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The exercise in Fig.1 has piqued my interest. I use a similar exercise but always play it as triplets (groups of three) or semiquaver triplets (groups of 6). Playing it in semiquavers (groups of 4) and alternating with semiquaver triplets (groups of 6) is going to do my head in for a while and is likely to be my next obsession
@stratman3142 Terry Syrek is great. Even now, with the dystonia. Inspirational.
Welcome to my world! I love it when the phrasing changes through gears like that. It's a feature of some classic Racer X riffs, and also some Di Meola and Holdsworth lines that really caught my ear.
In terms of @RedRabbit's technique development, it's one step beyond resting in between "speed bursts".
http://i.imgur.com/nYo2k7Y.jpg
This one continues through the pentatonic shape making it 5 bars in total. I can get this up to about 120bpm.
http://i.imgur.com/C9X39LI.jpg
I'm told this is a Paul Gilbert style lick. I can get up to 116bpm - maybe 120 on a good day
http://i.imgur.com/pOiafoe.jpg
This one comes from a Queen solo (A Kind of Magic I think). On the original every two beats were recorded separately and played using a mix of picking and legato but my tutor thought the full phrase would make for a good alt picking exercise. This is the one that I really struggle with. I had got it up to 116/120bpm but then got stuck at 104. Currently back up to around 108 but I'm still not sure what's caused the set back.
http://i.imgur.com/UH4QJgj.jpg
This is one of the single string exercise I've been doing - it continues down the neck finishing at the 5th fret. If warmed up I can play this cleanly at 140bpm - maybe a little faster.
In terms of rests between repetitions - the first and last exercises I'll tend to rest for a bar between repeats. The two two bar phrases I'll loop so the only rest is the quarter note at the end of the phrase. Either way I try to get through 5 clean repetitions before increasing the speed which I have been doing at 4bpm increments though I have reduced it to 2bpm when I get near my limit now.
I've watched some of the Troy Grady material on youtube (Cracking the Code?) but it seemed to only superficially tackle the problem (more entertainment than instruction). I'm guessing that the paid for material covers things in more depth but having spent money on a Claus Levin course before (possibly very good but I never got past the seemingly endless waffle) I'm wary of buying another video course.
Troy Grady's lesson should help you sort things out to be able to navigate it a little better and get playing it faster:
I take your a fan of the Troy Grady videos then. Have you tried any of the paid for material?
Most importantly, I can see what I need to avoid, e.g. starting three notes per string on a downstroke with a 'downward pick slant' would require a 'bounce' to get over to the next string for the upstroke. So what do you do? Start on an upstroke / start with upward pick slanting / even number of notes per string / etc.
I don't like the idea of pre-canned approaches...so I started experimenting with changing the slant on demand...it starts to ingrain after a while and, when you get it right, it feels good
Have you ever considered changing the way you hold the pick completely?
About 10 years ago I saw the Shawn Lane "Paris" DVD and noticed the way he held the pick - he slices through the strings, just like Jorge Strunz does -
I'm 99% sure that Jimmy Herring, Chris Poland and George Benson use this picking technique too, although I haven't seen them picking up close so I can't be sure. Bruce Bouilett picks like this and Paul Gilbert used to pick like this.
It's also how I have been holding the pick for many years now. This enables me to use very light picks (Dunlop Max Grip .60mm) because I am slicing the strings the thickness doesn't matter because the pick isn't really bending, plus lighter picks give me a lighter attack.
So, where does this way of picking help with alternate?
Well, I find it gives you more of pendulum like movement, the tip of the pick is dipping in an out between the strings without having to worrying about pick slanting. Watch this video from 11:03 onwards with the flamingo analogy.
Here is my attempt at your Gilbert lick, I play about 120bpm then increase to 126bpm and it does get difficult, but I guess with more practice I could maybe get it up to 130bpm.
Changing the way you hold the pick might be the very thing you're after.
The speeds you're achieving seem fairly respectable and I'm not sure I can do much better.
Oooh @Bingefeller, I didn't realise you were a Benson-style picker!
Dan mentions many other players who use this grip.
I, too, am a fan of Troy Grady's content. I've only consumed his free stuff thus far, though. I can see that some folks would struggle with his format, but there's a lot to be learned piecemeal, even without parting with any cash. I love the level of detail he goes into, but I'm a nerd who remembers Judy Letostak.
Grady's CtC episode on Eric Johnson would sort you for the first lick.
I'm not familiar enough with Queen to recognise the original lick in your five-string example, OP, so I might be missing something, but it struck me as an awkward fingering (A to C# on the B-string?) to use as an exercise. How do you fare with a straight three-note-per-string scale over five strings?
The thing about Troy's stuff is that it's quite technical and very, very deep. The stuff on Youtube covers about 90% of what's in his paid material. If you want the tabs and full length interviews then it's worth the money.
Here's where I'm at with the Queen exercise:
http://i.imgur.com/gNQKpK2.png
I cut the stretch out
As an exercise it's been pretty useful if only for causing me to start this discussion.
@bingefeller I've watched quite a bit of Cracking the Code and some other Troy Grady videos over the past couple of days. Found some very interesting stuff on the mechanics of picking with some visuals which have made me look at how I actually pick. When I've got more time I'll post a link to the video and go into a bit more depth about what I've found out and what I'm thinking about now.
For the time being I think it suffices to say that I may have just jumped down a rabbit hole!
@digitalkettle how do you set up GP 7 like that?
and this one
Most of my picking motion is coming from the wrist (wrist deviation as it's referred to in the first video) with a tiny bit of forearm rotation and no movement from the elbow. I'm thinking the heavy wrist involvement is leading to quite a bit of fatigue.
The second video shows Troy using primarily forearm rotation to get his main picking motion. I'm assuming this is what a lot of material tends to describe as a motion like turning a door knob - this analogy never made sense to me being a wrist picker.
Just by moving my arm about away from the guitar forearm rotation feels more natural and I can make a picking movement much quicker than I can with just the wrist and there seems to be far less fatigue.
It seems to be something worth exploring but, at the moment, actually picking from the forearm feels very unnatural (presumably due to how long I've been picking from the wrist) with very little control.
Obviously the other big thing that crops up in Cracking the Code is pick slanting. I think this is something I've already been doing to a certain degree but the angle of the pick changes as I move across the strings. I start off on the high E with quite a pronounced downward pick slant. By the time I get up to the low E the angle is pretty much perpendicular to the strings - if anything there's probably a bit of upward slant.
If I focus on the Eric Johnson style lick above - where I tend to get caught up is on the lower strings particularly on the A and E pairing. If I just play the pattern on the top three strings I can get up to 126bpm. Not a huge gain but considering I've not really changed anything yet it's enough proof to convince me there some validity to the approach.
It does seem that the downward pick slanting only really helps with certain licks though. The Paul Gilbert lick doesn't benefit from it unless I start it with an upstroke (and that feels weird enough that it's actually slowing my down at the moment) and the Brian May lick changes string on both up and down strokes which confuses matters slightly. It's a shame I don't have the original transcription anymore - I don't know how Brian May picks but, assuming he's a downward pick slanter, I'm guessing his use of legato may well coincide with where a string change would otherwise occur after a down stroke.
Anyway, I'm going to persevere with both downward pick slanting and forearm rotation for a while and see where it gets me. The seeming limitations of downward pick slanting do concern me a bit but given that I'm a huge Eric Johnson fan I think I can get some decent mileage out of it.