Help improving speed and accuracy

[Endrik]

Accuracy comes with strong rhythmic motion. Just like you can say if a drummer can play or not by his hi-hat performance, how his quarter or eight notes are in the pocket etc. the same goes for guitar. Every lick has to be rhythmically fluid.
To get really good at this I'd look into cross-rhythms, starting with playing 3 against 4 and 5 against 4 and then moving to more complex polyrhythms, playing 7 against 5 and so on.
And then starting accenting every even note and then accenting every odd number instead.

[javert]

Thanks, Cliff. That's actually not be me playing in that particular solo. That's our bass player/singer who also plays guitar occasionally He's great. He's playing a Gibson Les Paul with a P90 pickup (I think) through his Mesa Boogie Triaxis. I know you own a Mark V, so I'll assume that you're a little biased towards the Mesa Boogie sound

As for exercises, I'll say that I can feel that I have improved tremendously since I started playing in this band (that's about 2 years ago now) after an almost 10 year hiatus. The exercises are good for learning the basic movements, timing and such, but it takes a lot of time before it's a natural part of your playing. Plus, your brain has to adjust to making decisions at that speed too. I might start practicing exercises intensively again at some point, but right now I'm more focused on execution with the band, and with making music, of course. I, though, have a tendency to always work a bit on some new technical things, and still do, but it's not in a super organized way.

[Endrik]

Playing with a band certainly makes one improve a lot more than practicing scales alone. Every pro preaches this.
Even a mediocre talent who has played with bands a lot pulls lives, jams and studio sessions off much more easily than some wiz. who only plays alone.

[blackhatch]

greetings cliff im still here, will you upload a new vid? are you playing faster now?

[Cliff]

That's actually not be me playing in that particular solo. That's our bass player/singer who also plays guitar occasionally He's great. He's playing a Gibson Les Paul with a P90 pickup (I think) through his Mesa Boogie Triaxis. I know you own a Mark V, so I'll assume that you're a little biased towards the Mesa Boogie sound

Well, I am a big fan of the Boogie sound. On a second listen, the solo on the second track is much more musically interesting and expertly played

Endrik - yep, I realized quite late on that my rhythm wasn't strong enough here. I find I always forget about it when I'm trying too hard to go fast. Polyrhythms I think are beyond me for now, but I'll definitely focus more on accents for simpler figures from now on in.

Blackhatch - good to hear from you again. Am I playing faster now? A little, but not as fast as you . Very impressive clip you posted.

My exercise period ended last night - the last one I'll be doing this year. I'll see over the next few days how much it has benefited me in a general sense. I was pretty disappointed last night. I found I simply couldn't get a good rhythm flowing if I included the position shifts - I'd bitten off more than I could chew. I can do the hammer-on/pull-off 6-note pattern in a single position considerably faster and smoother, but the position shift is slowing me down. On the plus side, both are considerably better than before I started working on them 11 days ago - maybe 25-30% faster, but much more solid.

Regarding joining a band for improvement. I'd like to, but I'm really hesitant to reply to an ad and audition with a bunch of strangers. I still don't feel I'm good enough. If it was just a group of friends jamming for fun, that'd be one another thing altogether.

[ginsambo]

I think a lot, if not all of the rhythm comes from your head. I have problems with playing some stuff, cross string stuff, that I can easily play, but struggle to remember how it's phrased, simply because it goes against my natural grain of feel. So I have to practice and practice to remember how it's phrased. Naturally you lean to guitar players whose licks and overall feel sounds like your own, but it's trying to master, and I mean fluently with bells and whistles on, those guys who are like, at a complete opposite magnetic pole to you with their pghrasing and style. I think memory plays a big factor. If something sounds weird and unnatural to you, you just don't remember it. I guess it's all about practice, certainly that improves your speed memory, but definitely different things come easier and more naturally to different people because of something inherent, not speed necessarily but definitely the phrasing and feel that they lean toward.

That said I can recite a thousand arpegio type riffs in my head that I make up. But when I check out how I can play them on the fretboard, it's like...fuck that...I cannot be bothered to learn that fast. I suppose that is where the discipline comes in.


But yeah it comes from brain training, more than technique I think, definitely. Especially if you can hear or feel or think it fast.

Next best thing to a band situation for practicing your rhythms is jamming to records, I've been doing it for 25 odd years now and still do it.

Think about it like this, you didn't even have any lessons when you learnt to talk and communicate. That is infinitely more complex than playing the guitar fast!

[Endrik]

Endrik - yep, I realized quite late on that my rhythm wasn't strong enough here. I find I always forget about it when I'm trying too hard to go fast. Polyrhythms I think are beyond me for now, but I'll definitely focus more on accents for simpler figures from now on in.

Not all polyrhythms are hard. You don't have to jump straight into traditional Cameroonian dance music or playing something by Igor Stravinsky.

Even playing simple triplets is good workout. Instead of four 8th or 16th notes, play 3 even 8th or 16ths notes for every quarter note. Any lick or riff is fine.
Get the triplets fluid. It improves your sense of time a lot.
Then try 5 note groups against quarter beat.

[Cliff]

Oh right - that's what I've been doing. Playing groups of three or groups of six for every quarter note.

[Cliff]

Naturally you lean to guitar players whose licks and overall feel sounds like your own

Yep - I started out trying to play like Paige. Of course I can't, but I think his phrasing is more embedded in my subconscious than that of any other. I've wanted to play like Van Halen for almost as long, but have always failed. It's not just the speed and trickery - I think his phrasing is difficult to nail, and plays a more important part in his style than is immediately obvious.

[javert]

Well, I am a big fan of the Boogie sound. On a second listen, the solo on the second track is much more musically interesting and expertly played

That's more like it

[Cliff]

As threatened, here's a vid of the legato practice. I'm afraid it didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped.

Comments greatly appreciated.

[javert]

That sounds and looks okay to me, Cliff. The only thing I noticed is that your hammer-ons and pull-offs are a bit weak in strength (compared to the string noise).

[Cliff]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll try and keep that string noise down and making the fingers 'snappier'.
I guess I'm a bit unhappy because it doesn't sound as smooth to me as it should, nor as fast as I was able to do last week. At certain times when I was practicing it seemed to just flow (presumably I was 'in the pocket', as Endrik put it), whereas yesterday every beat felt like a hurdle to overcome, even at relatively slow speeds.
I think there are two aspects to the smoothness. The first is even dynamics, which I haven't achieved here, since the first note is picked and has a lot of emphasis, while the 6th note is hammered on with the pinky, so sounds particularly weak, and finishes earlier in readiness for starting the next beat (and is accompanied by a bit of string noise, as you point out). The second aspect is evenness of time for each of the notes. Again, I don't feel I nailed that here, but I think at certain points in my practice I had managed it.
It just goes to demonstrate that practice by repetition only works if you're repeating something that's correct .
As I worked through this, my speed would increase, and then I'd become dissatisfied with a particular aspect, try to correct it and slow down, and repeat. It's a great learning exercise, because I became very aware of the quality of what I was playing. But at some point impatience and the desire for speed took precedence, and I ended up subconsciously saying 'this is good enough' and cranking the metronome up.

[javert]

I think that with respect to legato, there are also different ways of going about it. Playing with by band mates, I noticed that I tend to try to make every note stand out very clearly (almost like picking it) when doing legato while one of the other guitar players (the bass player whose solo you liked) has a more fluid kind of legato. It's actually the same thing with our picking. We're quite different in style, I think. Mine is very clear and snappy while his is more soft, but I also think he can play some things a bit faster than me as a result, but he also cannot accentuate like I can. I think my style comes from listening to somebody like Uli Roth.

Regarding the string noise, I think it's a matter of dampening with both your palm and lifting your left-hand fingers a bit to control the strings. So, once a string has been plucked or excited some other way (like with a hammer-on) you lift the finger a bit but not off the string. The reamining strings you control with the palm of your right hand. Anyways, it sounds quite nice and even to me.

[Iivari]

Cliff, to me, your legato playing sounds "weak". Personally, I try to make the notes sound as loud, as they would sound as I'm picking them. I try to hit strings hard enough, so they can produce good tone. Hope this helps !