I have been spending 1 hour each day on the picking open strings to progressive tuplet figurings through the day as I get gradually more unfrozen...I have been @ it now for several months now...i have hit a ceiling @ 60-70 B.P.M. for sextuplets (depending on how good of a day it happens to be)...I have been grinding the hell out of this and a bit discouraged @ how long my metronome has been stuck on 60(-ish)... my primary objective is to be totally comfy when doing this so I refuse to charge forward up the nome just to be able to pick fast as a tense wreck...Is it possible i am doing something wrong, or have i gotten to the point of diminishing returns?

Nick, shoot me a video of yourself doing this and email it to me so I can see what you are doing. Tough to say without watching you.

uderoche@gmail.com

ATM it is not possible for me to film myself )-: I don't have a camera and I am a broke college student...tho I will be graduating in a few weeks with an undergrad in legal studies and an undergrad in economics (-:....I enjoy the 6-12 hours of shedding that being in college allows me to do and I am petrified by the prospect of graduation and getting a job that will get in the way of the shed...I will therefore continue w/1 hour/day/string picking approach...But I must say that continuing to do so requires me to have faith in what Pebber's teaching vids say...I hope he's right about this picking open strings thingy....b/c if not, I will go insane long before I ever get to reach my guitar goals.

Sextuplets you mean six notes per beat right, do you mean just down picking thats not bad. whats your alternate picking like..

Sextuplets is my alternate picking >-:

I pretty much do this with the metronome on 60 too. having never really measured my speed. but just been doing sixtuplets at 140bpm so it must be helping. I spend an hour (At The Least) on down, hour on up, hour on alternate... on alternate days depending on time. plus my accuracy is soo much better

Reading my post back i actually do day 1, single string day2, adjacent day3, non- adjacent, splitting it like means i can really focus without rushing..

Nick, groups of six at 60-70bpm isn't bad. Practice doing it using only downstrokes then practice it only with upstrokes. Also, speed the metronome up to a point that you cannot do it....say 100bpm...force yourself to try this for 30minutes or so. Then, back it down to 60bpm. You will find it much easier and more relaxed. Also, count these things out loud before you play "1-2-3 1-2-3" or "1-2-3-4-5-6" say it out loud a few times. clap it out loud at a particular tempo. Also, focus on accenting the "1." The 1 is what you are trying to get back to. 1-2-3-4-5-6 then back to the 1 so accent the 1...put a little more pick into that one.

Try accenting all 6 notes! The true virtuosos can accent any note they want at speed. All this requires years of practice. Sounds like you are on the right track but don't get hung up on one thing. Practice triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, etc etc at different speeds. Do all this with alternate, scalpel, and sarod. Then try to mix the picking styles into "hybrid" type styles. Alternate and scalpel together. Sarod and scalpel together.

Funny you should say that pebber. I was once throwing a few darts usual scores then started getting in a big argument with the missus. was so pissed off but realized after i was hitting scores i would never normally get.

Pebb was right about being pissed off...I got myself all wriled-up today...went from 12 noon untill about 20 min ago...got the chromatic scale on single strings up to tuplets of 7 leveling off @ 74 B.P.M w/out having to use slurs (-:...& as a plus, I no longer feel like being pissed off about certain persons who shall go un-named...

You must push.....
Push until you are 50% clean....50% slop.
Over a week or two you will become 80% clean 20% slop....
Do this for about an hour a day at the end of your practice day so you are warmed up.

Whats important about this exercise is you will experience the next level of your playing...even if it is slop at first....its those time when it is NOT that will drive you forward!

@Pebber I really wish you had your own guitar shaolin dojo like you say in some of your videos I would move to wherever it would be for lessons in person lol

hhh cool technique,
you know what helps enourmously too (me at least) ?

If i cant play it at a certain speed, i just do it insanely slow.. e.g if i cant do it at 180 bpm, i just play it at 90 bpm..
if i go back and cant still do it fine at 180 bpm , i practice it at 60 bpm.. etc..

After a while of doing it perfectly slow you can bump up the speed :) I have found the slower you practice, the faster you actually learn something, another advantage it seems to have is that it takes away the need of having to go back to it to "clean it up" it also makes it way harder to let a bad habit slip by and get engrained ( is it like this for any of you guys?, have you tried it?)

I have been learning the drums for a few months now and initially you need to spend 99% of your time with a metronome playing at speeds that induce fatigue. If you do not and just use your 'internal metronome' then nothing will ever challenge you to play faster and you will not improve. If you are fatiguing badly then take a break, whether it is 5 minutes or 5 hours doesn't matter. What is assured is that when you play that first drum beat after your break it will be 100% spot on, then you will see it die again 10 seconds later. You continue the process until your muscles and brain can do the task at that speed for longer, which is why we need to practice everyday so our body is challenged consistently.

The same thing applies to guitar, you need to be pushing yourself. Getting pissed off is one way to do it, that will take your mind off fatigue. But I do like Slashiepie's idea as well, if you can not play something at a really fast tempo then slow it down to a snail's pace and try it there. Anyone can play fast but playing slow with control is just as hard if not harder. In most cases you could probably attribute your lack of success to technique anyway, so playing it extremely slowly and concentrating on using the best technique possible certainly will not hurt.

Getting pissed off is one way to do it but I like Slashiepie's idea as well.