Struggling to achieve alt picking speed

wizbit81 · August 2023

sjo89 said:

wizbit81 said:

My 2 cents:

What are you actually trying to achieve? Is it to play certain pieces of music? In which case don't bother with exercises just learn those pieces slow and gradually speed them up, as you hit limits you'll work out strategies for getting round it, plus you're learning actual music you like instead of sh*t exercises and so you're liable to work harder and with more commitment.
If it's to build up technique towards a non-specific end then forget it and go work on something you actually want to do.
If it's to build up tech because you want to express yourself at those sorts of tempos then maybe find some licks you like and learn those and steal them, and then start writing some in a similar vein and learn to play your own lines.
Most players who developed high speed picking have strategies for it, like Malmsteen doesn't pick every note, he picks in certain places and hammers/pulls in others in a run where it's convenient. It's only certain people like John McLaughlin who pick everything and have incredible tech for inside, outside, and everything else style picking. For example Frank Gambale uses economy picking pretty much exclusively and so arranges everything where he's going in the same direction as even number of picks on a string, and odd picks if he's changing direction. That's a constraint and a limiting factor but it's essential for him to play like he does.

I'm a lefty who plays right handed and alternate picking was always my biggest issue until one day I decided to sort it by learning some Malmsteen, Dream Theater, and some other stuff. I found limits with my right hand angle, muting, rotation vs side to side, slanting, hand shape etc. and had to adapt to get faster.

Your basic technique looks fine, I just think it probably needs a few hundred hours practicing Gilbert/Malmsteen/DT/Di Meola/McLaughlin stuff and you'll be there.

Also, remember those guys honed their tech doing this for hundreds if not thousands of hours so it takes a similar amount to play like that yourself. You can't wake up and go, 'you know what I want to run 100m in less than 10 seconds.'

Not suggesting you're doing that btw, just trying to put in perspective that really fast and accurate alternate picking is probably the hardest physical thing on guitar and it's almost like an elite sport in terms of what needs to be done to get there.

I'm essentially trying to develop my ability to play flashy repetitive licks to drop in and out of solos - much in the style of Sam Coulson - it's not anything sophisticated or harmonically complicated and I want to do it just because it looks fun and I like the way it sounds.

Ok, so I wouldn't personally bother then.
Reason....there's plenty of flash stuff you can do that's loads easier and will impress an audience just as much. Sweep, tap, legato, left hand hammer, play with your teeth, play behind your head, use open string pull-off licks, whammy bar tricks, hamonic tricks like the lizard down the throat thing etc etc.
You could learn a bunch of those in the time it would take you to get your alternate properly nailed down. It's just a really hard thing to do properly with no shortcuts.

Just watched some short clips of Coulson, looks pretty simple stuff, just a little quick, you can get that down with just mild metronome practice every day for a little while.

sjo89 · August 2023

wizbit81 said:

sjo89 said:

wizbit81 said:

My 2 cents:

What are you actually trying to achieve? Is it to play certain pieces of music? In which case don't bother with exercises just learn those pieces slow and gradually speed them up, as you hit limits you'll work out strategies for getting round it, plus you're learning actual music you like instead of sh*t exercises and so you're liable to work harder and with more commitment.
If it's to build up technique towards a non-specific end then forget it and go work on something you actually want to do.
If it's to build up tech because you want to express yourself at those sorts of tempos then maybe find some licks you like and learn those and steal them, and then start writing some in a similar vein and learn to play your own lines.
Most players who developed high speed picking have strategies for it, like Malmsteen doesn't pick every note, he picks in certain places and hammers/pulls in others in a run where it's convenient. It's only certain people like John McLaughlin who pick everything and have incredible tech for inside, outside, and everything else style picking. For example Frank Gambale uses economy picking pretty much exclusively and so arranges everything where he's going in the same direction as even number of picks on a string, and odd picks if he's changing direction. That's a constraint and a limiting factor but it's essential for him to play like he does.

I'm a lefty who plays right handed and alternate picking was always my biggest issue until one day I decided to sort it by learning some Malmsteen, Dream Theater, and some other stuff. I found limits with my right hand angle, muting, rotation vs side to side, slanting, hand shape etc. and had to adapt to get faster.

Your basic technique looks fine, I just think it probably needs a few hundred hours practicing Gilbert/Malmsteen/DT/Di Meola/McLaughlin stuff and you'll be there.

Also, remember those guys honed their tech doing this for hundreds if not thousands of hours so it takes a similar amount to play like that yourself. You can't wake up and go, 'you know what I want to run 100m in less than 10 seconds.'

Not suggesting you're doing that btw, just trying to put in perspective that really fast and accurate alternate picking is probably the hardest physical thing on guitar and it's almost like an elite sport in terms of what needs to be done to get there.

I'm essentially trying to develop my ability to play flashy repetitive licks to drop in and out of solos - much in the style of Sam Coulson - it's not anything sophisticated or harmonically complicated and I want to do it just because it looks fun and I like the way it sounds.

Ok, so I wouldn't personally bother then.
Reason....there's plenty of flash stuff you can do that's loads easier and will impress an audience just as much. Sweep, tap, legato, left hand hammer, play with your teeth, play behind your head, use open string pull-off licks, whammy bar tricks, hamonic tricks like the lizard down the throat thing etc etc.
You could learn a bunch of those in the time it would take you to get your alternate properly nailed down. It's just a really hard thing to do properly with no shortcuts.

Just watched some short clips of Coulson, looks pretty simple stuff, just a little quick, you can get that down with just mild metronome practice every day for a little while.

That's kind of the point i.e. its simple (at medium tempo), and sounds kinda naff unless doing at high speed accurately, but it means you don't have to really think hard in the moment, you just blast off through the pentatonics.

As for learning other stuff, I am doing that too i.e. licks with lots of slurs in etc. - I just want to get this down too. And I'm under no illusions there's any musical merit to this.

Lewy · August 2023

sjo89 said:

As for learning other stuff, I am doing that too i.e. licks with lots of slurs in etc. - I just want to get this down too. And I'm under no illusions there's any musical merit to this.

If you can picture how you can use it to express yourself then there is musical merit to it. I actually think that this particular thing - alternate picked pentatonics across adjacent strings - does have a distinct colour and energy that a listener could pick up on.

digitalkettle · August 2023

Lewy said:

sjo89 said:

As for learning other stuff, I am doing that too i.e. licks with lots of slurs in etc. - I just want to get this down too. And I'm under no illusions there's any musical merit to this.

If you can picture how you can use it to express yourself then there is musical merit to it. I actually think that this particular thing - alternate picked pentatonics across adjacent strings - does have a distinct colour and energy that a listener could pick up on.

Yeah, nothing sounds like that aggressive pattern.

Anyway, I mess around with looping, recording, jamming, gigging, etc. all the time...sometimes it's just nice to treat something like this as a puzzle (beats a sudoku).

DLM · August 2023

How about giving this a pop:

Lewy · August 2023

DLM said:

How about giving this a pop:

That's an interesting nuance on the downward pickslanting idea - the detail being that both downstrokes start from the same point (i.e. the apex of the triange), which means the bass-side downstroke has a steeper angle than the treble-side one. Might be worth playing around with that and seeing how it feels...

digitalkettle · August 2023

Lewy said:

DLM said:

How about giving this a pop:
...

That's an interesting nuance on the downward pickslanting idea - the detail being that both downstrokes start from the same point (i.e. the apex of the triange), which means the bass-side downstroke has a steeper angle than the treble-side one. Might be worth playing around with that and seeing how it feels...

I always thought Zakk's approach was kind of brute force...and I think you'd need that level of movement for this to scale up for runs beyond 2 or 3 strings (which is the Zakk thing, right: rapid patterns over 2 or 3 strings?). Is there any right-hand tracking at all?

octatonic · August 2023

digitalkettle said:

Lewy said:

DLM said:

How about giving this a pop:
...

That's an interesting nuance on the downward pickslanting idea - the detail being that both downstrokes start from the same point (i.e. the apex of the triange), which means the bass-side downstroke has a steeper angle than the treble-side one. Might be worth playing around with that and seeing how it feels...

I always thought Zakk's approach was kind of brute force...and I think you'd need that level of movement for this to scale up for runs beyond 2 or 3 strings (which is the Zakk thing, right: rapid patterns over 2 or 3 strings?). Is there any right-hand tracking at all?

So I speed pick like in the video above, although my fingers don't touch the guitar body, it is purely a slightly turned out wrist and creating two triangles.
I didn't know it was Zakk Wylde's technique because I've not really looked at his playing much.

Having a look at this solo I can see what you mean by brute force- it is sloppier than I thought he'd be though, although I guess that is the vibe.

The trick for a lot of people is getting over the speed hump.
You get it to something like 16ths at 120bpm with a good degree of control but going faster feels like you hit the limit of what you can do.
There are usually two ways of doing it.

1. Increase tempo at 5 bpm a week.
2. Make it sloppy but fast and tighten it up later.

1 is the slowest way but a lot of people like 2 because it can give the impression of 'faster gains'.
If that sounds like you then do this.

Pick a 3 note pattern on one string, either 124, 134 or 123.
Pick as fast as you can on one string and then try to get your fingers to match the speed of the pick.
It will sound sloppy as hell but then the goal is to get the two hands in sync, so you can slow it down a bit until then get in sync and then speed up again until it flies apart. Repeat ... forever.

I favour a third way which is essentially both 1 and 2.
I play mostly under (like 70-90%) of maximum tempo and then have brief bursts playing as fast as I can.
These burst sessions are short- under 20 seconds and I do them every 5-10 mins a practice session (I play in 30-60 minute blocks usually).

digitalkettle · August 2023

octatonic said:

digitalkettle said:

Lewy said:

DLM said:

How about giving this a pop:
...

That's an interesting nuance on the downward pickslanting idea - the detail being that both downstrokes start from the same point (i.e. the apex of the triange), which means the bass-side downstroke has a steeper angle than the treble-side one. Might be worth playing around with that and seeing how it feels...

I always thought Zakk's approach was kind of brute force...and I think you'd need that level of movement for this to scale up for runs beyond 2 or 3 strings (which is the Zakk thing, right: rapid patterns over 2 or 3 strings?). Is there any right-hand tracking at all?

So I speed pick like in the video above, although my fingers don't touch the guitar body, it is purely a slightly turned out wrist and creating two triangles.
I didn't know it was Zakk Wylde's technique because I've not really looked at his playing much.

Having a look at this solo I can see what you mean by brute force- it is sloppier than I thought he'd be though, although I guess that is the vibe.

...

Wow...I need a sit down after that

On the big runs, I can see that he's tracking across the strings as well as using the big elbow movement for actual attack...had to be!

Lewy · August 2023

Just as a little addition to this - I'm really finding that with any alternate picked pentatonics that stray beyond 2 adjacent strings (i.e. they move further up or down the pentatonic shape across three or more strings) I'm getting much better results playing the same thing using 3 note per string pentatonic patterns. Especially things like the classic Eric Johnson cascade. The left hand is more challenging but I'm getting more speed that way for sure, I suspect because of reduced picking hand tracking needed and less reliance on fretting hand mini-barres for sequences that aren't just straight up and down. Maybe worth a look if you haven't before.

Littlejonny · September 2023

I’ve been watching these Troy Grady videos and having a go at some fast picking. I’m actually beginning to understand the subtle complexity of right hand picking movements. It really is very complex compared to the classical finger style technique I grew up on. There are so many variations and variables.

That being said, I’m not sure which approach I should be practising - upward slant or downward slant, or indeed no slant like Carl Miner? I can’t say one of these produces more speed and less tension than another in my hands.

digitalkettle · September 2023

Littlejonny said:

...
That being said, I’m not sure which approach I should be practising - upward slant or downward slant, or indeed no slant like Carl Miner? I can’t say one of these produces more speed and less tension than another in my hands.

Carl Miner obviously belongs in the flatpicking/bluegrassing bit of the Venn diagram...he's probably using an arcing 'double-escape' motion because he's moving across strings more than he's playing on a single string.

To see whether you favour upward or downward escape*, is one more comfortable at top end speeds? Have you tried filming it...is one more direct than the other? Can you switch between them on-the-fly?

* I think CtC deprecated the use of 'slant' terms in favour of 'escape motions' a while back...downward pick slant (DPS) = upward escape (USX) and UPS = DSX.

roberty · September 2023

Littlejonny said:

I’ve been watching these Troy Grady videos and having a go at some fast picking. I’m actually beginning to understand the subtle complexity of right hand picking movements. It really is very complex compared to the classical finger style technique I grew up on. There are so many variations and variables.

That being said, I’m not sure which approach I should be practising - upward slant or downward slant, or indeed no slant like Carl Miner? I can’t say one of these produces more speed and less tension than another in my hands.

Really for string skipping with alternate picking you should be able to switch between the two but most people have a default or dominant slant. Given a choice I would go with down simply because that makes 2nps starting on a downstroke easier

Lewy · September 2023

Littlejonny said:

I’ve been watching these Troy Grady videos and having a go at some fast picking. I’m actually beginning to understand the subtle complexity of right hand picking movements. It really is very complex compared to the classical finger style technique I grew up on. There are so many variations and variables.

That being said, I’m not sure which approach I should be practising - upward slant or downward slant, or indeed no slant like Carl Miner? I can’t say one of these produces more speed and less tension than another in my hands.

It’s quite easy to miss the point with Troy Grady’s stuff….it’s not fundamentally about choosing an approach to work on and saying "I'm going to become a double escape player", it’s about identifying which movement is your natural fast motion and then working on and around that, maybe trying little variations and additions do it. Your hands and what they want to naturally do is the starting point. All the other stuff is to help you understand and enhance. One reason it's easy to stray away from that focus is it seems he can do all of it equally well!

Littlejonny · September 2023

Thank you so much for these responses. Again, coming from a classical perspective, I have been expecting there to be a ‘correct’ way. It turns out, it’s ‘whatever works’ but we can learn from each other.

As for myself - I’m still not sure, it seems that the anchored wrist, downward escape motion is the fastest and most accurate for me, but I can see the benefit of the anchored fingers upward escape motion has advantages in letting the strings sustain.

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Struggling to achieve alt picking speed

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