Whoa, I've been trying to get good at "tremolo strumming", I mean playing tremolo over 2/3/4 strings (for metal / post rock style), and there was no advice in the internet other than "play slow and speed it up", or - it's like tremolo on 1 string but go over more strings instead. But noone pointed out that at higher speed things work different. This is the first video I saw where someone said to get to speed and then discover and develop the motion, that's a next level of understading - brilliant!
These days our most frequent advice can be condensed to "fast first, clean later"! Not because we only like fast playing - but because speed brings to the surface many problems that you wouldn't be able to see with the traditional "slow practice". It's easy to be stuck doing 60bpm exercises for years, essentially doing "good sounding but wrong" technique (ask me how I know :-) )
@@alessandro9740 Yes, our current understanding is that this is the most effective way for "building speed". First you give it a shot at the desired tempo to check that you have a motion that is in principle capable of the tempo. If you have that, you can then try to slow things down just a little to try and make it cleaner. Starting slow does not work because at slow tempo yo can get away with inefficient / slow technique, and you may never know if you are doing things right!
My mind is literally blown right now. I never realized how playing slow was potentially reinforcing unrealistic picking motions that are too inefficient for real world speeds. Make a mess then clean it up. Life changing information in this video. Thanks Troy and Cracking the Code!
Your channel and the community you've built are a genuine example of the Internet used as a vehicle of collective knowledge, Troy. Thanks for the effort you've put in your work over all these years.
It really is an amazing resource to be able to see what hundreds / thousands of real players are actually doing, to figure out what works and doesn't. Back in the day, it was just all flying blind.
@@troygrady Troy, I did what Shawn did quite a few years ago, with Gary Moore's 'Felicity' from Skid Row album-'Skid' I tried and tried for many years to play that technique of Gary's, but it got nowhere, then coupled with your wonderful instructional videos of pick slanting, and my sloppy but fast playing I suddenly got the sound that he had, a sense of urgency and attack in the tone, and I knew something had shifted, then using your videos I started to clean it up and to my amazement I really did start to get it down, also tone is very important. I kind of waded in with it and focussed on the overall dynamics, not even the scales but just got from A to B using that dynamic tone, then the scales slotted in and also my fingering got much cleaner in line with the pick style. Thanks for all your work, as above comment I totally agree, you have been an inspiration to many guitarists.
Troy you are such an amazing teacher. Man been playing for longer than I can recall, closed my eyes and tried this and almost immediately my right hand techniques changed just a little, faster, NO pain, strain... I could feel that smooth you mentioned, got the point ... Wow. Thanks.
Exactly what I needed. My pick constantly gets caught and I've wanted to quit so many times. This is pure gold thank you so much for sharing this now I can have fun playing me metal \../
I've never commented before on any of your videos but I feel like I just want you to know that I've watched nearly every video you've produced and I think I've learned more useful information on your channel than just about anywhere else in the realm of using a pick. Thank you for these videos and all the hard work that had to have been expended in producing them. It's very much appreciated!
What a great video. My picking could use some work and I've never tried going for broke right from the get go. I'll definitely give this a shot. Thanks
Another simple test you can do is just test your motions with no guitar. We have a whole battery of these that we use, here's one we put on the channel ( ruclips.net/video/L6PUCTaNAOw/видео.html ). If you're fast and smooth on the table, then you can be just as fast and smooth on a guitar, since the motions are the same or nearly so.
i havent played a guitar in 25 years. never was that good. i still love to watch all Troy's videos. Troy and these videos make me want to pick up my old guitar again.
The longer I play at any given time the more a change my pick approach. I generally start out with my elbows & wrists working the picking. After 10 or 15 minutes I get more into the hand and stay with that. When My hand starts to tire I resolve back to variations of wrist & elbow. The hand generally has quicker moves per calorie, the wrist and elbow have more longevity built into them. Switching as necessary is, in my mind, essential for guitarists...
Enjoy and appreciate your work as ever Troy, but what this video first brought to mind for is me just how far ahead MAB has always been. This is almost exactly what he says in what I think is the first line (definitely the first section) of "Speed Kills 1" - when he offers us the keys to the Lamborghini. 😁 Something along the lines of "You can't pick faster than banging on one note. That's how you pick fastest, that's how you pick best. You want to take that exact same motion and slow it down. I see a lot of players who play fast one way, and then slow down and play another way." (Sorry for the paraphrase, it's been years since I watched it). And of course, you mentioned my absolute favorite - Shawn, saying pretty much the same. Anyhoo, thanks for sharing sir. Cheers!
Yes, Mike is right when he placed the focus on locating the correct motion first and then slowing it down. We mention this in another video in the sequence of lessons, just not it in this one.
If there's anything I've learned over the past 10 years of playing, it's that there is no right or wrong technique. There are just varying degrees of usefulness for each of the techniques that you may be utilizing. When I was in high school, I was naturally an "elbow picker" and man the amount of flack I received from other players who preached against it was astounding. I had to relearn and discover the forearm "key turning" method just to feel like I was a capable player. Now, I use all kinds of picking techniques, including elbow, to achieve my musical goals and know with utter confidence why each one is useful, no matter what anyone else says to the contrary!
The elbow prejudice is strong for sure. But I doubt anyone watching either of Vinnie Moore's two Hot Licks instructionals ever thought he was limited by his choice of elbow for faster passages. It's also clear from those videos, as you're saying, that elbow wasn't the only motion he used. It was just the default until the phrase required otherwise.
This speaks to a theory I've always had: I think a lot of guitarists who we think of as naturals just got lucky. When they first picked up a guitar, they started picking in a way that was natural to their body mechanics, and there was no one about to tell them to take a different approach. The biggest thing that set me back when I started playing was I too observant of other guitar players' picking technique (and yes, I bought Al Di Meola's REH instructional video, which I think was a huge mistake in retrospect). I spent so much time trying to make my wrist move like it looked like theirs was moving, completely ignoring what felt natural. It even resulted in me developing severe wrist pain early on. I have large hands with long thin fingers. Of course the biomechanics of how my hands operate are different than someone with more, I guess you'd say, compact hands. Not just my hands, but my arms are longer, and that's important as well in how it all works together. What I like most about your sessions with Andy Wood is, he always stressed how things should feel. It should just feel right and natural. I wish I had someone screaming that in my ear when I first began.
Have you checked out our Brendon Small interview? We have a great talk about his alwesome elbow tremolo technique: ruclips.net/video/VFzIVA4vkgA/видео.html
I think that the real stuff is going from one string to other synchronizely, I mean, tremolo just in one string should be relatively easy for everyone. Thank you Troy for all your videos, it's as an invaluable work!
I remember in Troy’s earlier video’s, guys in the comment section would seriously get into it. All because Troy hadn’t mentioned “Sean Lane” in any of his videos. Not because Troy had anything against Sean. Gotta love RUclips’s comment section. ;) For all those previously offended, with respect and admiration, may this fantastic addition to this invaluable episode find you.
The Lane crowd can be a little... excitable at times! Shawn seems like he a great guy and I get the impression he would have been interested in the kind of stuff we do here and a great interview if he were still around.
Kim is a champ borne on the shoulders of giants! Thanks to Troy for being there to reinforce truth and justice to eliminate years of numbing toil by showing her success from the first moment. I hope she's shredding hard! Now its time to assess the topic of callouses 😨
After watching this episode in the Pickslanting primer, I asked my 7-year old kid to do the same. He got to almost the same speed within his five minute attention span :)
That's what I did, just started flailing and tremolo picked until I found the smoothness and fluidity. I realized I was doing alot of pick slanting as well by doing this, it works great, trial and error and adjustments..
No nonsense actionable wisdom. This project by the team never fails to amaze. In every other physical pursuit, we take its study seriously. Somehow for guitar picking it's always been some trite truistic sounding advice. Cracking the Code is literally Cracking it. Thank you for your work!
Man, @troygrady, I'm getting so pumped to get my Magnet in the mail when they're done so I can break down exactly what I'm doing and really dig into it. Thanks for this one too! Very useful stuff!
I am figuring out that I can go fast when my picking motion is like the girl’s first one but without any space between my thumb and the strings but when I switch to the other vertical motion, their needs to be space between my thumb and the strings but I can’t go as fast with that space. Kind of irritating.
Have you tested your motions without a guitar? Here's a simple one we like to use ( ruclips.net/video/L6PUCTaNAOw/видео.html ). If you can be fast on a table, you can be fast on a guitar. These are all just joint motions.
@@troygrady Interestingly, I play guitar right handed but I write left handed so the Eddie motion doesn’t feel comfortable to me at all. Lol. Thanks for the video suggestion.
I used to hold the pick with the index finger positioned like her for nearly all my guitar playing years. I also anchored my pinky on the guitar body. It hurt my index finger after long hours of practising. I switched a little over a year back to a half curled index finger position with the side of the index right over my thumb pad, with no pinky anchor. Feels good but I have sweaty hands and playing some long passages cause my thumb to over-extend to the point that my index is now over the thumb middle joint instead of the fleshy pad.
First step - don't do long hours of practice! I don't really play for more than 40 minutes or an hour at a time. And if I'm not making obvious progress, I don't play at all. Everything else is just wasting time repeating the same thing for no reason.
Ok I finally understand the pick slant wow what a difference! I thought I had been doing that but I was reverting to string hopping for speed instead. I know understand it thank you for the inspiration for me to keep hammering away til it got into my fingers and my brain finally--GREAT lessons thank you again!
Your instruction is the best I’ve ever come across, scientific, straightforward, complex yet easy to understand. Guitar playing has felt like a chore for a long time for me, this makes it fun again to discover 🎸
For sure, the focus in these recent updates has been all about extracting actual usable info from all this awesome real-world examples we've been able to look at.
For hand synchronisation - chunking is key. Check out older CtC videos on that matter. Also, no matter what you do, these concepts need to be practiced and applied to gain results.
@@alessandro9740 it stands for Close Quarter Combat :) I meant the channel you're on - Cracking the Code of course. Just search for cracking the code hand synchronisation and you'll find sth Including an old video by Ben Eller regarding chunking and so on. It helped me quite a bit
Its proof that some people are simply going to be better at something than others, in other words innate talent. No matter how much someone practices they can only get so far.
@@troygrady yes he’s an incredible tenor banjo and fiddle player. Best ever in my opinion but he has a very interesting banjo right hand technique with a mix of different things going on. Uses a very firmly planted thumb grip. Top of the thumb perpendicular to the pick. Locks any finger wiggle out of the equation for triplets which is a common technique in Irish playing. A lot of trad music relies on alternate picking patterns but there is economy picking happening in parts and I’d expect some double escape picking. A few videos on youtube but not a lot of good examples. I live up the road from him here in Ireland. He’s a true virtuoso. Love what you’re doing!
So glad I found this channel, awesome stuff! Would be very interesting to see John Browne or Olly Steele from the band Monuments on here, two of the best rhythm guitar players on the planet in my opinion, ridicoulus picking techniques!
I find a lot of Troy’s videos underscore the importance of picking mechanics and pick slanting which is crucial to playing. The thing is hand synchronization between left and right hand is what many guitar players with. He may have covered this and perhaps I missed it? But thus far I have yet to see a Troy Grady video on left and right hand synchronization.
The key concept you are looking for is "chunking": check out ruclips.net/video/p9DiIm4RqrQ/видео.html and one of the old Cracking the Code episodes (I'll post it here when I find it)
I've been playing guitar for most of my life and I'm in my late 20s and I've tackled shred stuff before with a fair bit of success (for reference, I could play the 'follow the signs' solo) and I couldn't really pick that much faster than Kim.. which is depressing maybe? 😂 But the max speed I could pick at wasn't much faster than what I could actually perform string changes with relatively comfortably in 4 note groups with downward pickslanting. In fact I could string change with my max speed at about 75% reliability, which is to say 3 out of 4 string change transitions sound okay and don't stick on the strings or miss for 10 or so seconds before fatigue gives in. I don't know if I should be demotivated about this sobering fact, considering she is a complete beginner but I've injured both of my hands trying to shred and perform fast tremolo picked technical death metal songs. Usually I would practice bursts of 8 to 16 notes at top speed and I still believe that I'd be able to pick a fair bit faster in 8-16 note bursts than Kim but I don't practice like that anymore because it led to a lot of injuries from the sheer strain and tension involved in hulking out at your max speed for an extensive period of practice time. Nevertheless, I don't know how to feel about this 😕 Kim should try her hand at guitar though because I was thoroughly impressed 👏
I'm a super beginner, but I've seen several people talk about practicing speed with short bursts and increasing the length of the bursts slowly. But they all emphasized focusing on relaxing during the breaks between the bursts and trying to keep that relaxation as much as possible during the bursts. They specifically said if they tensed up too much, there's no way they'd be able to have stamina for longer passages at speed. Maybe that is the key, to start slower again and really focus on not "hulking out" as much as possible?
I hold the pick very similar like the girl in the first example. I felt never comfortable with the other more conventional grip. Do you think, that I can still make a progress with this kind of grip? Lately I discovered, that I can play better, when I hold the pick very loose.
I hold it like that too, I find it much more precise, but I play mostly economy picking. I tried alternate picking for the sake of it (😜) and the second position seems to work better.
You can still have smooth attack with a low-edge pick grip - bluegrass players do this, for example. But they also use heavy gauge picks with rounded edges, so the roundness of the pick is almost a similar to effect to playing with the edge. With a thinner pick where you don't have this advantage, yes, holding the pick more loosely and allowing some flop will help with attack smoothness.
It's all in the wrist. The elbow motion is just inconsequential and compensatory. 80% of the time it's thumb and 1st finger movement, not so much for tremolo though.
Hi Troy...Great video. 1 question..if a guitar player can naturally generate decent speed with elbow motion of the picking hand....would you advice him/her to move away from that and towards wrist motion as it is widely considered more consistent, economical and less prone to injuries in the long run?
Troy, how can I get the cell phone holder that you use? So i can analyze my own picking/fingering techniques. Is this a homemade device? I have one that clamps to my headstock but that holder your using is the real deal.
Hey troy, Would a second interview with Marshall harrison focusing on his unique swybryd technique be considered? The first one that focused on his sweeping was awesome
Hello Mr. Grady. You should check out the channel Fingershreds. I've never seen a more shredding finger picking technique. It seems truly superior to using a pick. I feel like my own technique has been destroyed by those darn fingerpickers.
I've been playing for 11 years, around 1 hour a day and still can't pick correctly, still can't synchronise my 2 hands and can't play fast shit like eruption (dude I've tried so hard and so much). Also I'm lefty playing with a normal guitar. I always feel like I'm stock and I can't get better.
Try tremolo picking just like in this video (or find a technique thats efficient and fast for you, maybe anchoring your pinky on the body of guitar for accuracy) and incorporate it to some licks that use multiple strings (three note per string licks) picking just like you would on one string
I’ve been playing for over 25 years and I can’t shred either. I didn’t put in the 8 hour practice days during the first few years, and now I’m old and don’t have the time to carve out, so I get a little better all the time, but I’ll never be a guitar hero.
To synchronize hands you need to play scales slow. Build a good working relationship with when you pick and when you fret. Then you can gradually speed up.
@coujean99 I hear you. I'm also a lefty playing a right handed guitar and Yes, fast picking is a tough one for me as well, but I think it's not impossible, it may just be a bit harder to naturally find the picking motion that works for you. In my case my right arm would always tense up whenever I'd try to pick fast, I have been playing with too much tension in my right arm for over 30 years and I'm now in the process of un-learning the tension that's become automatic. It's a slow process but I'm seeing results.
@@LarsBauer74 in my early days of learning guitar I had the same problem. It took me years to figure it out on my own. Now Troy Grady website is a great way to help. Check it out
I get that we can attempt the fast stuff with sloppiness. But how do we self correct to remove that? Surely I can use the magnet to see slow-mo footage. But in order to fix it I'd need to still slow down right?
One possibility is to slow down gradually (while still remaining in the fast-ish zone) to check if you can gradually increase your control and clean this up. You don't wanna go so slow that you can get away with inefficient motions. Random example: you can do the thing fast and sloppy at 170bpm 16th notes (and crucially, your fretting patterns are memorised). Try to go down to 150 or 140 and see if you can start hearing and correcting mistakes. Let me know if that works :)
I am frustrated. I just don't get it. I keep trying to slant the pick in the right direction and get the right movement but the pick still gets stuck on the strings and it gets worse when I switch strings. Why can't I do this?
First thing you can do is use simple repeating single-string patterns like the Yngwie "six note pattern" and try to lock them up. Line up the first note of the pattern with a downstroke consistently by hitting that downstroke just a tiny bit harder. You can then just ignore the next five notes because they'll automatically line up. That was how I did it. Short answer: sync works by lining up target notes with a specific pickstroke and ignoring the others. That's the secret.
Sadly the advice of "just play fast" didn't work for me AT ALL. If I do that, I just end up defaulting to spastic flailing. I can't default to anything close to this technique. And if I try to mimic this technique, I end up barely being able to pick. I'm talking, like I can barely get the pick to cross the strings. I don't know what to do since clearly the most "natural" way I can get speed is not sustainable. I'm someone who's been playing bass for a long time. I've played with my pick and fingers. I'm trying to finally fix my picking and this feels so far from natural I can barely move. I tried it on guitar too because I was hoping it would be easier if the strings were thinner. No luck. It's incredibly frustrating that a beginner can do this better than I can. It makes me just want to sell all my instruments.
Hey, if you feel like sharing some clips of your picking on the Cracking the Code Forum, the community there might come up with some useful things to try!
IMO the only thing that's bad is pain or discomfort. If you are able to do a fast and comfortable elbow motion (like Vinnie Moore, Bill Hall or Brendon Small), you should be OK.
i was forced to learn guitar left handed because of a tendon injury. FFS my untrained (right hand) strums 2x faster than my left hand even after a year of working on strumming. Nothing has made a big enough difference for me to play the tremolo section of one by metallica.
You should try taking some of our table tap tests with both hands just to see if there is any difference in raw capability, or if it is just the "guitar" part that is tripping you up.
I think "naturally" is a little too superstitious. We have these table tapping tests that we do to simulate various picking motions, and most people score highly on all of them, over 200bpm. ( Here's one you can try: ruclips.net/video/L6PUCTaNAOw/видео.html ) So most people can already do most motions fast. They're just not familiar with how to do them on a guitar. So we just say, in the interest of saving time, go with whichever one you can do right now because that's the shortest path. But you can learn any of them in the long run. In this case, wrist was working in the first test, and elbow in the second. So either one would be a good choice, and many players use both.
I need help with my picking but Troy never responds to me. Everyday I feel like a beginner when I first pick up the guitar. After hours and hours of practice I can kinda shred. But Everyday I have to relearn how to pick. Is this normal? Please help. I know you're really busy and don't see every comment. I want your course but I feel like maybe something is wrong with me.
Remember, you have shorter arms, and you are right handed. Try being left handed and play a right hand guitar, which is my plight...and I have long arms...but I won't give up
I don't think this is a big factor to be honest. We run everyone through tests of joint motion speed and endurance and almost everyone can move very fast with their picking hand. In my own tests I'm actually somewhat faster with my left hand, I just don't use it for picking. Most of the difference in performance you see between various players comes down to the techniques they're using, not so much anatomical differences. Those differences may exist, but I think they're smaller than what most of us think.
We’ve reached out to him in years past with no response. Which is fine, not everyone is comfortable being filmed in the, shall we say, intimate fashion to which we are accustomed.
Not as far as we know. Lots of great players, like Vinnie Moore and Brendon Small, use it, and have done so for years with no apparent ill effects. As usual, any motion done incorrectly or for excessive periods of time, or when you feel tension, can be detrimental. But we don't have any specific evidence that there is something wrong with elbow motion.
Whoa, I've been trying to get good at "tremolo strumming", I mean playing tremolo over 2/3/4 strings (for metal / post rock style), and there was no advice in the internet other than "play slow and speed it up", or - it's like tremolo on 1 string but go over more strings instead. But noone pointed out that at higher speed things work different.
This is the first video I saw where someone said to get to speed and then discover and develop the motion, that's a next level of understading - brilliant!
These days our most frequent advice can be condensed to "fast first, clean later"! Not because we only like fast playing - but because speed brings to the surface many problems that you wouldn't be able to see with the traditional "slow practice". It's easy to be stuck doing 60bpm exercises for years, essentially doing "good sounding but wrong" technique (ask me how I know :-) )
@@TommoGuitar "fast first, clean later" is it really work?
@@alessandro9740 Yes, our current understanding is that this is the most effective way for "building speed". First you give it a shot at the desired tempo to check that you have a motion that is in principle capable of the tempo. If you have that, you can then try to slow things down just a little to try and make it cleaner. Starting slow does not work because at slow tempo yo can get away with inefficient / slow technique, and you may never know if you are doing things right!
@@TommoGuitar okay thanks, i'll give it a try!
anyway what is "our" referred to?
@@alessandro9740 do you practice running by taking slow walks? :D
This guy should have over a million followers. his videos, information camera angles and animations are amazing.
I totally agree!!!
If youtube was a meritocracy, jake paul wouldnt be at 20 mil😂
I agree plus a Yale graduate he knows what he is doing and he can jam too. Ever see him figure out Steve Vai's intimidation lick? A must if haven't.
I agree. Unfortunately the populus are ignorant to pick angles!
Agreed and he is a Yale graduate if not mistaken. Dude knows his shit. Oh btw this is Michelle's husband my phone died. Lol
My mind is literally blown right now. I never realized how playing slow was potentially reinforcing unrealistic picking motions that are too inefficient for real world speeds. Make a mess then clean it up. Life changing information in this video. Thanks Troy and Cracking the Code!
You’ve got me here. With the “slow down and speed up” dogma around, it’s little wonder people quit so early on.
Your channel and the community you've built are a genuine example of the Internet used as a vehicle of collective knowledge, Troy.
Thanks for the effort you've put in your work over all these years.
It really is an amazing resource to be able to see what hundreds / thousands of real players are actually doing, to figure out what works and doesn't. Back in the day, it was just all flying blind.
@@troygrady Troy, I did what Shawn did quite a few years ago, with Gary Moore's 'Felicity' from Skid Row album-'Skid' I tried and tried for many years to play that technique of Gary's, but it got nowhere, then coupled with your wonderful instructional videos of pick slanting, and my sloppy but fast playing I suddenly got the sound that he had, a sense of urgency and attack in the tone, and I knew something had shifted, then using your videos I started to clean it up and to my amazement I really did start to get it down, also tone is very important. I kind of waded in with it and focussed on the overall dynamics, not even the scales but just got from A to B using that dynamic tone, then the scales slotted in and also my fingering got much cleaner in line with the pick style. Thanks for all your work, as above comment I totally agree, you have been an inspiration to many guitarists.
@@johnlannikk2701 Did you pay samo amount of money for Troy? You should do that.
I love how Troy breaks this down. I would have never figured out the mechanics on my own.
You have improved me in 3 minutes. It is always good to listen to real pro-tips! Keep up the good work
In these recent updates, it's all about the case study footage and finding stuff that we can verify really works.
Troy you are such an amazing teacher. Man been playing for longer than I can recall, closed my eyes and tried this and almost immediately my right hand techniques changed just a little, faster, NO pain, strain... I could feel that smooth you mentioned, got the point ... Wow. Thanks.
oh wow.....yes......i closed my eyes......and.....and...i got FASTER...... almost INSTANTLY...... wow..... what a miracle.....
Exactly what I needed. My pick constantly gets caught and I've wanted to quit so many times. This is pure gold thank you so much for sharing this now I can have fun playing me metal \../
This guy should have over a million followers. his videos and animations are amazing.
troy, you are a genius. thank you for your immense contribution to guitar!
This content is just the best. Troy always seems like a cool, chill dude as well. 10/10
I've never commented before on any of your videos but I feel like I just want you to know that I've watched nearly every video you've produced and I think I've learned more useful information on your channel than just about anywhere else in the realm of using a pick. Thank you for these videos and all the hard work that had to have been expended in producing them. It's very much appreciated!
Right on - thanks for watching!
I like your analytic approach
Your content is so great. Your experiment clearly proves. You have to start with speed in order for you to know that you have an effective technique.
Can't thank you enough for these revelations that helps reassure a new guitar player
learning misirlou is really satisfying and now i know why
What a great video. My picking could use some work and I've never tried going for broke right from the get go. I'll definitely give this a shot. Thanks
Another simple test you can do is just test your motions with no guitar. We have a whole battery of these that we use, here's one we put on the channel ( ruclips.net/video/L6PUCTaNAOw/видео.html ). If you're fast and smooth on the table, then you can be just as fast and smooth on a guitar, since the motions are the same or nearly so.
i havent played a guitar in 25 years. never was that good. i still love to watch all Troy's videos. Troy and these videos make me want to pick up my old guitar again.
@@bradejensen that guy is insane. learned new Yngwie stuff in 1 day. crazy.
The longer I play at any given time the more a change my pick approach. I generally start out with my elbows & wrists working the picking. After 10 or 15 minutes I get more into the hand and stay with that. When My hand starts to tire I resolve back to variations of wrist & elbow.
The hand generally has quicker moves per calorie, the wrist and elbow have more longevity built into them. Switching as necessary is, in my mind, essential for guitarists...
Enjoy and appreciate your work as ever Troy, but what this video first brought to mind for is me just how far ahead MAB has always been.
This is almost exactly what he says in what I think is the first line (definitely the first section) of "Speed Kills 1" - when he offers us the keys to the Lamborghini. 😁
Something along the lines of "You can't pick faster than banging on one note. That's how you pick fastest, that's how you pick best. You want to take that exact same motion and slow it down. I see a lot of players who play fast one way, and then slow down and play another way." (Sorry for the paraphrase, it's been years since I watched it).
And of course, you mentioned my absolute favorite - Shawn, saying pretty much the same.
Anyhoo, thanks for sharing sir.
Cheers!
Yes, Mike is right when he placed the focus on locating the correct motion first and then slowing it down. We mention this in another video in the sequence of lessons, just not it in this one.
Always consistently valuable to stop by here. Thank you Troy.
Amazing video
If there's anything I've learned over the past 10 years of playing, it's that there is no right or wrong technique. There are just varying degrees of usefulness for each of the techniques that you may be utilizing. When I was in high school, I was naturally an "elbow picker" and man the amount of flack I received from other players who preached against it was astounding. I had to relearn and discover the forearm "key turning" method just to feel like I was a capable player. Now, I use all kinds of picking techniques, including elbow, to achieve my musical goals and know with utter confidence why each one is useful, no matter what anyone else says to the contrary!
The elbow prejudice is strong for sure. But I doubt anyone watching either of Vinnie Moore's two Hot Licks instructionals ever thought he was limited by his choice of elbow for faster passages. It's also clear from those videos, as you're saying, that elbow wasn't the only motion he used. It was just the default until the phrase required otherwise.
This speaks to a theory I've always had: I think a lot of guitarists who we think of as naturals just got lucky. When they first picked up a guitar, they started picking in a way that was natural to their body mechanics, and there was no one about to tell them to take a different approach.
The biggest thing that set me back when I started playing was I too observant of other guitar players' picking technique (and yes, I bought Al Di Meola's REH instructional video, which I think was a huge mistake in retrospect). I spent so much time trying to make my wrist move like it looked like theirs was moving, completely ignoring what felt natural. It even resulted in me developing severe wrist pain early on.
I have large hands with long thin fingers. Of course the biomechanics of how my hands operate are different than someone with more, I guess you'd say, compact hands. Not just my hands, but my arms are longer, and that's important as well in how it all works together.
What I like most about your sessions with Andy Wood is, he always stressed how things should feel. It should just feel right and natural. I wish I had someone screaming that in my ear when I first began.
Please make more videos on tremolo picking...
Have you checked out our Brendon Small interview? We have a great talk about his alwesome elbow tremolo technique: ruclips.net/video/VFzIVA4vkgA/видео.html
I think that the real stuff is going from one string to other synchronizely, I mean, tremolo just in one string should be relatively easy for everyone.
Thank you Troy for all your videos, it's as an invaluable work!
Even staying on one string certainly isn't easy for me.
Going to name my new band “Pocket Of Randomness”
Gotta be a math rock band like Hella or Lightning Bolt!
"Diagonal Motion Path"
"Downstroke Escape"
"The leading edge"
Every term Troy and the community has coined makes a good band/song name. Haha
Thank you! Excellent tech presentation ! this is the type lesson i look for to learn efficiently! keep bringing it
I remember in Troy’s earlier video’s, guys in the comment section would seriously get into it. All because Troy hadn’t mentioned “Sean Lane” in any of his videos. Not because Troy had anything against Sean. Gotta love RUclips’s comment section. ;) For all those previously offended, with respect and admiration, may this fantastic addition to this invaluable episode find you.
The Lane crowd can be a little... excitable at times! Shawn seems like he a great guy and I get the impression he would have been interested in the kind of stuff we do here and a great interview if he were still around.
Kim picks faster than me on her first go!! Amazing stuff and I love the dissection
Kim is a champ borne on the shoulders of giants! Thanks to Troy for being there to reinforce truth and justice to eliminate years of numbing toil by showing her success from the first moment. I hope she's shredding hard! Now its time to assess the topic of callouses 😨
Thanks alot Mr Troy
After watching this episode in the Pickslanting primer, I asked my 7-year old kid to do the same. He got to almost the same speed within his five minute attention span :)
Awesome! I think the speed thing has been way over-dramatized, most of us have plenty of it already.
Great videos grady! Thank you for years of great instruction, you’re one of the best!
This is genius... thank you for all of your hard work on these videos!!!
Right on! Thanks for tuning in.
Unbelievably useful video
That's what I did, just started flailing and tremolo picked until I found the smoothness and fluidity. I realized I was doing alot of pick slanting as well by doing this, it works great, trial and error and adjustments..
Right on. Finding the smoothest motion first really is the best step.
@@troygrady thanks Troy 🤘
No nonsense actionable wisdom.
This project by the team never fails to amaze.
In every other physical pursuit, we take its study seriously. Somehow for guitar picking it's always been some trite truistic sounding advice.
Cracking the Code is literally Cracking it.
Thank you for your work!
That's what we're aiming for! Thanks for tuning in.
Excellent content as usual.
Thanks Dan!
Man, @troygrady, I'm getting so pumped to get my Magnet in the mail when they're done so I can break down exactly what I'm doing and really dig into it. Thanks for this one too! Very useful stuff!
언제나 감사합니다
I am figuring out that I can go fast when my picking motion is like the girl’s first one but without any space between my thumb and the strings but when I switch to the other vertical motion, their needs to be space between my thumb and the strings but I can’t go as fast with that space. Kind of irritating.
Have you tested your motions without a guitar? Here's a simple one we like to use ( ruclips.net/video/L6PUCTaNAOw/видео.html ). If you can be fast on a table, you can be fast on a guitar. These are all just joint motions.
@@troygrady Interestingly, I play guitar right handed but I write left handed so the Eddie motion doesn’t feel comfortable to me at all. Lol. Thanks for the video suggestion.
I used to hold the pick with the index finger positioned like her for nearly all my guitar playing years. I also anchored my pinky on the guitar body. It hurt my index finger after long hours of practising. I switched a little over a year back to a half curled index finger position with the side of the index right over my thumb pad, with no pinky anchor. Feels good but I have sweaty hands and playing some long passages cause my thumb to over-extend to the point that my index is now over the thumb middle joint instead of the fleshy pad.
First step - don't do long hours of practice! I don't really play for more than 40 minutes or an hour at a time. And if I'm not making obvious progress, I don't play at all. Everything else is just wasting time repeating the same thing for no reason.
Ok I finally understand the pick slant wow what a difference! I thought I had been doing that but I was reverting to string hopping for speed instead. I know understand it thank you for the inspiration for me to keep hammering away til it got into my fingers and my brain finally--GREAT lessons thank you again!
Your instruction is the best I’ve ever come across, scientific, straightforward, complex yet easy to understand. Guitar playing has felt like a chore for a long time for me, this makes it fun again to discover 🎸
For sure, the focus in these recent updates has been all about extracting actual usable info from all this awesome real-world examples we've been able to look at.
Excellent. Is there a piece of tape or something stuck to her pick on the 2nd clip? To improve her grip I guess?
Yes
Thank you Troy!
No, thank you for watching!
This is truly excellent 🤘
Seus videos tem contribuido para a melhora da minha palhetada grande Troy um forte abraço do brasil obrigado por esta fantastica serie de videos!
Muito obrigado!
- 3 years of playing: 160 bpm
- 3 seconds of playing: 210 bpm
I'm pretty sure 3 years of playing can give you 200bpm picking speed but syncing the notes is the issue for most of us
For hand synchronisation - chunking is key.
Check out older CtC videos on that matter.
Also, no matter what you do, these concepts need to be practiced and applied to gain results.
@@jakubturlinski7159 what is CtC? can you link me the video pls?
@@alessandro9740 it stands for Close Quarter Combat :)
I meant the channel you're on - Cracking the Code of course.
Just search for cracking the code hand synchronisation and you'll find sth
Including an old video by Ben Eller regarding chunking and so on. It helped me quite a bit
@@alessandro9740 Cracking the Code by troy grady
That girl has better technique than me...and I’ve been playing for 20 years!!!!!
It's never too late!
Its proof that some people are simply going to be better at something than others, in other words innate talent. No matter how much someone practices they can only get so far.
Amazing videos as always. You should check out John Carty's banjo right-hand technique.
Is he a tenor player? I like me some Gerry O'Connor, always thought it would be cool to check him out if we're ever over there.
@@troygrady yes he’s an incredible tenor banjo and fiddle player. Best ever in my opinion but he has a very interesting banjo right hand technique with a mix of different things going on. Uses a very firmly planted thumb grip. Top of the thumb perpendicular to the pick. Locks any finger wiggle out of the equation for triplets which is a common technique in Irish playing. A lot of trad music relies on alternate picking patterns but there is economy picking happening in parts and I’d expect some double escape picking. A few videos on youtube but not a lot of good examples. I live up the road from him here in Ireland. He’s a true virtuoso. Love what you’re doing!
Thank you Troy, with each lesson you make us better guitar players! thank you so much!
So glad I found this channel, awesome stuff!
Would be very interesting to see John Browne or Olly Steele from the band Monuments on here, two of the best rhythm guitar players on the planet in my opinion, ridicoulus picking techniques!
Thank you for making these good contents
I find a lot of Troy’s videos underscore the importance of picking mechanics and pick slanting which is crucial to playing. The thing is hand synchronization between left and right hand is what many guitar players with. He may have covered this and perhaps I missed it? But thus far I have yet to see a Troy Grady video on left and right hand synchronization.
The key concept you are looking for is "chunking": check out ruclips.net/video/p9DiIm4RqrQ/видео.html and one of the old Cracking the Code episodes (I'll post it here when I find it)
I've been playing guitar for most of my life and I'm in my late 20s and I've tackled shred stuff before with a fair bit of success (for reference, I could play the 'follow the signs' solo) and I couldn't really pick that much faster than Kim.. which is depressing maybe? 😂 But the max speed I could pick at wasn't much faster than what I could actually perform string changes with relatively comfortably in 4 note groups with downward pickslanting. In fact I could string change with my max speed at about 75% reliability, which is to say 3 out of 4 string change transitions sound okay and don't stick on the strings or miss for 10 or so seconds before fatigue gives in.
I don't know if I should be demotivated about this sobering fact, considering she is a complete beginner but I've injured both of my hands trying to shred and perform fast tremolo picked technical death metal songs.
Usually I would practice bursts of 8 to 16 notes at top speed and I still believe that I'd be able to pick a fair bit faster in 8-16 note bursts than Kim but I don't practice like that anymore because it led to a lot of injuries from the sheer strain and tension involved in hulking out at your max speed for an extensive period of practice time.
Nevertheless, I don't know how to feel about this 😕 Kim should try her hand at guitar though because I was thoroughly impressed 👏
I'm a super beginner, but I've seen several people talk about practicing speed with short bursts and increasing the length of the bursts slowly. But they all emphasized focusing on relaxing during the breaks between the bursts and trying to keep that relaxation as much as possible during the bursts. They specifically said if they tensed up too much, there's no way they'd be able to have stamina for longer passages at speed. Maybe that is the key, to start slower again and really focus on not "hulking out" as much as possible?
I hold the pick very similar like the girl in the first example. I felt never comfortable with the other more conventional grip. Do you think, that I can still make a progress with this kind of grip? Lately I discovered, that I can play better, when I hold the pick very loose.
I hold it like that too, I find it much more precise, but I play mostly economy picking.
I tried alternate picking for the sake of it (😜) and the second position seems to work better.
You can still have smooth attack with a low-edge pick grip - bluegrass players do this, for example. But they also use heavy gauge picks with rounded edges, so the roundness of the pick is almost a similar to effect to playing with the edge. With a thinner pick where you don't have this advantage, yes, holding the pick more loosely and allowing some flop will help with attack smoothness.
@@HeadbangoO I just started to try economy picking (at the age of 51) and it feels good with my grip.
@@troygrady Thank you for the advice, Troy. I use heavy gauge picks, but the tip is pointed. I will experiment with thinner picks.
@@troygrady Thank you for the reply, I will try both approaches!
The guitar science show i always wanted 😍
Amazing informative video could you do a In depth Pick analysis on John Petrucci 🔥 🔥 🔥
It's all in the wrist.
The elbow motion is just inconsequential and compensatory.
80% of the time it's thumb and 1st finger movement, not so much for tremolo though.
4:02 according to the DSX-5 manual, individuals who approach the guitar with high levels of randomness…
Hi Troy...Great video. 1 question..if a guitar player can naturally generate decent speed with elbow motion of the picking hand....would you advice him/her to move away from that and towards wrist motion as it is widely considered more consistent, economical and less prone to injuries in the long run?
Troy, how can I get the cell phone holder that you use? So i can analyze my own picking/fingering techniques. Is this a homemade device? I have one that clamps to my headstock but that holder your using is the real deal.
Hey troy, Would a second interview with Marshall harrison focusing on his unique swybryd technique be considered? The first one that focused on his sweeping was awesome
Sir we need an interview with max ostro please
How Kiko Loureiro’s alternate picking technique work?
Hello Mr. Grady. You should check out the channel Fingershreds.
I've never seen a more shredding finger picking technique. It seems truly superior to using a pick. I feel like my own technique has been destroyed by those darn fingerpickers.
I've been playing for 11 years, around 1 hour a day and still can't pick correctly, still can't synchronise my 2 hands and can't play fast shit like eruption (dude I've tried so hard and so much). Also I'm lefty playing with a normal guitar. I always feel like I'm stock and I can't get better.
Try tremolo picking just like in this video (or find a technique thats efficient and fast for you, maybe anchoring your pinky on the body of guitar for accuracy) and incorporate it to some licks that use multiple strings (three note per string licks) picking just like you would on one string
I’ve been playing for over 25 years and I can’t shred either. I didn’t put in the 8 hour practice days during the first few years, and now I’m old and don’t have the time to carve out, so I get a little better all the time, but I’ll never be a guitar hero.
To synchronize hands you need to play scales slow. Build a good working relationship with when you pick and when you fret. Then you can gradually speed up.
@coujean99 I hear you. I'm also a lefty playing a right handed guitar and Yes, fast picking is a tough one for me as well, but I think it's not impossible, it may just be a bit harder to naturally find the picking motion that works for you. In my case my right arm would always tense up whenever I'd try to pick fast, I have been playing with too much tension in my right arm for over 30 years and I'm now in the process of un-learning the tension that's become automatic. It's a slow process but I'm seeing results.
@@LarsBauer74 in my early days of learning guitar I had the same problem. It took me years to figure it out on my own. Now Troy Grady website is a great way to help. Check it out
I found that my wrist/arm motion found the most efficient way by itself.
what these speed tutorial videos miss to teach is the other hand. mostly just the picking techniques. bu it needs to two hands to coordinate.
I get that we can attempt the fast stuff with sloppiness. But how do we self correct to remove that? Surely I can use the magnet to see slow-mo footage. But in order to fix it I'd need to still slow down right?
One possibility is to slow down gradually (while still remaining in the fast-ish zone) to check if you can gradually increase your control and clean this up. You don't wanna go so slow that you can get away with inefficient motions. Random example: you can do the thing fast and sloppy at 170bpm 16th notes (and crucially, your fretting patterns are memorised). Try to go down to 150 or 140 and see if you can start hearing and correcting mistakes. Let me know if that works :)
damn troy, what guitar did you eat, bcuz playing is in your blood, geez, your channel should be a worldwide patrimony with all the content
I am frustrated. I just don't get it. I keep trying to slant the pick in the right direction and get the right movement but the pick still gets stuck on the strings and it gets worse when I switch strings. Why can't I do this?
Go to the Cracking the Code forum and post a video clip of your picking. That way the issue can be diagnosed.
is there any bpm detecor app that works for guitar playing, I want to measure my speed anyone can recommend something for android?
So… there IS hope for me yet! :)
How do you calculate her picking speed? Is there a program that will tell you the bpm based on a recording?
sooo how do we smooth it out man? I'm kind of in the same spot as the beginner in the video
My pick is pretty fast but syncing my right hand up with the left is where my problem lies...
First thing you can do is use simple repeating single-string patterns like the Yngwie "six note pattern" and try to lock them up. Line up the first note of the pattern with a downstroke consistently by hitting that downstroke just a tiny bit harder. You can then just ignore the next five notes because they'll automatically line up. That was how I did it. Short answer: sync works by lining up target notes with a specific pickstroke and ignoring the others. That's the secret.
If you are a right handed picker then try to pick with your left hand. That's the trick to study a beginner if you are alone.
That's right! Doing this is super cool, and feels like being a newb again.
Sadly the advice of "just play fast" didn't work for me AT ALL. If I do that, I just end up defaulting to spastic flailing. I can't default to anything close to this technique. And if I try to mimic this technique, I end up barely being able to pick. I'm talking, like I can barely get the pick to cross the strings. I don't know what to do since clearly the most "natural" way I can get speed is not sustainable. I'm someone who's been playing bass for a long time. I've played with my pick and fingers. I'm trying to finally fix my picking and this feels so far from natural I can barely move. I tried it on guitar too because I was hoping it would be easier if the strings were thinner. No luck.
It's incredibly frustrating that a beginner can do this better than I can. It makes me just want to sell all my instruments.
Hey, if you feel like sharing some clips of your picking on the Cracking the Code Forum, the community there might come up with some useful things to try!
hey man hope you figured it out by now and didnt give up. I go through those existential crises very frequently but it's important to keep going
You need to check out a guy by the name of Dean Lamb of Archspire. Picking is crazy on an 8 string.
so is elbow good or bad? should i avoid it?
IMO the only thing that's bad is pain or discomfort. If you are able to do a fast and comfortable elbow motion (like Vinnie Moore, Bill Hall or Brendon Small), you should be OK.
i was forced to learn guitar left handed because of a tendon injury. FFS my untrained (right hand) strums 2x faster than my left hand even after a year of working on strumming. Nothing has
made a big enough difference for me to play the tremolo section of one by metallica.
You should try taking some of our table tap tests with both hands just to see if there is any difference in raw capability, or if it is just the "guitar" part that is tripping you up.
So with this particular example... would you advise transitioning from elbow to wrist at any point? Or just go with what comes naturally?
I think "naturally" is a little too superstitious. We have these table tapping tests that we do to simulate various picking motions, and most people score highly on all of them, over 200bpm. ( Here's one you can try: ruclips.net/video/L6PUCTaNAOw/видео.html ) So most people can already do most motions fast. They're just not familiar with how to do them on a guitar. So we just say, in the interest of saving time, go with whichever one you can do right now because that's the shortest path. But you can learn any of them in the long run. In this case, wrist was working in the first test, and elbow in the second. So either one would be a good choice, and many players use both.
@@troygrady thank you!
Troy looks like the lovechild of Frank Gambale and Jay Leno. With a bit of Marty McFly thrown in for good measure.
I have been playing guitar for 40 years and I don’t even know if I’m holding my pick correctly.
Great work. Why don't you write a research paper on this or something?
Now if I could just get my fretting hand to catch up with my picking hand I’d be in goddamn business!
I need help with my picking but Troy never responds to me. Everyday I feel like a beginner when I first pick up the guitar. After hours and hours of practice I can kinda shred. But Everyday I have to relearn how to pick. Is this normal? Please help. I know you're really busy and don't see every comment. I want your course but I feel like maybe something is wrong with me.
Try the Cracking the Code forum at forum.troygrady.com, plenty of people there willing to help, including Troy :-)
I’m changing my bands name to Pocket Of Correctness.
Remember, you have shorter arms, and you are right handed. Try being left handed and play a right hand guitar, which is my plight...and I have long arms...but I won't give up
I don't think this is a big factor to be honest. We run everyone through tests of joint motion speed and endurance and almost everyone can move very fast with their picking hand. In my own tests I'm actually somewhat faster with my left hand, I just don't use it for picking. Most of the difference in performance you see between various players comes down to the techniques they're using, not so much anatomical differences. Those differences may exist, but I think they're smaller than what most of us think.
Plz whammy bar technique shred
🔥🔥
Proud and scared in equal measure!
Ok I’m just gonna ask what everyone else wants to know. When are you investigating Jason Richardson hands?
We’ve reached out to him in years past with no response. Which is fine, not everyone is comfortable being filmed in the, shall we say, intimate fashion to which we are accustomed.
@@troygrady he must be guarding his secret formula!
Fast down picking study video
I hope someday you will give your opinion of what picking style works best. Thanks for the videos.
Almost all picking styles can give you great results, if you know how they work :)
So wait using elbow for picking ISNT Bad
Not as far as we know. Lots of great players, like Vinnie Moore and Brendon Small, use it, and have done so for years with no apparent ill effects. As usual, any motion done incorrectly or for excessive periods of time, or when you feel tension, can be detrimental. But we don't have any specific evidence that there is something wrong with elbow motion.
Get Jason Richardson on the show!!