Picking, How to pick with speed.. Options

[Rockyracoon]

Hi Ivan

I just signed up and subscribed to your classes, I have only been playing for a few months and have become frustrated
with picking. I cannot move up and down scales faster than 80BPM without messing up and digging into or missing strings.

I intend to follow you 'Minor Pentatonic' classes, will this help my accuracy and speed, at the moment I feel like giving up.

Thanks

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[jstcrsn]

Hi Ivan

I just signed up and subscribed to your classes, I have only been playing for a few months and have become frustrated
with picking. I cannot move up and down scales faster than 80BPM without messing up and digging into or missing strings.

I intend to follow you 'Minor Pentatonic' classes, will this help my accuracy and speed, at the moment I feel like giving up.

Thanks

Iam sure ivan will tellyou it will help but I would like to ad that the fastest track to shredding is zack wydles, started playing at 14 , played with ozzy 19,don't give up , but be realistic, it will take a few years

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[Rockyracoon]

Iam sure ivan will tellyou it will help but I would like to ad that the fastest track to shredding is zack wydles, started playing at 14 , played with ozzy 19,don't give up , but be realistic, it will take a few years

I would not want play like any of those people, I like Blues, I simply want to tie riffs and scales together at a coherent speed.

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[Ivan Milenkovic]

Hello mate, welcome aboard! Glad you like my lessons, I hope they will help you in your musical journey.

I think jstcrsn was talking about is having patience. Regardless of what you want to play, it's always important to keep in mind that results will come after couple of months of practice, if you start practicing right away. Guitar playing is something that is very rewarding, but you need to be able to be realistic about it as well, which I'm sure you are.

The thing with speed, I'll quote Guthrie here: "Speed is a byproduct of accuracy". being precise enough, and staying precise when increasing tempo gradually is a sure step to achieve greater tempos. It may take months, years, but you will get there if you really want to do it.

In general, best advice that I can give you is: Take is very very slow when practicing anything at all. Chord changes, fast runs, bends, vibratos.. anything - it all requires you to really put your fingers into slow motion mode, so the brain can have time to remember what is the correct way. If you practice slow, and stay on slow tempos for couple of days, you create proper foundation for developing speed later on. The precise you are - the faster you will become. Of course this is where patience comes into play, because you need to increase those tempos very gradually, giving your muscle memory time to adapt to new speeds.

If you need some metronome practicing methods, or anything like that, let me know, and I'll try to help.

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[Michael AC]

Welcome to GMC! Do not be frustrated, we all hit times like that, but I have found that using a metronome has been the best help with my speed and I am still really slow compared to others here.

I focus on accuracy, tone and technique. Speed will come in time. If you start to get frustrated learning a specific technique like alternate picking, change your lesson structure for a couple of days and then come back to it.

Just remember if you hands start to hurt to stop...you have to let your muscles grow and become stronger.

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[VilleFIN]

Check out this:



There's some good info about how you hold the pick.

Cheers

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This post has been edited by WeePee: Sep 5 2011, 04:08 PM

[Rockyracoon]

Hey Guys

Thanks for all of the advice, I will put some some careful and precise routines into my practice time. Looks like
patience is the answer.

I will have to sign to GMC for a while, you guys certainly make newbies welcome...thanks again.

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[SpaseMoonkey]

Hey Guys

Thanks for all of the advice, I will put some some careful and precise routines into my practice time. Looks like
patience is the answer.

I will have to sign to GMC for a while, you guys certainly make newbies welcome...thanks again.

Welcome to GMC. Being a guitarist in itself can be a struggle but is very rewarding. I've owned a guitar since I was like 14 which was 14 years ago and I quit for around 10. Within the last 4 years I picked it back up and I've been jamming out. I'm not that great, I may be around a skill thats like a level 5. I can do somethings and make it look like I'm good but thats because I've practiced certain runs and licks so much that my parents have told me I need headphones they are sick of hearing it. When I do a scale in thirds I'm extremely slow.

So just keep your head up and give it sometime. At a certain level you will feel you aren't gaining but everyone else around you will. If ever in need here just ask, you have the best instructors here. Attend some of their chats, I usually don't have that much time for them. But when I do go I learn a lot and feel inspired to play. Like Gab said last week the key with a good picking movement is letting your hand be loose like your trying to shake water off of it. That has helped me a lot and that was only a week ago!

- Travis S.

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[Ivan Milenkovic]

Hey Guys

Thanks for all of the advice, I will put some some careful and precise routines into my practice time. Looks like
patience is the answer.

I will have to sign to GMC for a while, you guys certainly make newbies welcome...thanks again.

We are glad to help mate Anything you need, you let us know.

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[JPBluestring]

Check out this:



There's some good info about how you hold the pick.

Cheers

Made sense to me. Good video. Thanks for sharing!

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[Dinaga]

I think what people already said pretty much covered the answer to your question, and I'll just add my 5 cents

I used to feel the same as you, frustrated because I couldn't play a scale or a lick fast enough. Even worse was the fact that playing everything slower than the original song was pretty boring and no fun. I felt there was no progress at all.

But believe me, the worst feeling was realizing that I learned a solo, totally wrong because of rushing to learn it. Even worse is learning a complete technique wrong, it takes months, even years to fix that. So now my philosophy is pretty simple - I start everything at the slowest speed possible, as long as I play the thing PERFECT, or at least as close to perfect as possible. Only when I am 100% satisfied with my take, I speed it up by 5% or 10%. When I feel I'm not doing it perfect, I take a rest and slow down again. Yes, it takes time but it makes your technique as flawless as you can get. It took me months to learn some particular solos but the feeling when I finally nailed them was amazing

Doing everything slow makes you pay attention to everything. Your right hand, your left hand, your angles, fingers, frets... even your shoulders and elbows. When you can play something without even thinking about it, it's time to move faster. Of course, it's a little different story at jam sessions but we're talking about learning a technique here. And don't be disappointed if you can't play something as fast as you could yesterday - or a week ago, that means you need to warm up your fingers first by playing it slower or you didn't play for a while and it will take some days to get back on track. The most important thing it - NEVER GIVE UP

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[Rockyracoon]

[quote name='Dinaga' date='Sep 21 2011, 12:28 AM' post='544482']
I think what people already said pretty much covered the answer to your question, and I'll just add my 5 cents

Hi
I have been trying the slow approach since my original posting, along with a new way to hold the pick.The technique
really does help, and will be my standard practice routine from now on. I am glad I asked the question, I was beginning
to feel that everyone else had some kind of natural talent that I was missing.

Thanks for your input, it is very encouraging.

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[MonkeyDAthos]

Azz once show me this, it really help me out.

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[Bossie]

No matter how slow you play , as long as it's perfect you're already an ace guitarist

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[dark dude]

I think what people already said pretty much covered the answer to your question, and I'll just add my 5 cents

I used to feel the same as you, frustrated because I couldn't play a scale or a lick fast enough. Even worse was the fact that playing everything slower than the original song was pretty boring and no fun. I felt there was no progress at all.

But believe me, the worst feeling was realizing that I learned a solo, totally wrong because of rushing to learn it. Even worse is learning a complete technique wrong, it takes months, even years to fix that. So now my philosophy is pretty simple - I start everything at the slowest speed possible, as long as I play the thing PERFECT, or at least as close to perfect as possible. Only when I am 100% satisfied with my take, I speed it up by 5% or 10%. When I feel I'm not doing it perfect, I take a rest and slow down again. Yes, it takes time but it makes your technique as flawless as you can get. It took me months to learn some particular solos but the feeling when I finally nailed them was amazing

Doing everything slow makes you pay attention to everything. Your right hand, your left hand, your angles, fingers, frets... even your shoulders and elbows. When you can play something without even thinking about it, it's time to move faster. Of course, it's a little different story at jam sessions but we're talking about learning a technique here. And don't be disappointed if you can't play something as fast as you could yesterday - or a week ago, that means you need to warm up your fingers first by playing it slower or you didn't play for a while and it will take some days to get back on track. The most important thing it - NEVER GIVE UP

Listen to this man.

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

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