Thanks Pebber. You, Ursin, FRaKh and the members here rock! I've never before made such effective and sure progress as since following this site and these lessons. Much appreciated.

I think I had a pretty productive day yesterday. I spent 90 minutes or so on legato alone, starting slow and deliberate at 72bpm with triplets. I worked up to sextuplets at 84bpm, at which point it become too sloppy, noisy and generally lacking in clarity. But on the way I got to work on those gentle pulls just like you say, and the sound started to come together and create, at times at least, an even flow.

I then put in a good amount of time on first sweeps and then tapping, before finally trying some picking sequences. I've been neglecting picking of late, but was pleasantly surprised to find that, what with the left-hand workout and the much lighter pick attack, I was able to get a sweeter tone than ever before. (I know the light pick attack has been mentioned before, but I'm a slow learner, and sometimes it takes a while for all the pieces to fall into place.)

I've been working on the trills most nights (again, slow and deliberate with each combo, followed by fast), and, since Ursin's latest sweep lesson, I'm going to start incorporating the ladder exercises.

Here's my latest legato progress:



The three clips here were taken from an hour's worth of drilling the same scale.

At the slower speed, I'm trying to keep the volume as consistent as possible between picked, pulled and hammered notes. Please let me know if you think I'm on the right track.

Then I tried to push the speed, up to the point where the quality is clearly unacceptable. I noticed three problems with the faster attempts: I tend to pick too hard with all the excitement, so I lose some of the fluidity; I think my first finger is no longer moving into position to correctly damp the other strings; and my pinky becomes sloppy and can hit other strings by accident.

Again, any comments/advice/criticism would be greatly appreciated.

So far I am a couple minutes into Pebbers new video ...I am salivating @ geting a whole hours worth!

This is awesome - thanks very much Pebber!

Just finished my first hour of drilling from this vid. Just playing the C scale at quarter notes, 120bpm. I see now how playing like this - decoupling the start of each beat from the string change - forces one to become more mindful of the dynamics. I'm sure this is going to help make it smoother and more flexible (for when I move on to the sequences....)

Anyone else trying this?

didn't get to this video yet as it requires 14 position scale system. i'm still studying the 7 position system. plus daily drill of ursins 2 string sweeps and pebbers ladder + trill exercises. will start this video once i get comfortable with 7 and 12 position scale systems.

Pebber is 100% dead on in this video about listening. We don't talk enough about listening. So important. Listening and watching.

definitely will, starting today. thanks for the video pebber. and for ursins advice about sweep picking ladder exercises. i'm having fun practicing since i came across pebbers youtube channel and forum. and my playing has improved a lot.

Day three of following the instructions in Pebber's vid. Does this seem like I'm on the right track? All comments appreciated:

I still really suck at this myself, so I'm torn in typing anything at all. But since you helped me with a dynamics issue in the sweep thread, here goes. Close your eyes and listen to your video again. Did you notice any pattern in your dynamics? I did. I don't think I'm supposed to.

Thanks Damon - you're feedback is always appreciated.

I was surprised to hear a pattern of groups of 4. I was expecting groups of 3 - ie accent on the string changes. Is this what you hear? My metronome is set to emphasize the first beat in every four, so it sounds like I'm actually following the metronome. I know this isn't ideal, but I'd prefer that over the groups of 3. Or am I deluding myself :)?

Dunno. For me, it started more in 3s, some 4s in the middle, and maybe 3s a bit at the end. Maybe I'm hearing things that aren't there. But anyway, what caused me to write my response above was the tone your pinky hammer-ons were producing. Not all of them, but most of them seemed a bit hotter to me than the other tones. Again, I find this very difficult myself, and I'm not sure if I'm nit-picking here or not. If I can find the time to actually practice, I'll try to show myself later this week to get some return feedback.

That makes total sense - thanks for that. Looking forward to hearing how you're doing with it.

It was clear, and that's what I thought I was doing. It's a little faster than that, because I understood you to mean to work up to a speed of quarter notes at 200bpm after a month, so I've been incrementing a little every day.

Yeah, it was just one note per click, but the metronome was emphasizing the first of every four clicks, which is probably what you're hearing. I've since set it to a strict even rhythm, and I'll be sure to make it more audible next time.

Thanks for the feedback!

I have been doing trill exercises for a while but I think that I was neglecting about moving across the fretboard. For about 3 months I did only moving horizontally across the fretboard and i was getting pretty good at it. A few weeks ago i tried moving vertically across the fretboard and I could hardly do it. The problem was when changing the strings. Since then I have been practicing it vertically only everyday across the entire fretboard and this has helped me a lot in playing my legato and maintaining the picking and legato. Here I have Lesson 7.36 Four finger trill pattern with open strings 0-1-4-2-3 @ 235 notes per second and 2 notes per beat (eighth notes). I do strongly recommend doing one trill pattern every day across the entire fretboard for better control on your fretting hand. I have seen nothing but progress and progress on my playing since i started doing this.

How do you guys keep track of your tempo? I mean Pebber has thousands of lessons/exercises. How do you keep a track of what tempo you played an exercise last time or what measure (1 note per beat or 2 notes per beat ...) you played last time. Last time could be yesterday or weeks or months ago. Does anyone keep a track of it? Please let me know.

I appreciate any comments about the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J62rZIQx3Z8&feature=youtu.be

Pretty cool! Have you considered running those permutation trill exercises using other scale shapes instead of just 4 chromatic notes? You know, many birds with one stone: scale shapes, stretching the fingers, and trills?

Quote: dlraben wrote in post #75

---

Pretty cool! Have you considered running those permutation trill exercises using other scale shapes instead of just 4 chromatic notes? You know, many birds with one stone: scale shapes, stretching the fingers, and trills?

---

Very cool!