=41813&view=findpost&p=556254
As a final word I would remind everyone that you don't make progress by doing the same thing all the time. To have progressive results that increase, you have to increase the work that you put in. In other words, if you want fast to come out you've got to put fast in. There is a balance of course.. you can't just blaze away at top speed and expect clean technique to miraculously develop but on the other hand you can't expect to only ever play slow within your current ability / comfort zone and expect to somehow develop a fast motion.
I think the whole 'avoid tension, be relaxed, avoid injury' can actually frighten people away from pushing themselves on the guitar so that they constantly remain in a state of limbo where they are just practising licks to a metronome at slow speeds forever and wondering when they're going to get better.
Remember, before metronomes became popular there was Yngwie Malmsteen and countless other old school players that just did it and worried about it later. First, find something that works and has some raw, fiery results and shows a slightly rough version of what you want.. and then worry about honing it later !
At least one of those approaches, or a couple of them, may help you Good luck !
i had similar problems in the beginning...tried it all , best thing that improved it was angling the pick a bit.
But still not perfect, i always missed a pick sometimes. Then after lots of despair and throwing out guitars
through windows i decided to angle the pick to the other side..there it was..it felt natural!!!!
I'm reading and re-reading all of your advice mate and i really appreciate them thanks.. I think the word "frustrating" (used by Alex) for describing this is the most appropriate , every day to achieve control i have to struggle a lot. I'm not confortable at all on what i'm doing and all seems unnatural at first. Also the feeling that i have are different, and i can't really tell wich feeling is the right one. I think every feeling i get is associated by the way i strike the cord: the roundness of the movement, the force, angle of plectrum and one think that really change my approch it's the volume of the amp and wheter or not i'm using clean or distorsion channel. I think I also have different way of perform mentally the movement: pendulum like, concentrating (maybe exagerating don't know) the upstrokes, concentrating on both upstrokes and downstrokes (Ben what do you think?).
So this maybe looks like overanalyzing for most of you but it's not for me! It really makes the difference, and once you can't progress with a think that for some is natural the only way it's to analyse what you are doing. What do you think?
also important to keep a fresh and open mind on it..once you start exercizing with dowds and frustrations it won't come out.
Easier said then done ofcours..when i saw your last rec i think you can tackle it...great playing.
One more thing you can try on tremelo or fast alternate picking on a single string..is resting your pink on the body below the strings.
Some will shoot me for this but it stabilizes your distance to the string and gives less stumbling...and ofcours don't dig in the strings..
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