Instructor Posts: 13.792
Joined: 11-March 10
From: England
I'm really interested in how picking fast feels for everyone. We're always told to relax and not play with tension, which I agree with. A relaxed muscle moves easier and faster.
However, in order to demand more performance we still have to make our muscles work right ?
I pick from the wrist but when I start speeding up and playing over my comfort zone, I can feel the muscles engaging somewhere above my elbow. It feels like it's either the tricep or behind the tricep. I'm not consciously 'tensing up' the arm but I'm very conscious of the muscle working. It doesn't hurt and I've not suffered any aches or pains because of it. I've managed to increase the speed and stamina of my picking lately and the speeds which previously felt more 'physical' are now a bit less 'physical'.
To all you fast pickers out there, can you describe how it feels when you pick fast ? I think it would help people who are confused about how relaxed they should be and are afraid of pushing their speed boundaries because they see muscle fatigue as tension so they avoid it and stay in a certain range.
GMC:er Posts: 25.297
Joined: 23-December 09
From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
BEN! I know exactly what you mean. It's very natural to bring the bigger guns to bear when focusing on a problem like that. In my experience though, I"ve had to fight it like crazy or it actually makes me play slower and burns out my hand quicker.
I had to train my hand/body to not let it tense up as speed increased. A lot of what Azza is saying in his post is great info. Way to go azza! I talk about a lot of that stuff in chat. Sort of like reducing wasted motion in karate/kung fu, the same applies to picking but on a nano-scale. At speed, your dealing in microsecond so too much wag beyond the pick strike will just gum things up. Training the hand to stay in a very tight range of just a few millimeters feels like microsurgery at first. But gets less alien over time thank goodness.
I made a video just for this post that will hopefully help a bit. It's a close up on the right hand. Notice how it doesn't even look like my pick hand is moving very fast, and it doesn't look like it's working very hard. I am taking advantage of the natural motion of the hand and leveraging economic picking for ascending string traverse and leveraging alternate picking for descending string traverse. Oh yeah, and I use crazy sharp picks to reduce the amount of contact the pick has with the string.
Let me know if this makes sense
P.S. That bit in pauls video where he talks about not playing with the pick parallel to the string is crucial. I do the same thing
*Notice that the pick is more vertical to the string than horizontal. Coupled with a sharp pick, this greatly reduces the amount of pick hitting the string. I choke up very close to the tip when playing so a little hand tilt and you get pinch harmonics. Never know where you might them. I need them everywhere
*Notice all the action happening below the wrist and not above. I'm not in full on shred here, just casual pick demonstration, but even at top speed I try to keep my hand about this loose and stil pick from the wrist.
QUOTE (Ben Higgins @ Feb 10 2012, 04:22 AM)
I'm really interested in how picking fast feels for everyone. We're always told to relax and not play with tension, which I agree with. A relaxed muscle moves easier and faster.
However, in order to demand more performance we still have to make our muscles work right ?
I pick from the wrist but when I start speeding up and playing over my comfort zone, I can feel the muscles engaging somewhere above my elbow. It feels like it's either the tricep or behind the tricep. I'm not consciously 'tensing up' the arm but I'm very conscious of the muscle working. It doesn't hurt and I've not suffered any aches or pains because of it. I've managed to increase the speed and stamina of my picking lately and the speeds which previously felt more 'physical' are now a bit less 'physical'.
To all you fast pickers out there, can you describe how it feels when you pick fast ? I think it would help people who are confused about how relaxed they should be and are afraid of pushing their speed boundaries because they see muscle fatigue as tension so they avoid it and stay in a certain range.