Ha! Thomas Keller (owner of The French Laundry, one of America's best restaurants) said something similar about carrots. If you see a great big pile of carrots you have to peel and slice, and think 'oh crap', you're probably in the wrong business.
(And then there's Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance - definitely worth a read for thoughts along these lines.)
Ursin, Pebber - thanks both. I am indeed working on both hands. I feel like me left-hand has improved quite a bit over the last few days. And thanks for posting the legato vid again. Watching it again refreshed the memory somewhat, and I'm fixing what wasn't quite right before.
Hey guys - thanks a lot - it's really good to have this confirmed.
I think my question was originally unclear. At first I didn't understand Nick's response, until I realized he thought I was talking about lightness of touch and butterfly feeling with the right hand.
So one thing I'm a little confused about. There's talk of lightness of touch, hand feeling like a butterfly etc etc. Does this only apply to picked passages? For legato, should I be aiming for using as much finger strength as possible? Should my touch be as light as possible for picking? I wonder if my attempts to use a light touch are causing me to make my fingers move too slowly to hit the timings accurately. But I worry if I use too much force I'm going to learn habits that I won't be able to speed up.
Damon, Ursin - thanks both for the awesome feedback. This is what makes this forum such a great place in my opinion.
Yeah, I was pushing the speed too much here. Usually I don't play any of these this fast. (I fell into temptation after a guy on another forum claimed - and I seriously doubt it - that he could do exercises 1-5 at 160bpm).
So one thing I've noticed is that when I play at this sort of speed, a little beyond where I'm comfortable, then my finger motions aren't quite the same as when I'm playing slower. For instance, the part of the glitchiness in ex 16 comes from a pull-off from my pinky to third finger. I've noticed I can do this much better if the third finger is well arched at the knuckle first - it gives the pinky something to lever against without requiring much pressure - but of course when I'm playing too fast this arch isn't there cause I put the fingers down too quickly without precision. There are similar issues with exercises 1-5, I think. Too fast and the fingers aren't where I expect them to be.
Regarding exercise 33, there are two separate problems, I think. The one I mentioned, on the shift from 8th to 5th position, is most definitely a left-hand issue. With the shift, the lick switches from being 1st, 2nd and 4th fingers to 1, 3rd and 4th. Also, the span changes from 4 to 3 frets. I think these two things together are throwing me off so my stance isn't quite right after the shift - just something to work on. The other problem is a more general synch issue - sometimes I can start and the two hands aren't in time with each other :). That didn't seem to be a problem with this particular recording; maybe because I'd spent so long warming up my left hand.
So, yeah, more practice at a slow and manageable speed with a focus on precision, clarity etc. And then occasionally letting rip! Sounds good. Thanks guys!.
After that, I'm a little embarrassed to post this, but what the hell.
I've been focussing on Stetina's exercises 1-5 (plus trilling, not shown here). The speed is a little too high for me here, and it made me realize how much extra time I need to spend on strengthening my pinky. The distorted legato exercises don't sound as well articulated as I'd like, and there's lots of string noise. I think when I'm playing too fast, my fingers flail about a little more than usual and knock the other strings. I finish with my old favourite exercise 33. This is in response to Diego's advice of concentrating on single-string licks for picking. I actually tried wrist, scalpel and George Benson while playing this. None of them helped me avoid fluffing the shift from 8th to 5th position :). Aside from that one sticking point (and the fact that sometimes I don't seem able to sync up the two hands), this one feels more comfortable to play than it used to. Before it always felt like I was playing right on the edge. I've got to say, though, overall I'm a bit disappointed with my progress. Oh well :).
Thanks for posting the vid: that's a very cool demo of the technique. Let's call it "George Benson" or GB for the sake of discussion.
I think you've hit the nail on the head: the important aspect of the technique is the motion that's used to pick, rather than the angle of the pick itself. The angle is similar to a scalpel angle, and gives a similar tone, but I find the idea interesting that using these wrist muscles might be faster and encourage more endurance than standard wrist picking. And maybe than scalpel too? In this respect it seems to share a benefit with sarod.
Couple of other people who use something similar: Santana and Neil Schon.
This got me inspired. Maybe we should all post vids?
Looks like, according to my notes, I stopped recording my speeds around 2 years ago. I know I was still working with the book for at least a year after that. Anyway, for those exercises, here's what I had and what I managed today:
Ex 15: 80 / 164 Ex 16: No timing / 164
These weren't perfect, I'd still need to work on damping the top string better when moving to the lower string to make these timings solid.
Ex 26: 90 / 110 - I don't trust my old timing on this one, I think I always had sync issues here Ex 28: 70 / 80 - Still a little flaky on this speed, but I reckon I could nail this with just a little practice. Ex 29 70 / 110 - I've been working on this one recently. I get between 110-120 depending on the day. Today wasn't a good day :)
Well, up until four or so years ago, I would read voraciously. Then first computer programmer followed by guitar playing consumed all of my free time. When I was younger I was a wannabe author, which eventually led me into journalism. So on balance, over the span of my life, literature has been more important to me than music. Personally speaking, If I do read now, I make sure it's something that's really worth my time, and I give it as much attention as I can muster.
Not sure who here has read this. It's a very interesting write-up about various picking techniques that the author has tried throughout his career, based on observations of others, in particular George Benson. Other than Pebber, I've not seen anything else that goes into so much detail about the actual mechanics of picking. Well worth a read:
tuckandpatti.com/ pick-finger_tech.html #1.2.11
Remove the spaces from the link and add 'www' to the front.
Personally, I'd be a little wary of this. Agreed it's good for building the muscles, and the exercises themselves can be tedious. Recently, I've noticed I seem to get better results if I remain focussed on what I'm doing in the exercises, and try to spot little mistakes (eg degree of finger pressure, distance fingers are moving away from the board, etc) and correct them.
It's funny what you say about how your rig sometimes sounds awesome, and sometimes not so much. I've felt this about my own setup, and I've read online a bunch of other people saying the same thing. I think sometimes it's either our ears, or our playing.
I don't play out at all at the moment, so my rig is very simple. I have a delay pedal that I rarely bother plugging in, and a Mesa Boogie Mk V that I bought used. I also have a clean boost which worked very nicely to beef up the clean channel on my Mesa Studio 22, but I sold that and haven't even bothered trying the boost with the Boogie - it doesn't need it. There are three clean channel options, with the last having a fair bit of bluesy breakup. There's a crunch channel which I rarely use, but it also has a Mk I mode which I like to play with my PRS - it really does sound pretty close to Santana. If I'm going for distortion, I spend most of my time on the third channel, which has a Mk II, a Mk IV and an Extreme setting. At the moment I'm favouring Mk IV, which has some more beef to it than the Mk II.
My rig is pretty bright sounding too. I shared a flat with my best mate who played a strat through a Studio 22, and he always went for a very bell-like tone, so that still influences me. Other than that, I'm very much into the Yngwie tone. And Santana.
For the last 25 years or so I've only had one guitar, a Charvel Model 6. A couple of years ago it started going out of tune (I guess some part of the locking trem finally wore), and so I bought a new Jackson Soloist. It's a mahogany body and neck, with an ebony board, and it has two Humbuckers From Hell pickups. I understand these are meant to be strat-like (I also wonder if they're meant to be Yngwie like, from the Arpeggios From Hell thing he did?) Anyway, it's a very bright sounding guitar. I love the neck pickup sound, but the bridge is probably just too much.
So after that purchase, I became a little addicted. I bought a PRS CU24. Looks great, sounds great, smells great, but not quite as nice to play as my others. Then I bought a Jackson Death Warrior. Super easy to play, though I've lowered the action too much (it can fret out on some high E bends), and awesome sounding with a Van Halen pickup in the bridge. I think it's a Duncan JB in the neck, which also sounds cool. Recently I got a Spalt Apex with a maple/wenge neck, which has two Bare Knuckles pickups. I forget their names, but they've got something to do with mass destruction and violence. I really like the tone of this one, particularly the neck pickup. It's also super easy to play. And it looks... well, it looks beautiful, I think.
My most recent purchase was a BlackStar HT1R, which is a small practice tube amp with a headphone socket. This was mostly a present to the rest of my family. At first I was blown away by the tone, but after a while I've become aware of its limitations (cleans are pretty good, distortion a little artificial sounding, and it sounds way better through the headphones than through its speaker). Still not a bad little practice amp though.
Still debating whether or not to shell out for an Axe FX II, but I find mostly I think about buying gear when I'm frustrated with my playing.
Ursin, I've got say a big thank you for the picking advice. With this new way of holding the pick, my thumb and forefinger are a little more extended, which makes them feel a lmore relaxed, and also requires less effort for the scalpel motion. Perhaps the biggest plus is now my forefinger is actually pointing at the string I want to pluck. It seems so obvious now! It feels so much more focussed, like I have laser targetting :). This, coupled with much smaller picking motions, and I can already feel my left and right hands synching up much tighter than before. I'm really looking forward to seeing how I'll improve over the coming weeks.
Hey Nick - thanks for the reply about sextuplets. Now I think about it, I'm pretty sure I've seen them occasionally notated simply as six notes, sometimes as two groups of three and sometimes as three groups of two. I guess it depends on the music. At any rate, in this particular case of three notes per string, it's very easy to fall into two groups of three, and I take your point about using accents as a rhythmical crutch.
Diego - thanks for the explanation. It's perfectly clear, but it'd be cool to see a video nonetheless. Playing scale sequences on one string should give me a chance to practice my Yngwie meedly-meedlies, so that's something to look forward to :).
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