Help improving speed and accuracy

[Trem]

A good piece of advice on muting practice, again it came from paul gilbert from like his first video in the 80's - I think i wrote this out earlier in this thread on one of the first pages.
Anyway but again, this is a good one. You can practice playing lightly with the pick and slowly digging in playing harder then back to lighter and at the same time muting lightly to harder and so forth all combined into one exercise, this is one of the earliest and helpful things for me that i learned, i still do it sometimes and just doing it now i can see i should do it more, lol.

------------12----------------12
---12-13-15---15-13-12-13-15---15-13- and so on... play it anywhere on the neck same basic idea in any scale whatever intervals you like

[Cliff]

Thanks Trem - I definitely need to work more on this. The more I learn, the more I realize there's more to learn. So, not only do I have to play the right notes in the right order, at the right time, but I have to make them all sound good too?
By chance, I picked up my PRS the other day, which I rarely use - nearly all my practicing is done on my Soloist, which I sort of assumed was the fastest, easiest to play guitar. Well, it looks like I can play this sort of stuff more easily on the PRS after all. Here's my latest progress. I thought I was doing pretty well until I recorded it, at which point all the variations in tone, changes in timing, hesitations etc etc become painfully obvious. Still, I'm pretty sure I couldn't play like this a year ago:

[blackhatch]

Hey Cliff.
The thing that i see here is how you have your pick hand. I think if i was to have my pick hand in that pos..............

Hello Trem, i'm really happy for you because you have practicing almost all your life, that is awesome. Well i am glad too to see you practicing with the metronome, i hate people who try to do what they can not do the faster they can and they upload shit to youtube, i hate that. Well i have seen your videos and i could say that you are doing great but you must improve your picking, with 20 years playing i don't think you need to improve your left hand speed, you need to really look every details of what you are doing with your right hand, i mean look at your hand and the direction of your picking, improving that will speed up your hand, "the direction of your picking" if you do a 3 note scale you just need to slide your right hand accross the strings, twin scales are like easier than a 3 note scale, i dont know well but i have practicing very hard for 4 1/2 years just learning songs from tierra santa and iron maiden, at vance, doing scales, sweep picking and i suck at tapping, you can watch my vid, it suck but i played what i've doing really heavily for 4 years, now im kinda happy becouse i have a new guitar and i play better (: ahahahah

hope this helps you
http://youtu.be/ixct68U8zh0

greetings from the ass of the world

[Cliff]

Blackhatch, that's extremely impressive

[BenoA]

Blackhatch, that's extremely impressive

+1

[micha]

Sounds a bit like Viking Kong in the beginning, you're a Racer X fan?
Impressive indeed....

[Trem]

Hello Trem,

hope this helps you
http://youtu.be/ixct68U8zh0

Nice job Blackhatch. Your picking hand is doing very well. Now learn some musical scales and move it around, play to some riffs and you'll be ripping youtube up in no time.


Edit: Seems to me i remember at a time when it was just a few years into paying i could rip really good, then you go into this phase where it seems you are going backwards, like when you start learning scales and theory.. Anyone notice that?, lol. Like when i was 17 or so i could play fast as shit, though it didn't exactly know my scales as much. I also had a friend who could play super fast then as well, but he wasn't playing in scales really, just patterns so fast you couldn't tell. Then when i taught him some scales and theory later, he wasn't as fast for a few years, lol.

[Argos]

Nice job Blackhatch. Your picking hand is doing very well. Now learn some musical scales and move it around, play to some riffs and you'll be ripping youtube up in no time.


Edit: Seems to me i remember at a time when it was just a few years into paying i could rip really good, then you go into this phase where it seems you are going backwards, like when you start learning scales and theory.. Anyone notice that?, lol. Like when i was 17 or so i could play fast as shit, though it didn't exactly know my scales as much. I also had a friend who could play super fast then as well, but he wasn't playing in scales really, just patterns so fast you couldn't tell. Then when i taught him some scales and theory later, he wasn't as fast for a few years, lol.

I think it's a consequence of becoming too ingrained in certain routines; your hands are on autopilot. One of the biggest challenges in learning to play is ensuring that you learn how to play, rather than what to play.

[BenoA]

Had a "somewhat bad" rehearsal last evening and I'm back in my "playing sucks" mood...

I feel like I'm doing always the same pentatonic runs and licks when improvising.

One word of advice I'd like to share: don't always practice sitting. Also practice standing up with the strap adjusted so you feel confortable.

[blackhatch]

Nice job Blackhatch. Your picking hand is doing very well. Now learn some musical scales and move it around, play to some riffs and you'll be ripping youtube up in no time......

thanks you all, you are really nice people. The reason behind why i play scales was because i used to hate it at the beggining and was my perdition/frustration 'cause i am too much perfectionist, i can't see waves on the bedding. I started to practice too much with the metronome and it helped me a lot till now. I started to play at 19, im 23 years old now and i still practicing too much, i don't want to rip youtube, i don't like it, i now doing my own music, you can hear it if you want...i just have gp files...
well, if you need a guitar player in your band i can travel to u.s. ahahahahah
joking

[Cliff]

I'd hoped to post another video with my progress on Flight Of The Bumblebee. I've been practicing the first section like crazy. But it always seems to be the same: I get up to a certain speed, feel happy with it then, the next day, I either can't get that speed back or I do, but it sounds really scrappy. Not sure if I was playing it well the previous day or I was just oblivious to the mistakes. I recorded myself over the weekend, and frankly it all sounded worse than what I posted here a couple of weeks ago. I'm beginning to get really disheartened by all this.
I tried switching guitars, then switching picks. In both cases, I thought I was getting somewhere, then hit the same wall. Then last night I took one particularly troublesome phrase and just played it over and over as fast as I could. It began to sound a little like one of those Paul Gilbert licks on Youtube where he's demonstrating picking. If I could play that fast consistently, I'd be extremely happy. But this was without a metronome - I know I can't play like that in time. And chances are I won't be able to play like that at all tonight.
Question: when repeatedly alternate picking a fast lick that crosses two strings, do people keep the base of your hand anchored and switch strings with wrist motion, or do you use your forearm. Now, if you're playing the same lick, but moving across the strings (say 1 and 2, then 2 and 3, then 3 and 4, etc), do you use your forearm at all to switch strings? I've been trying to keep my wrist motion just for picking on an individual string, and use forearm motion for moving between strings. I'm now beginning to think there's not enough speed or accuracy in my forearm for this. Also, it's harder keep a consistent palm mute going if I allow the hand to move across the strings in this way. Any thoughts?

[Trem]

Since my last post and looking at what i do wrong. I noticed some players while watching videos - they do use a bit of free movement in their 'forearm' - and that is something i never really did. Al Dimeola does it.
I tend to either be anchored and muting or hand lifted up a bit and not muting, but still kind of stationary - while my fingers holding the pick move over the strings and sometimes even then my pinky is anchored on the body - so when i get to the lower bass strings the pick motion is sort of coming from the middle up. I mean i'm using alternate picking, but it's just the force of motion, hard to explain, everything emanates from the middle strings. So i'm kinda picking 'up' on the lower, and 'out' on the higher.

So i have been trying to 'hover' a bit more, especially when doing arpeggios - certain shapes of them anyway. Anything that is like 'acoustic picking' or that should be an easy like 3 string chord shape i have a hard time just raking over them with ease, i see like Loomis do it or whatever and it's totally easy, i can see it, it's nothing but 1-2-3-2-1 string pick the notes big whoop, but i have a hard time not hitting some strings twice!!! Like a d-g-b-e string chord shape arpeggio, i will hit the high E twice, once going down, and once again on the way up. Not supposed to do that, lol. What i found is if i start on an upstroke it's no problem. Though usually when coming from another line into an arpeggio like that, it should be a downstroke. But whatever.

One thing i will say, and this is from critiquing myself to death over the years, and trying to compare myself to some other person, like "they can do it so easily, why can't i ?" It's easy! But it's Not easy for me!
And the thing is,...simply..in my opinion, some people have it, and some people don't. I don't care how much you practice it, someone can do it without thinking about it, and someone else will have to put all their effort and brain power into trying to squeeze it out. Now that's not to say ever give up, i don't.. but at some point you have to say to yourself - at least for piece of mind, like, "I may never play Flight of the Bumble bee like Nuno". Oh well, i'll keep trying, just don't let it piss you off. What you want to do is find what you 'Can Do' and just try to do it the best you can. It will make you much more happy. If you can't pick every single note at 160 bpm like a machine gun - use hammer ons and pull offs , cheat or whatever you want to call it, just do what you can do get your expression out. Yngwie does it, i mean he can rattle notes off strict alternate picking if he wants, but he also uses hammer ons and pull offs a lot more than i realized.

Some things i've also come to conclusion is, i'm a little scatterbrained of a person, i day dream when i'm watching a movie, i lose the story line and start thinking about the set, or what that actor was thinking about when he was delivering that line. Or reading something i'll dwell on that last sentence or thought while mindlessly reading the next paragraph not absorbing it cause i'm thinking about the last thing i read. If you are a person like that, it might be part of it - just my theory anyway. Like when you read or hear someone who's done something amazing or is really good at what they do, they are focused to an extreme, like an olympian or sports star or whatever learn of a family member dying right before a competition, and they seem to just be able to block it out and focus only on their task. Those people often do the amazing things. So if at all you can put yourself in "that place" try to do it, it seems to be proven. Meditate, clear your mind, don't think abut the bills, or work, or whatever...personally smoking pot does it for me. I play better, learn more, and get more out of practice when i'm high, lol. But i haven't been high in a long time, and i notice my decrease in progress.
I think it's my form of ADD medication, lol.

[Cliff]

Trem - thanks once again for such a considered response!
I understand what you mean about picking from the middle of the strings. At first I'd decided I didn't want to do this. As you say, you pick 'up' on the lower and 'out' on the higher - I was worried this would mean I couldn't pick as fast as if my forearm was parallel to the strings and I was swinging my wrist from its center. However, I'm now thinking of going back to what you describe. It's all a trade-off, I guess, and maybe the trick is to be flexible and adapt to the passage at hand. I was trying to watch my right hand very closely last night, and I realised that, when moving between strings, I had no idea how I was avoiding (or trying to avoid) hitting the wrong string as I switched to the next. So far as I could tell,
It's hard to come to terms with the idea that I can't do something as well as the next guy. But of course it's human nature. You only have to watch young kids to see how some are more graceful, athletic or whatever than others. For what it's worth, I'm crap at catching a ball and playing video games too . Talented people usually say how much work they put in on top of their talent to achieve success, but I wonder how many people put just as much work in and achieve very little, but are never heard from? I hate the idea of wasting my time on something that's basically beyond me, but I'd also hate to admit defeat if it just required a little more perseverance. I'm beginning to wonder if a few lessons might be in order.
Regarding lack of concentration - I definitely notice this. It's particularly difficult when trying to practice something well known slowly - my mind check's out in no time, yet I'm supposed to be concentrating to fix the mistakes I can't perceive properly when playing as fast as I can. In my job, I regularly achieve that 'in the zone' feeling and time just flies by as I do what needs to be done. Trying to achieve this with guitar playing is harder.

[Cliff]

So after all of yesterday's moaning and complaining, I had a much more successful practice session last night. Admittedly, I'd lowered my expectations somewhat.
I wonder how if this up and down thing is a result of changes in ability from day to day, and how much is down to perception. Maybe when I think I'm playing well, I'm being less self-critical, or not hearing mistakes that at other times seem glaring.
Anyway, I think I discovered something useful. (I have to be wary here, 'cause often I think I've found a new way of doing things and after a few days I realise it's no help.) I was playing with my right hand totally floating. The only contact was between pick and strings, and a little bit of light palm muting. As a moved between strings, I was moving my forearm up or down, but this motion was coming from both the shoulder and elbow. Last night, I discovered if I anchored my forearm on the top of the guitar body, I could move between strings with a very slight movement at the elbow. Picking suddenly seemed much easier and cleaner, and palm muting more consistent. (I used to play like this, but for reasons I now forget I thought it was better to have my entire right arm and hand as free as possible).

[CowboyFromHell]

I have to say that this thread has given me alot of respect for certain people here. It's a very difficult thing to put your struggles out there for people to see. That takes a real man to do. I also have to say that it's fucking awesome to see all the help people here are stepping up and supplying. No insults (that I've seen) just alot of constructive criticism and good advice. I feel your fight Trem and it can be rather discouraging but it seems like you've made up your mind not to let it kick your ass. For that I commend you. I agree with you about the "smoking" thing. Seems that doing it slows down my brain enough to focus on what I need to and, as you said, it does seem to relax me and I play better. Keep it up and you'll get it. You're observant and have some great people to refer to for help.