Fast alternate picking runs - how do you approach it?

Adi

I'm interested how people approach fast alternate picking runs on multiple strings , I'm currently working on couple of things , one of them being a solo to "Superstitious" by Europe and another one intro to "I am a viking" by Yngwie.

 Both of them have these fast ascending runs that I'm having some problems with. It feels like in order to play them fast I have to use a completely different approach than when I play them slowly with the metronome.  It's almost like a difference between fast walking and running,  you'd be using a different movement. 

When I play it with metronome I only get to the certain speed and I can't go any faster , my picking hand just doesn't go that quick. 

However, I can go much faster when I use sort of burst of speed instead of focusing on every pick stroke, the only problem then it is difficult to synchronise both hands and it's not very clean , usually there's some string noise especially when crossing the strings. I'll try to upload some videos tomorrow so it's a bit clearer.

Any words of advice?

Roland

Do you need to pick every note, or could you use hammers and pull-offs? I often find myself picking once per string, or just the accented notes, and letting my left hand do the rest of the work.

Adi

The run in Superstitious definitely has to be picked from start to finish

Roland

Then it’s a question of patience, and building the speed over several months.

Danny1969

Accepted wisdom is you start at a slower BPM and practice building up speed until you get there. I personally don't do that. I start playing it at the right speed or faster and it's sloppy as hell but by keeping at it I improve and refine it until it sounds ok. 

digitalkettle

I’ve been leaning towards Troy Grady’s ‘cracking the code’ approach for a while.

 The running/walking thing you describe is well acknowledged on CtC and, as a consequence, the slow steady ramp-up of the metronome may not be as useful for ‘getting fast’ as previously thought.

One of the other cornerstones of CtC is about understanding precisely how you’re addressing the strings and escaping the plane of the strings. This could certainly be relevant to your paragraph about string noise as you might leave your pick stuck between two strings and have to ‘swipe’ through one on your way to the next note.

Devil#20

digitalkettle said:

I’ve been leaning towards Troy Grady’s ‘cracking the code’ approach for a while.

 The running/walking thing you describe is well acknowledged on CtC and, as a consequence, the slow steady ramp-up of the metronome may not be as useful for ‘getting fast’ as previously thought.

One of the other cornerstones of CtC is about understanding precisely how you’re addressing the strings and escaping the plane of the strings. This could certainly be relevant to your paragraph about string noise as you might leave your pick stuck between two strings and have to ‘swipe’ through one on your way to the next note.

Sounds interesting. Must check that out. 

tekbow

Devil#20 said:

digitalkettle said:

I’ve been leaning towards Troy Grady’s ‘cracking the code’ approach for a while.

 The running/walking thing you describe is well acknowledged on CtC and, as a consequence, the slow steady ramp-up of the metronome may not be as useful for ‘getting fast’ as previously thought.

One of the other cornerstones of CtC is about understanding precisely how you’re addressing the strings and escaping the plane of the strings. This could certainly be relevant to your paragraph about string noise as you might leave your pick stuck between two strings and have to ‘swipe’ through one on your way to the next note.

Sounds interesting. Must check that out. 

What @digitalkettle says.

It deals With the concept of slanting your pick in 2 planes i.e. edge picking and up/downward slanting.

The edge picking is less relevant to what you're trying to achieve but the pick slanting Is very relevant.

Its whether the tip of the pick is pointing slightly up (a la Eric Jonhson) or pointing slightly down (Gilbert), and where you end up as a result to play your next note.

The MAB interview is really excellent in this regard for his technique in escaping the inevitable 'caught between strings'

Winny_Pooh

Metronome plus economy picking and time

Musicwolf

I'm an absolute carthorse when it comes to speed.  Recently I've needed to tackle a solo including a fast run (our singer wants ago at the song) but fortunately, with no gigs on the horizon, time is on my side.

I've tried this in the past, slowly building speed, but hit a brick wall.  Since then I've altered my pick grip and this time around it feels easier.  I've started slow to make sure that I've nailed the phrasing and I've built up over several days.   What I've noticed is that I'm 'learning in my sleep' i.e. I'll get as far as I can one day but next morning I can pick up the guitar and, once I've warmed up, pick up where I left off and make a step improvement.

digitalkettle

tekbow said:

What @digitalkettle says.

It deals With the concept of slanting your pick in 2 planes i.e. edge picking and up/downward slanting.

The edge picking is less relevant to what you're trying to achieve but the pick slanting Is very relevant.

Its whether the tip of the pick is pointing slightly up (a la Eric Jonhson) or pointing slightly down (Gilbert), and where you end up as a result to play your next note.

The MAB interview is really excellent in this regard for his technique in escaping the inevitable 'caught between strings'

I can't believe I left it so long without being explicitly aware of this...all those hours tripping over Eugene's Trick Bag (still do actually)

For the OP: I didn't subscribe to CtC...it wouldn't have worked for me at that depth...but there's the forum and lots of free info which was enough to switch me on a bit more (I did get involved in the magnet kickstarter though). I don't like quoting the CtC approach too heavily as Troy has had a couple of epiphanies along the way and the terminology has changed slightly. I still call it pickslanting and, for me, it boils down to this:

1. stick with your natural slant and organise all your lines to support this
    ...and/or...
2. don't organise your lines and cope with it using two-way pick slanting

Other folks on this thread have mentioned legato and economy approaches: these should be in the toolbox too and they will get you out of a bind when you've got one foot on a monitor! But sometimes you just want to knock out a 100% alternate line

Bennyboy-UK

I've been working on that solo from Superstitious as well - super lesson by @jonnyscaramanga - just in case its not the one you are using to learn from.

The thing I have found most helpful, is to record me playing attempting to play it  and practicing - for some reason especially with the really quick stuff, when I'm actually playing it I cant hear how close I am to getting it nailed - I think my brain hears it one way when doing it, and it sounds different when played back.

There is also a very good backing track on you youtube for the solo section, which does help as it give you the context of where it all fits - just using the metronome doesn't give you that, especially as this solo has some cool feel and timing including on those runs which start just after the beat.

I also found it useful to check out other Kee Marcelo videos to see how he's playing it and when the most important timing cues are to get the feel - there is a good one from what looks like a Hot Licks video where he's playing a cool red SG90 where he discusses that in a bit of depth with some examples.

Its a killer lead break, so I reckon its worth the effort

Hope that helps a bit?

Adi

Thanks for all the replies guys , that's very helpful. I'll need to record it and take a closer look at my picking hand as it feels like my results are very random , sometimes I can play it pretty decent,  the other time I trip up, there's no consistency. 
@tekbow have you got a link to that MAB interview?

xscaramanga

Thanks for the nod, Bennyboy! The lesson he's referring to is here. Ignore my dodgy bends.

The Superstitious solo is organised so that all the string changes are on upstrokes. The stuff about pick slant that digitalkettle was talking about it super useful, but you can do the whole Superstitious run with one picking motion. (Incidentally, Cracking the Code don't use the term 'pickslanting' anymore because for some picking motions it's not relevant. See: 

)

In the REH video, Kee talks about playing it rubato but having analysed the recordings (both the original version and his 2011 remake), I don't think he does play it rubato. The fastest segment comes out as groups of nine notes per beat (nonuplets) on both versions. Thinking of the low D on the A string and the high C on the top E string as target notes to hit on the beat may be helpful, but in fact the notes come out pretty evenly in between.

Nonuplets are an awkward feel to get down. I learned to count them by thinking of them as triplets within triplets, so I was counting "ONEtwothree onetwothree onetwothree, ONEtwothree onetwothree onetwothree" and then eventually I learned to feel it. There's a kind of arms race that happens between your brain and your hands when you're learning to shred. At first the licks are two fast for your brain to process, and they just sound like a blur of notes. You have to raise that threshold by playing at the fastest point where you can still hear the subdivisions, and work on pushing that tempo up. But you also have to work on moving your hands fast enough. I came up with a whole complex process for developing this. I'm hoping to make a video about it but who knows when I'll get time.


@Adi, you're dead right that fast picking is a different motion from slow picking, which is why you hit a speed limit trying to take your slow picking up to speed. Here's a great Cracking the Code post demonstrating that: 

The way you're talking about building speed in bursts is exactly right in my view. Hand synchronisation does become an issue. The way I worked it was to come up with a burst that started and ended on a beat. If I could only manage four notes in a burst, I'd calculate what tempo that needed to be. Then I'd play the four notes as a triplet plus one note on the next beat. In that case, the first note should be a downstroke on the click, and the last one should be an upstroke on the click. Even if it was too fast for me to hear the notes in between, as long as the first and last notes were in the right place I knew I must've got it right (you could record yourself and slow it down if you want to check though!). Then I'd move onto five notes. Recalculate the tempo for 16th notes, and play four notes in a beat plus one note on the next click. Again, first and last notes are on the clicks, this time each with downstrokes. 

Sounds more complicated than it was. I broke the back of my picking problem in a couple of weeks over the summer when I was quarantining. 

tekbow

@Adi theres the vid where it breaks down his technique, and theres also a dedicated interview vid somewhere As well.

The interview made me rather Fond of MAB. Hes a very soft spoken humble guy.

Vibetronic

Metronome, time and practice as all mentioned...plus the pick slant thing. The other important thing is to keep your hand, wrist and arm really relaxed. If you tense up - or hold the pick really tight - it'll inhibit you. The other thing I do is angle the pick slightly towards the headstock. It's a tiny adjustment, but that, coupled with the above, has helped me get loads more accuracy and speed over the last few months. I was fast before, but not always accurate, or more importantly, consistent - been the weakest part of my playing for years and I've hammered the practice on it over the last 3-4 years.

I've also been taking lessons with Martin Goulding - his way involves no hand anchoring (just resting on the strings by the bridge) and letting the arm jog with the pick movements. Not going to try and explain it fully here as it's his thing and I'd do a crap job, but I've used parts of it with my own stuff mentioned in the first para and it does work. I'm still working on doing it exclusively his way, but that'll take some more practice  

tekbow

@digitalkettle, yeah I also agree that Its a tool to have in the box along with the likes of economy picking.

Hell, Sometimes you'll use elements of everything

digitalkettle

tekbow said:

Hell, Sometimes you'll use elements of everything 

Yep...God knows what the next gig will be like!

roberty

Fast and slow picking are different motions really. This video was helpful for me:



Along with the slanting tips from troy grady's videos

I had a bit of a breakthrough with picking motion when learning bark at the moon by ozzy osbourne, just pedaling on the A string while palm muting

I relearnt my picking technique a few years ago. I got worse at playing before I got better because I couldn't change easily between my old (slow) and new (fast) picking styles. It took maybe a year for it to become natural after the key pieces had fallen into place

DLM

Also check out Chris Brooks, for example:

ThePrettyDamned

Helpful thread.

I've found that I can more easily play fast on lighter strings. This wouldn't be a surprise for legato playing, but it surprised me how much more work is required to pick an 11 gauge E compared to a 9 gauge e. 

I also prefer the sound of light strings on humbuckers. Sadly, I play singles mostly  

MAB comes across really nice. I thought he'd be a bit of a nutcase because of his play style, but actually, he seems intelligent, passionate and very musical.