The one thing you wish you could do better?

[tapper mike]

For me it's sight reading standard notation. I used to be much better but atrophy has set in.

[zerocrossing]

Speed. I've never been able to really play quickly. I can get a fast lick in, here and there, but anything sustained and my timing starts going off to a degree that is unacceptable to me. I've always been jealous of the people who can play full fast solos.

[wintoid]

I'm a bass player, so I'm all about the groove. Timing is the thing I'd like to be better at. When I record my playing and listen to it back, it's rare that I'm not disappointed with the timing.

[Bombadil]

Travis Picking.

[jamcat]

Math

[Cuauhtli]

Arpeggios/sweep picking. And timing.

[CapnLockheed]

Make money. Never been very good at that.

[mystran]

Speed. I've never been able to really play quickly. I can get a fast lick in, here and there, but anything sustained and my timing starts going off to a degree that is unacceptable to me. I've always been jealous of the people who can play full fast solos.

This is normal and probably a case where your muscles just don't have the endurance and/or cannot replenish energy/oxygen at high enough rate due to lack of aerobic endurance training at fast speeds. Regular "high-speed aerobic endurance training" (eg. play something on a loop at a speed close to the maximum you think you can sustain... and try to push a bit past the fatique that usually kicks in pretty quickly) helps... slowly... but I think anyone who claims there's a really fast way is probably trying to sell snake oil.

FWIW: I feel terribly slow as well, but especially my right-hand used to be way faster when I was actively practicing violin, so I know it's not really a matter of "not having the ability" as much as simply having lost the right type of muscle fiber... and I have personally seen pretty steady progress whenever I can actually bring myself to specifically do "aerobic high-speed endurance training."

[mystran]

Arpeggios/sweep picking. And timing.

I just can't seem to get hang of sweep picking at higher speeds either... every time I manage to improve it a little and then try alternate picking instead, I find that the latter is just easier.

Trying to practice sweep picking has improved my ability to alternate pick arpeggios though.

[YnJ]

Sweep picking isn't that hard, just don't force it using a metronome to increase your speed. Do the pattern slowly until it is stuck in your muscle memory. Then just jump off and play it as fast as you can. You might stumble the first few times, you'll get there quickly though

[zerocrossing]

Speed. I've never been able to really play quickly. I can get a fast lick in, here and there, but anything sustained and my timing starts going off to a degree that is unacceptable to me. I've always been jealous of the people who can play full fast solos.

This is normal and probably a case where your muscles just don't have the endurance and/or cannot replenish energy/oxygen at high enough rate due to lack of aerobic endurance training at fast speeds. Regular "high-speed aerobic endurance training" (eg. play something on a loop at a speed close to the maximum you think you can sustain... and try to push a bit past the fatique that usually kicks in pretty quickly) helps... slowly... but I think anyone who claims there's a really fast way is probably trying to sell snake oil.

FWIW: I feel terribly slow as well, but especially my right-hand used to be way faster when I was actively practicing violin, so I know it's not really a matter of "not having the ability" as much as simply having lost the right type of muscle fiber... and I have personally seen pretty steady progress whenever I can actually bring myself to specifically do "aerobic high-speed endurance training."

I've had times when I did make some progress, but I always felt like I was putting in more effort than it takes other people to reach the same level. Also, I'm not a big metal guy anyway, so part of it could be that, in the end, I don't want it enough. I'm not terrible, and I think I have a better sense of composition than most, and a good ability to improvise, but pure speed... no.

[mystran]

Looks like I was talking about right hand when I ment left hand (which is actually really similar between guitar and violin at least for single note stuff... not that there aren't similarities with right hand too, but they are more subtle) ... oops... although I think it all applies to both hands really.

I've had times when I did make some progress, but I always felt like I was putting in more effort than it takes other people to reach the same level. Also, I'm not a big metal guy anyway, so part of it could be that, in the end, I don't want it enough. I'm not terrible, and I think I have a better sense of composition than most, and a good ability to improvise, but pure speed... no.

Well.. there's also the "use it or lose it" thing ... but I think it ultimately comes down to whether you actually enjoy playing (and practicing daily) the kind of stuff that happens to develop it as a byproduct... because if you have to specifically practice "just speed" and then you otherwise play much slower stuff, that'll feel like much more effort ... either way, I just wanted to point out that I really don't think it's purely a "skill issue" but rather there's a very real physiological component that just needs regular training... and I just don't believe anyone who claims they got super fast overnight.

Personally, I kinda like technical practice, but ... honestly I've made peace with myself that I'm probably never going to be playing anything truly fast .. that's fine. As far as improvisation though (which I also enjoy a lot) I feel like there's actually more value in being able to comfortably play and combine a large variety of things on the fly at "moderately fast speed" than trying to go for extremes. At some point you're mostly impressing other musicians (and maybe hardcore fans of more technical genres) anyway, 'cos the average casual listener is likely to think you're pretty fast already when you can play 16th notes at 100bpm or so (which by metal standards isn't really anything yet.. and even in other styles there's plenty of reasons why you might sometimes want to be at least slightly faster).

[mystran]

Sweep picking isn't that hard, just don't force it using a metronome to increase your speed. Do the pattern slowly until it is stuck in your muscle memory. Then just jump off and play it as fast as you can. You might stumble the first few times, you'll get there quickly though

So... the part that I'm struggling with (once we get to into the ballpark of 90-100bpm 16ths) is that if I'm alt-picking, I'm essentially picking from the wrist as if I was playing on a single string with double escape motion and then using my elbow (or arm, but I'll call it the elbow) to move the hand over the strings (because that's what you have to do to keep the same picking angle) and this works great: the wrist is always doing the precision timing, so as long as the hand movement isn't too badly off, we're good.

Yet, when I'm sweeping, I'm basically timing from the elbow, more or less as a smooth motion, 'cos there's no efficient way to stutter here (or is there? I can't seem to do it at least), but that isn't too bad on it's own. The trouble is when I need to change direction (and skip a string in the process), I need to add a wrist motion (for the escape) on the last note of the sweep (or first if you sweep one extra note.. but I find outside picking easier) and I'm REALLY struggling to get my brain to sync all of this properly... and the shorter the sweep, the worse the results.

I'd like to get this down though, 'cos theoretically it would be slightly more energy efficient so the theoretical speed potential should be better (1nps double escape isn't bad, but it's still slightly more effort than one-way pick-slant and certainly more than just letting the wrist rest through the sweep).

ps. My alt-picking isn't super clean either, it's ... awfully sloppy, but .. it feels more of a "repeat this a few thousand times" type of deal, where as with sweep picking it feels like I'm missing some fundamental piece of the puzzle.

[tapper mike]

Re Sweeping
Hybrid picking. Use a teardrop pick

[tapper mike]

Travis Picking.

Start with the basics. Beat them into your head and hands even if you don't feel it at first.


I've been playing fingerstyle forever. But I had the worst teacher....me Sometimes unlearning a bad habit is a lot harder than learning a new one. Still persistence paid off. I'd practice every day and when I stopped practicing I wouldn't go back to finger picking for the rest of the day.

Now I'm better at strict travis picking which is always thumb index middle. But I will resort to more fingers when the situation calls for it. Paul Simon did an interview with Howard Stern


The thing is if you listen and transcribe a lot of Paul Simon he's introducing more fingers. Same with other notable Travis style pickers. Which is why I use Travis picking sparingly now. Same with Hybrid. I tried classical picking but I couldn't keep my fingers arched the way classical players do. I always need them cupped for muting but not so much as for chicken pickin.