Martin Miller on developing speed

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bingefellerbingefeller Frets: 5723
edited February 2018 in Technique
This is the best and most concise video on developing speed that I have seen yet.  Martin explains the very open and closed loop systems in motor functions and why playing fast and sloppy is a good thing for gaining speed.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ft6p6dqWWY
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Comments

  • I thought this was interesting also. I hope you goes further on this topic... adressin crossing strings etc.
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  • I thought this was interesting also. I hope you goes further on this topic... adressin crossing strings etc.


    With regards to the issue of crossing strings you have to work out if you're an upward pick slanter or a downward pick slanter and then organize your lines to suit. 

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  • LewyLewy Frets: 4125
    edited February 2018
    I’ve heard exactly the same advice from bluegrass/flatpicker Steve Kauffman....”to speed up, you play faster”. 

    Learn what you’re trying to play at slow tempo, then push it knowing full well you’re going to crash and burn. Then slow it down, again, regroup and then push it again.
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  • I like Martin Miller's view on things, including fretboard visualisation and techniques. His straight talking perspective always seems to make sense to me. And he clearly has credibility based on his amazing skills.
     
    It's not a competition.
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  • Thanks for that @bingefeller ;

    I'd not come across Martin Miller before but he talks a lot of sense and, from some of his other videos, he's clearly a great player as well.

    The old "practise slow and speed it up" technique never worked for me but I've been making good progress with burst playing and chunking.  I'm still not fast by most people's standards but I think that's due to the stop/start nature of my practising.  I'm sure if I stuck to it religiously for 6 months I'd see huge gains. I guess the old advice must have worked for some that it's stuck around so long though.
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  • I just came on here to start a thread on this but you beat me to it
    couldn’t agree more with the link
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  • bingefellerbingefeller Frets: 5723
    I just came on here to start a thread on this but you beat me to it
    couldn’t agree more with the link

    It's a great video, I downloaded it from Youtube and am keeping it in my guitar lessons folder.  A lot of it is also discussed in Martin's interview with Troy Grady and also Troy has some interviews with Dr Noa Kageyama about performance psychology and how to optimize your practice habits.  They also talk about chunking / closed loops.  It's an interesting concept that I'd never heard of until a lot of months ago, but it certainly makes sense.
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  • I like the cracking the code forum too. Full of lots of great insight from troy
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  • DavidReesDavidRees Frets: 334
    excellent stuff ...

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  • mixolydmixolyd Frets: 826
    I posted this same video in a thread someone started about speed last week.

    I had discovered it that same day and having applied the concept of practising beyond my limits I can confirm that significant speed increase quickly follows.

    Years of playing and following the old “slow and seek perfection” advice had made me a slow but very neat and tidy player. The only times I ever got fast was when playing live for hours at a time I’d reach a point of not caring and just get faster and faster with attendant mess and mistakes.  Now I realise that I should have been doing that more often.
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  • JackGrantJackGrant Frets: 11
    The Talent Code book is good source for understanding and applying the current understanding of how we learn. I'm 58 and have improved loads more in the last 4 years once applying this approach. 
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  • BlueingreenBlueingreen Frets: 2582
    edited March 2018
    I'm not a very fast player nor do I have big aspirations to be, but I've always been sceptical of the advice that you learn to play fast by playing slow, the cliched argument being "if you play so fast that you make mistakes, you are just practising those mistakes".

    One analogy I've thought about in this context is golf.  You don't start off trying to make perfect contact with a slow swing and hit the ball 30 yards.  You try to hit it reasonably hard.  And sometimes you shank it, or miss it, or hook it or slice it and sometimes you hit it sweetly.  But you have a feedback system in operation that lets you learn which movements are leading to which outcomes so you can refine what you're doing and gradually you learn to avoid the misses and shanks and cut down the slices and hooks.  The fact that you made mistakes doesn't mean you're practising to make mistakes:  the mistakes are part of the feedback system by which you learn to stop making them.
    “To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.”
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  • JackGrantJackGrant Frets: 11
    There’s good evidence that nerve fibres work similar to muscles when they develop strength. So you learn the move slowly so you have the shape of it.  Then you build up the speed until the shape of it collapses. The body goes “Oh we need to do it faster”, and deposits the myelin sheath which speeds up the transmission. I also like your approach, which is like error correction.  
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