March 20, 2025 • 40 mins
The pursuit of lightning-fast guitar playing often leads down a path filled with frustration and plateaus. What if the secret isn't in how fast you can move your fingers, but in understanding the subtle mechanics that make true speed possible?
In this deep-dive exploration of speed picking, we shatter common misconceptions about developing velocity on the guitar. The truth? You're only as fast as your slowest element. Whether it's finger strength limitations, pick angle issues, or string-crossing challenges, these hidden bottlenecks are what prevent most guitarists from achieving their speed goals.
The psychological dimension of practice is equally critical. Some days will feel amazing while others feel like regression—a reality every guitarist must embrace rather than fight against. We provide a framework for maintaining consistency through both types of days, separating maintenance-level practice from advancement-focused training.
Beyond theory, we explore practical concepts like "getting your ya-ya's out" through raw practice, the critical importance of tremolo picking development, and why three-note-per-string patterns have become the gold standard for speed development. These spread fingerings create symmetrical patterns that allow both hands to find synchronicity at higher tempos than traditional scale positions permit.
Perhaps most valuable is our exploration of the subtle technical nuances—pick depth, pick weight, hand positioning, and guitar setup—that transform good technique into exceptional speed. These seemingly small details often make the difference between hitting a wall and breaking through to new levels of playing.
Ready to transform your approach to speed? This episode provides the roadmap that will change not just how you practice, but how you think about the mechanics of fast playing forever.
Be sure to watch for the video on the GuitarZoom YouTube channel to see these examples in action!!!
Links:
Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/
- Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
- GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
- Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steve (00:00):
Okay, so let's dive in specifically and talk about
speed picking using what we callthree note per string patterns.
Okay, now, first of all, inorder to do this, I need to just
discuss a little bit with youissues that people have.
Number one strength of fingers.
Okay, and throughout thepicking booster course, you're
(00:20):
learning about legato andstrengthening your fingers and
stuff like that, and it iscrucial Because if want to learn
how to pick fast, always remindyourself that you're only as
fast as your slowest element.
So if you have a particularfinger or a grouping of fingers
that is always struggling, um,because they're not strong
enough, or whatever it might be,that's going to be an issue and
(00:42):
that's just the reality of it.
Okay, it doesn't matter, youcould pick super fast and that's
great, but if this hand can'tkeep up, there's going to be a
problem.
Right, if this hand is superfast but this hand can't keep up
, again that's going to be aproblem.
So you're always going to be asfast as the slowest elements.
So independence and strength inyour fingers is something that
you want to make sure thatyou're working on, and there's a
(01:02):
lot of really great legatoexercises and things like that
you can do to develop andmaintain and enhance that
strength.
Okay, speed, obviously.
Through that strength becomesthe availability of being able
to play faster, and we're goingto talk about all kinds of
different levels of fast Okay.
But the other part is staminabeing able to do something for a
(01:25):
longer period of time, not justshort bursts, although that's
okay, but over time we want todevelop the ability of being
able to do something fast for alonger period of time, which
we're going to talk about.
And then we've gotsynchronization, okay, the
ability of both hands being ableto find that medium space in
(01:46):
which they both can coexist andwork together.
Okay, and again, you can keepworking on this and elevating it
by understanding.
What is it that I need toincrease ability, my skill set,
right?
Do I need to make my pickingfaster, cleaner, more articulate
, dynamically, whatever it mightbe?
Or is it that my fretting handexcuse me needs to develop some
(02:08):
more strength through legatoexercises, through finger
independence, all of those kindsof things?
What is it that I need?
Because, in reality, whenyou're doing speed picking,
you're mostly doing what we callthree note per string patterns,
which means you're dealing withone, two and four as a
combination and one, three andfour as a combination, and it's
(02:28):
the one three and four thattends to give people the most
problem.
So, again, all the practice inthe world of this can
synchronize more, but ultimatelywhat's going to really make a
benefit is being able to isolatethat problem and develop the
strength and the speed and thestamina of said finger or groups
of fingers, if that makes sense.
And then a little bit differentidea of an issue that someone
(02:52):
might have as you get into thisis going to be string changing,
switching strings.
So once you start developingthis idea, being able to connect
it to the next adjacent string,and so on as we keep going
through it.
Okay, then, the other thing Iwanna talk to you about before
we get started here is mindset.
So when you're trying to learnhow to do this, you have to
understand that you're gonnahave great days and you're gonna
(03:14):
have less than ideal days, andthe most important thing is this
understanding that you can workthrough those.
But the days that aren't ideal,you're gonna have to work
through those, but the days thataren't ideal, you're going to
have to work through it.
Not every day is a great day.
Not every day is consistent.
It's not like, every day youget better and better.
It doesn't happen that way.
You've got to be able to workthrough the ebb and flow of the
(03:38):
psychology, of what happens inyour mind when you have a great
day and then the next day mightnot be quite as good, but the
practice still needs to beconsistent.
Okay, and I always try and tellpeople there's a difference
between practicing to maintainand advanced practicing, or
elevated time practicing tooffer the ability to elevate
(04:01):
Right.
At the very least, we need tomaintain and if you think about
it, it's kind of like being arunner.
Okay, I've been a runner mywhole life.
There's a difference betweenrunning every day to maintain
and running because I'mpreparing for a marathon.
It's a different kind of thing.
Everything about it, everythingabout the training is different
(04:22):
and with speed picking we haveto understand that there's all
these small little nuances thatwe need to become aware of,
which we're going to talk about.
And then we need to develop allof these little nuances because
if something's not clean orsomething's not clear or
something's messy or, you knowagain, a finger combination is
struggling or whatever, we needto be aware of those, identify
(04:43):
those and then we need toisolate that and practice that
so holistically, we can make thewhole thing move forward.
But depending on the focus thatyou have, the availability of
time that you have and all thesesorts of things are also going
to determine whether or notyou're, at the very least,
maintaining, so you can continuedoing what you're doing, or you
need to elevate and once youget to that elevation point
(05:06):
again, you can decide whetherit's time to maintain or whether
you want to try and keep going.
Oftentimes, as you keep tryingto keep going, it requires more
of your time, more of yourconcentration, right, all of
those kind of things.
That's how we get there.
The next thing I want you toknow is that there's a
significant difference betweenpracticing something slow.
The next thing I want you toknow is that there's a
(05:27):
significant difference betweenpracticing something slow and
then practicing it fast.
You might develop a particularway of being able to pick or
finger or do whatever at aslower pace, and once you start
moving that metronome up,everything changes, it morphs.
The concept is still there, butthe execution, the approach,
might change drastically and youneed to be okay with that.
(05:47):
You don't want to just say toyourself well, that's the way
I've always done it.
That's fine.
But that may not work when wemove it into the realm as we
keep moving faster and faster.
So it's just again a mindset.
You got to get used to beingable to think about that.
And the other thing I want tomention too is the importance of
warming up warming up your mind, warming up your body, getting
(06:08):
yourself focused, that sort ofthing before you really try and
hit a practice regimen for theday.
So for me, for instance, I do apre-practice, which is the
first thing I have to do when Iget to the studio or when I
start warming up or whatever youknow at home cup of coffee,
whatever it is I'm doing I haveto get myself in the right
(06:28):
mindset and I've got to get myfingers warmed up and all of
those sorts of things before Ireally hit the training, if you
will.
And once I get there, you know,then it might be going great,
it might not be going great,every day is different.
But I have to go through a warmup routine of just getting
myself organized.
So as we go through thesethings, you're going to hear me
(06:49):
keep talking about really tryingto think about what you're
doing, how you're doing, whyyou're doing it that way, and
really become hyper aware ofevery nuance of what you're
doing.
Not just I'm going to do thisas fast as humanly possible for
five minutes and then move on tosomething else, but really
becoming aware, because if youwant to learn how to do this,
you can, but we've got toconstantly be doing a mop-up.
(07:11):
We've got to clean up behindourselves all the time.
Is this getting better?
Is this getting faster?
Is this getting cleaner?
How's the synchronicity going?
We need to think about thosethings.
Now, some things to think about,to be mindful of as well, just
to get you in the right place is.
We've already talked aboutbeing clean, okay, well, clean
can also mean deadening out theother strings right, keeping the
(07:34):
string changes clean, all ofthese other elements as well
that aren't just directlyconnected to the picking and the
moving of the fingers, butmaking sure that everything
sounds clean around theexecution of what we're doing.
Are the other strings beingdeadened?
Are you getting unwanted noisefrom that stuff?
Think about the pick angle atwhich you're playing, right, you
want to think about where thatpick is and again, I can't give
(07:56):
you a right or wrong answer.
You're either playing flat oryou're turning in and turning
the pick a little bit.
Okay, we also have theavailability of turning this way
a little bit.
Now there's all kinds of thingsthat we can learn about and read
about of all these differentspecifics on pick angles, and I
think that's wonderful.
I'm not going to get all crazywith that stuff right now.
What I want you to do is, whenyou start learning how to
(08:18):
practice, the things we're goingto talk about is I want you to
explore pick angle and pickdirection, okay, and start
thinking about how does it workwhen you're on one string.
What feels most comfortablewhen you start trying to connect
to the next string that stringconnection, which is gonna be
really important.
How does it feel then?
Do we need to readjust a littlebit to make that smoother as we
(08:41):
go across there?
So those are things I want youto think about as we do this.
The other thing is pick depth,not just the angle this way or
the angle this way, but how faryou're pushing the guitar pick
into the string, where you mightbe doing some strumming and
stuff and you're really diggingin to get an aggressive sound,
but when it comes to speedpicking, you might need to learn
(09:02):
how to just graze that stringto get over it.
So these are things we want tothink about.
We also want to think about theguitar pick itself.
The size of the guitar pick,right.
The thickness of the guitarpick Do these things make a
difference For me?
I want a really sharp point onmy guitar pick.
(09:22):
Okay, not ridiculous, right, Idon't need it to be like a pin,
okay, I just need it to be sharp.
If it's really dull, if it's,you know, like a jazz style pick
and it's really rounded on theedge, I'm not going to get any
attack off that string, right,it's going to sound.
However, it's not going to havethat attack that I want.
(09:45):
So I want the pick to be sharp.
The point I want the pick to beheavy because I want to be in
control of the pick and as itmoves through the string.
If the pick is really really,really, really light, for
instance, every time I try andpick, the pick's going to bend
and that's just going to take memore time trying to get through
this guitar string.
(10:05):
So the thicker that guitar pickbecomes, the more the pick is
forcing itself across thatstring and then I can decide
with pick depth, how far in orout I need to be to get the
attack that I'm looking for andthe speed that.
I'm looking for speed, that I'mgoing to be.
(10:31):
If I start pushing in too far,it's going to get stuck.
If I'm using a really lightpick, it's going to bend and I'm
going to get stuck.
So I have to think about thosekind of things.
I'm not going to tell you howbig the pick needs to be.
I'm not going to tell you howthick the pick needs to be.
I need you to think about thatand figure out what works best
for you.
Now I can give yourecommendations of things, but
ultimately you need to figureout what works best with your
execution, with the way that youplay.
(10:53):
So, finally, before we getstarted here, just be aware of
every nuance.
Okay, be aware of everything.
Be aware of the way you'resitting, the way you're holding
the guitar, the relaxed state ofyour body, from your neck on
down.
Are you focused?
Are you thinking aboutsomething else?
Right, are you trying too hard?
Are you not finding thatcomfort zone?
(11:15):
Okay, we're going to talk aboutdifferent levels of practice in
terms of whether or not we'reactually trying something just
to hammer out as rough and rawas it is, hammering it out to
start making some sort ofconnection.
And then there's preciseness,clarity, right.
That's a different practicethan just hammering it out,
trying to, you know, makesomething out of nothing and
(11:36):
start developing it from a rawperspective, versus really
refining it.
Okay, versus practicing atincredibly fast speeds, as
opposed to always starting downhere and working our way up.
We can actually learn how tostart up here and work our way
down.
So there's lots of differentways that we can do that, but at
the end of the day, the mostimportant thing is you got to be
honest with yourself.
Okay, messy is messy, but messycan be cleaned up.
(12:00):
Okay, we can refine that.
So, be aware, be honest aboutyour playing.
If you're struggling withsomething, find answers, find
out why.
Find out if it's okay right nowthat it's not as good as you
want it to be, but you're on theright track.
That's what you need to do, allright.
So the first thing I wouldrecommend is that you get used
to what's called tremolo picking.
(12:21):
Now, in the picking boostercourse, it does talk about this.
All right, so you can always goback and review there too.
But the big thing with tremolopicking is you're just trying to
isolate a string and you'retrying to explore your palm,
muting your pick, attack, pickangle, pick depth, all that kind
(12:43):
of stuff.
And you're not limited by whatyou're doing with your fretting
hand, because it's not even partof the equation.
So you're just trying to workon how does my neck feel, how
does my shoulder feel, right,all the way down as I play,
(13:08):
right?
So I have an unlimited amountof time to just be hitting this
string with an alternate pickingapproach down and up picking.
Do I need more work on myalternate picking?
Am I attacking the string bothwith the down and the up with
the same kind of dynamic?
Okay?
So, as much as you might think,well, you know, think to
yourself.
You know, I remember learning.
(13:29):
Again, always remember there'sa difference between renting and
owning.
Don't rent ideas when it comesto your skill level, your
confidence.
Don't rent it, you have to ownit, okay.
So when you're trying to learnsomething like this, don't say,
oh, I've done alternate pickingor I've done tremolo picking.
I want you to be honest withyourself and really dial in in
(13:50):
your mind, in your body, yourability to be able to execute
this technique of tremolopicking.
See if I dig deeper, see how itgets thicker and maybe a little
(14:13):
bit messier.
Now I'm not saying that thatcan be bad.
Depends on what I'm doing.
But I do want to be aware that,depending on how deep the pick
goes into the string, it changesthe tone.
Right, it makes it fatter as Idig deeper into it.
Okay, which is gonna slow medown.
It's gonna make each noteinstead of being this big, it's
gonna make each note this big,so they might start getting
(14:34):
really close to each other.
If I back off, each notebecomes thinner.
Therefore, I can hear a littlemore space in between each one.
I can also explore where I needto be, this direction as I play
.
Where do I need to be to getthe best kind of sound that I'm
(15:03):
looking for?
I want to be aware of that asI'm playing so tremolo picking,
just grabbing your guitarthroughout the day, whenever it
might be, it doesn't have to.
Again, you might need to warmup, as we talked about.
Right, just grab the guitar andyou start doing this, and it's
not just how fast can I go?
And then I'm done.
Am I making a connection?
Am I sensing any irregularities?
(15:26):
Are my dynamics off a littlebit?
How does it feel?
Am I loose?
Am I tight?
You got to become aware of thesehyper aware of these things.
See, and that's a prime exampleas I slow down, the technique
(15:53):
completely changes, my approachcompletely changes.
I'm picking wide all this kindof stuff because I've got to
play slower.
When I'm playing faster,everything comes.
It's not that the action isn'tdifferent.
Of course I'm picking down andup, but the specifics of how I'm
doing it changes drasticallyfrom playing super slow to
(16:15):
playing super fast.
And I need to become aware ofthat.
If I'm not used to playing fast, I'm used to playing slower.
I've got to get used to playingfaster and the differences in
feeling between doing it slowerand doing it faster.
So right now I'm not worriedabout a metronome, I'm not
bringing that into the equation.
Right now I'm just practicingin a raw state, I like to call
(16:36):
it.
I'm just trying to get used tohow things feel.
Now, a lot of that is going todevelop your ability of being
able to pick cleanly, accurately, quickly all of those kinds of
things, Focusing on the thingswe are talking about, not just
watching it as a Netflix videoand spending two minutes and
then going back to somethingelse, but focusing,
(16:57):
hyper-focusing, zooming in witha magnifying glass what is
working, what isn't working,what feels good, what doesn't
feel good, what sounds good,what doesn't sound good Small,
tiny, minor adjustments that youcould do to develop that speed
picking, that tremolo pickingthe other part is legato
exercises and, again, betweenthe picking booster and the
(17:20):
technique course and all thesedifferent kinds of things that
you can do that we have here.
You've got to develop those.
If you're struggling with yourthird and your pinky, which most
people do, you need to work onthat and I'm not going to spend
any time talking about it rightnow because you can study the
rest of this picking boostercourse has got stuff like that
in there.
But you need to be awarebecause most people struggle
(17:41):
with these two fingers.
Well, let's be honest, if youstruggle with these two fingers
in any level, right, that's asfast as you're going to get.
That's going to be yourlimitation, that's your
bottleneck.
So, developing this isdeveloping independence in
certain areas and then, as youcontinue to do that, you start
(18:02):
trying to bring them together.
But they're still only going tobe as fast as whatever your
slowest issue is, whatever theslowest element is.
So you need to keep that inmind.
So there's not a day that goesby I don't work on picking and I
don't work on most certainlywork on legato stuff with my
fingers, keeping them strong,keeping them fast, working on
(18:25):
the independence.
All of those kinds of thingsare absolutely crucial.
All right, so we're going to doa little practice that I call
getting your ya-ya's out, andthere's a million different ways
that you can do this.
This is a raw practice to seewhere things are before we start
moving into the actualrudimentary elements of the
three note per string stuff.
So the first thing I would do,for instance, is I would take
(18:48):
and create a four note perstring pattern.
So I might do something likethis where I go to let's just
say I go to the seventh fret ofthe fourth string.
I'm going to turn off my reverb.
(19:22):
Now what I'm trying to do is I'mnot going Because it's just
chaos.
Okay, what I'm doing is a groupof four, and then I'm stopping
and then doing a group of fouragain, and then I'm stopping and
doing a group of four.
In that, stopping and doinganother group of four.
It doesn't need to become arepetitive pattern.
(19:42):
Rhythmically, we as musiciansare always drawn to that.
The problem here is I'm notfocusing on that.
What I'm focusing on is theexecution, in a raw sense, of
these four notes, and what Iwant to really think about is
how are they connecting?
How does it sound, how does itfeel Now, as I'm doing this?
(20:10):
This was crazy to me becausewhen I was younger, I'd never
even thought about this.
It wasn't until I'm older.
I got older.
But when you're practicing this,there are times when you might
need to take, for instance, yourpicking hand and slow it down
just a hair to find thatsynchronization, even though
your picking hand can go fasterand you keep wanting this to
(20:30):
catch up and to do the speed ofyour picking hand.
There are times that you justhave to slow down your picking
hand a little bit to find thatsynchronicity and then you go oh
, there, it is right and, yeah,I want to be faster.
I want to get that.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
But I need to find that Now, inpracticing what I'm doing right
now, I want to do this in avery raw get your ya-ya's out.
(20:53):
I want to do it in a really rawway Because what I want to come
to the surface here is whereare the limitations that I'm
experiencing and I'm hearing,and I'm being honest about this
with myself.
So, as I'm doing this, forinstance, I'll do the best I can
with this.
So, let's say, I was doing thisand I'm playing and I go uh,
okay, but what I actually windup hearing is that which happens
(21:18):
a lot to guitar players so thethird finger is being too slow
and so, ultimately, when I speedthis up, you're not hearing
this finger.
You're hearing and you becomeaware of that.
Now you have two choices Eitheryou can just slide by that and
(21:39):
go I just want to impress myfriends or you can say, boy,
there's a problem there which isgoing to lead to a bigger
problem down the road, so Ishould probably fix this, okay.
So that's where you starttrying to figure out well, what
do I need to do?
Do I need to do more legatoexercises to develop that.
And of course, I'm going tokeep doing this raw practice
because I want to keep trying toget that third finger to make
(22:01):
contact before the pinky comesin, right.
I'm not using a metronome, I'mraw practicing getting my
ya-ya's out right and I'm justtrying to get this to line up.
Do I need to relax a little bitwith my picking hand?
Do I need to play softer ormove the pick out a little bit?
(22:24):
Or what do I need to do?
Or slow down or whatever?
You'll notice I'm palm mutingbecause I like to be able to
hear everything.
If I go, sometimes it gets alittle noisy, depends on what
strings I'm on, but sometimes Ilike to palm mute it.
(23:01):
Okay, now all of this is alsoleading to the discussion of the
comfortability.
We already talked about thepick, but we also need to talk
about the comfortability of theguitar, especially the guitar
neck and the strings, and it'suber important when you're
playing and it doesn't matterwhat style of music you like to
play.
Comfortable guitar obviouslywould be very important.
(23:23):
If you're a marathoner andyou're wearing shoes that are
three sizes too small for you,that's not going to work If
you're wearing shoes that arethree sizes too big for you,
that's not going to work right.
You've got to find the rightfit, and so you know all the way
around with guitar playing.
But certainly when you'repracticing stuff like this, you
need to make sure that thatguitar neck feels good, those
guitar strings feel good, theguitar is set up properly for
(23:44):
your kind of playing, yourattack.
All of those things make adifference.
You know, if my strings aregoing to be this far away from
the neck, it's going to bereally hard to do this.
Logically, if the strings arecloser to the neck, it's going
to be easier for me to do this.
Now, if they get too close, Imight run into issues because
maybe I'm a really heavy-handedplayer and I need to have those
strings, you know, a little bitfurther away.
(24:05):
Okay, listen, that's fine.
You need to find what works foryou, just like being
heavy-handed.
Some people are reallyheavy-handed when they play and
some people are really gentlewhen they play.
There's not one that's betterthan the other.
You know, steve Ray Vaughan wasvery heavy-handed.
Joe Cetriani is not.
It's not right or wrong or blackand white, it's what are you?
(24:26):
What do you need to do.
What do you want to do?
And how do you adjust theguitar to fit who you are?
Those are things that you needto ask yourself.
All right, so, moving back intothe four note thing.
So I'm becoming aware of myshortcomings and what's working.
I've got my guitar tone dialedin, I got my guitar,
everything's feeling good.
(24:46):
So here I am, doing the thing.
It doesn't matter what string,it doesn't matter what fret.
As a matter of fact, I do wantto try this on different strings
, because I might be able tohear some of those
inconsistencies better on ahigher register or a higher
string or something you know.
So it's again.
(25:18):
It's not always how fast I'mgoing, it's.
Can these two meet in themiddle?
Can they find each other andwork this out?
And what are the problems?
Now, once you've got that kindof developed, the next thing I
would strongly start doing isstart working on connecting to
the next string.
This is profound.
So it's not just oh, we'regoing to do it on two strings.
Yeah, we are, but the movementof the pick from one string to
(25:40):
the next is a big hang up forguitar players because it takes
time to get used to.
When you're on one string,everything's small.
When you need to move toanother string, you gotta
connect, you gotta shift down.
So there's a larger motion withyour hand and with the pick to
connect to the next string.
So I don't want to worry aboutconnecting to the next string
until I've got my ya-ya's workedout on these first four notes.
(26:03):
I've got to work on that.
Being honest, no, that's notgood enough.
That's really messy.
I've got to try and figure outwhy it's messy.
This hand's going too fast,this hand's struggling with
whatever.
The pick is really noisy whenI'm picking.
It's really messy.
I have way too much distortionon my amplifier.
I have way too much distortionon my amplifier, whatever it
might be.
We need to work these outBecause as we keep moving toward
(26:25):
the actual techniques of speedpicking, you know the skill set
that we need to do that.
We've already worked out theseother problems by the time we
get there.
Otherwise we're gonna get thereand we're still gonna have the
same problems.
Okay, so now what I'm gonna dois I'm gonna move in, and I'm
aware that I might need to slowdown a little bit, because now
(26:45):
I'm going to make a connection.
So because of this one littlebump, this one little change.
It changes everything about mypractice.
When I was just doing four, itfelt a certain way.
Now I've got to do four plusone, and that plus one is huge
because it's this new movementto the next string.
(27:05):
Are my four still together?
Are they becoming loose?
Is it getting muddy?
Right, and that's okay, becausewe're getting our ya-ya's out
Again as we start adding thisnew plus one, this new string in
.
We're going to start gettingused to being able to move up
(27:26):
into that.
So we might start losing theseback four a little bit because
we're focusing on this.
That's okay, but we are goingto have to come back and clean
this up.
So what do we need to do?
If we're trying to do all ofthis way too fast?
We shouldn't be trying to makea connection.
We should be back on thesefirst four and developing that.
And if I'm really strugglingwith a certain finger, I need to
(27:47):
back up and really try and workon that.
And that is the reality ofplaying guitar.
That's what it is okay.
Be okay with it, actuallyembrace it, because that's how
you, that's how you get betterat it.
You understand the problem andnow I'm working on fixing the.
Okay, I can still do all theseother things in between, but
that's going to be the problem.
That's what I got to work on.
So as I do this now I got myfour plus one Are all the other
(28:21):
strings being quiet?
Am I keeping all of that stuffdead?
So now I get there and now Icould do.
But I'm coming from thisawkward down that came from the
string before the 4 plus 1.
So I'm going to have to getused to being able to do four
(28:44):
plus one, which connects to thenext four.
So there's going to be that bigshift from string to string
that I've got to get used to.
And again, that's what playersmiss.
They just try and work on thisstring and then they expect that
they can play it across allthese other strings.
No, you've got to get used tothe awkwardness of connecting to
the new string and that weirdjump that happens in between.
(29:06):
And that's okay, there's nohurry, this is what we got to
work on.
So I've got four, I've got fourplus one, and then I've got
four plus one that connects tothe four.
Right, that's what it is.
So I've got to work my way backand figure out where the
problem is, and then work my wayforward again.
That's what I gotta keep tryingto work on.
(29:26):
Okay, so no hurry, I can dothis slow, I can do it fast,
right, however, it is to try andwork these bugs out, but that's
what I gotta focus on.
So there's the connection.
(29:51):
To that string, right.
And then when I got my 4 plus 4, the 4 plus 1 plus 4.
So there's that big jump inthere, right there, big jumping.
So a lot of times what you'redoing is you're just ironing
(30:12):
things out.
You're just ironing it out.
It's.
It's rough, hey, it's okay,it's tuesday, right, or whatever
.
It's rough, hey, it's okay,it's 8 am the morning, whatever.
This is.
What warm-up is is we're justironing things out, we're just
ironing it out.
If we do this for 10 minutes,15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30
minutes, and we're aware andwe're working and we're
(30:33):
concentrating, we're going toiron it out.
That's what we're doing.
Okay, that's okay.
You could talk to any shredderout there, john Petrucci, and
he's going to tell you he doeswarm-ups Right.
You've got to get yourselfsynchronized, your brain, your
hands, and some days suck morethan others and that's the way
it goes, right.
(30:54):
But the more you're aware ofall of this, the more progress
you can make.
Now I call that revving like.
What you're doing is you'restarting like, because people
(31:16):
always try and target all sixstrings and then moving all over
the fretboard, which is theworst thing you can do.
If you can't play four notes ona string.
How are are you going to do allthe rest of this If you can't
do four plus one?
How are you going to do all therest of this If you can't do
four plus one?
Connecting to the four partright, two strings, how are you
going to connect to the next oneand the next one, and the next
(31:36):
one and the next one?
You're not.
It's just going to wind upbeing a mess.
Now, as I said before, when it'sa mess, it can be cleaned.
And that's the crazy thingabout speed picking is that it's
okay if we're kind of startingfrom the top side, the messy
side, and we keep refiningdownward, as opposed to the
traditional mentality is alwayswe start slow and we work our
(31:58):
way up to keep things clean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great,we want to do that.
But there's nothing wrong withstarting up here and then just
cleaning things as we move downtoo.
That's okay, as long as we'recleaning, as long as we're
getting things better.
(32:22):
Like you got to keep justdialing it in, dialing it in,
dialing it in.
You know what feels awkward.
Is there too much distortion?
You know you got to slow thishand out a little bit, you know.
Whatever Do I need to go backand just do some legato stuff
for a while to get my hand inthe game, because I'm really
struggling today?
That's the reality of this.
So working with getting yourya-ya's out in a group of four
(32:45):
is a really great place to start.
All right, so now let's startlooking at three note per string
, which is what people tend touse when they're trying to learn
how to speed pick.
Okay, we use what's calledspread fingerings.
So let's explain that for asecond.
When you're playing, forinstance, pentatonic, you're
dealing with two note per stringpattern, which is great, and
again, we can learn how to playthose fast too.
But where things really starttaking off is when you start
(33:07):
playing three notes on a string,like a diatonic scale.
Now, if you were playing what Irefer to as a closed position
diatonic scale, you'd be playingsomething like one, three, four
, one, three, four, one, three,and then we we back up and do
one, two, four.
You know one, two, four, one,three, four.
So there's some, there's somemovement in there, and then we
(33:29):
also have some strings thatmight not have three notes on
them.
So somewhere along the line,somebody started creating this
thing called a spread fingering,which is where we play three
notes on every string, so we canstart developing consistency
with the guitar pick andanticipate consistency with the
fretting hand, because we'realways using the same group of
fingers.
We're always using one, two andfour, or one, three and four.
(33:52):
Why?
Well, because you're not goingto be using one, two and three.
That would give you like a youknow a bluesy kind of thing or
two, three and four, which wouldbe the worst finger combination
on the planet.
Right, that's not what we'redoing.
We're using one, three, fourand one, two, four, which are
the common things that we see.
So we develop our positions ofthe fretboard, of the scale, and
(34:13):
in a little bit different way.
So, for instance, instead ofplaying, let's just start with
something like G major or Eminor Same thing, right, if you
know your theory.
So if I was playing G major, Imight do this, right.
So I'm playing two notes onthis string, three notes on this
(34:33):
string, three notes on thisstring.
But if I moved it into a spreadfingering, I'd be doing three,
five, seven, three, five, seven.
So there's synchronicity there.
You see, it's the same thingtwice.
Three, five, seven, three, five, seven.
Now we call it a spreadfingering because I'm playing
three, five and seven.
It's wider than you might beused to Three, five and seven.
Now the struggle you're goingto have, if you've never done
(34:56):
this before, is whether or notyou should be using three with
your first finger, five withyour ring finger and then seven
with your pinky.
Now, most people don't do itthat way because the stretch
between these two fingers is alot smaller, right, where, if I
use my one and three or one totwo like this okay, I've got a
(35:16):
wider spread and then I've gotmy pinky Again.
It might feel awkward at firstbecause you've never done that
before, but I can't tell youwhich way you have to do it.
I'll do it, you know.
However, I need to as I'mmoving across the fretboard, but
if I have my choice, I would beusing one, two and four to play
that Because the spread, thedistance between the fingers,
becomes easier if I do Now, inorder to do the spread fingering
(35:39):
, of course my neck needs to beup a little bit, my wrist needs
to be down, like I might need torethink the way I'm doing this.
I can't be in a blues, you knowstance like this with my thumb
over the top.
There's no way I'm going to beable to reach that.
I got to come down and get thatwide reach going.
So even that needs to be atopic of discussion, as needed
(36:02):
in the placement of the handproperly.
Now I don't want to spend anhour talking about that, but I
want you to be aware of thatbecause if you've never done
that before, that needs somegetting used to.
So now I've got my G major.
Instead of doing this, what I'mnow doing is this Same notes,
but I'm playing 3-5-7-3-5-7.
(36:24):
Then I'm going to do the nextoctave.
It would be 4-5-7-4-5-7.
So again there's anothersymmetrical pattern.
And then 5-7-8, 5-7-8.
So again another symmetricalpattern.
So I can get used to not onlyvisualizing the symmetry but the
(36:46):
comfortability of playingsymmetrically, so I can make
things faster.
Also, because there's threenotes on every single string,
the pick is going to want to dothe same thing over and over and
over.
It's just going down, up, down,up, down, up, down, up, down,
up, down, up, down, up, all theway through.
Now, of course, the differencewould be is that if I was doing
(37:08):
this slow motion, I'd be goingdown, up, down, up, down, up.
So every other string startswith an upstroke, because I'm
going down, up, down, up, down,up, down, up, down, up, down, up
, down, up, down, up, down, up.
So I'm training the hand justto do this.
And the reason that that'sbeneficial is because we're not
(37:29):
always starting.
We don't always know if we'restarting at a group of three or
wherever it might be, or whatstring or what fret or all these
kinds of things.
We're just trying to train theguitar pick to just do this,
just like when we strum theguitar.
We're just trying to train itto do this.
We're not trying to train it todo this and then this and then
this and all these other things.
We're just training it to go.
(37:50):
I'm running a hundred yard dash.
I'm just moving my legs leftand right.
You know, left leg, right legas fast as I possibly can to get
from point A to point B.
I'm not trying to hop and jumpand skip and all these other
things in between, because it'sjust going to slow me down.
That's what you're learning.
How to do is just develop thisraw element of being able to
push through.
That's the way this works.
(38:10):
So you've got spread fingeringand the technique involved in
being able to execute that, thecomfortability of where your
guitar neck needs to be, allthat kind of stuff.
And you've got theunderstanding of the reason why
you're doing that is to create acommon style movement with your
fingers, this symmetry thathappens and the availability for
the guitar pick just to keepmoving along, just alternate
(38:32):
picking the entire time.
But if you dig a little deeperinto that, you recognize that if
you were really doing thisacross the fretboard you'd be
doing groups of two strings Downup, down up.
Down up is a group of six.
It's two groups of three rightWith a plus one in between, that
connection that we were talkingabout before with the four
notes.
(38:52):
Only now we're doing threenotes.
So the big difference here isthat when I do that connection
to the next string it'shappening on an up strum Right
Addams Family.
That's what it is.
(39:12):
So what we want to do in thenext section is we're going to
isolate exactly that and starttrying to get used to that.
Okay, so let's dive in specifically and talk about
speed picking using what we callthree note per string patterns.
Okay, now, first of all, inorder to do this, I need to just
discuss a little bit with youissues that people have.
Number one strength of fingers.
Okay, and throughout thepicking booster course, you're
(00:20):
learning about legato andstrengthening your fingers and
stuff like that, and it iscrucial Because if want to learn
how to pick fast, always remindyourself that you're only as
fast as your slowest element.
So if you have a particularfinger or a grouping of fingers
that is always struggling, um,because they're not strong
enough, or whatever it might be,that's going to be an issue and
(00:42):
that's just the reality of it.
Okay, it doesn't matter, youcould pick super fast and that's
great, but if this hand can'tkeep up, there's going to be a
problem.
Right, if this hand is superfast but this hand can't keep up
, again that's going to be aproblem.
So you're always going to be asfast as the slowest elements.
So independence and strength inyour fingers is something that
you want to make sure thatyou're working on, and there's a
(01:02):
lot of really great legatoexercises and things like that
you can do to develop andmaintain and enhance that
strength.
Okay, speed, obviously.
Through that strength becomesthe availability of being able
to play faster, and we're goingto talk about all kinds of
different levels of fast Okay.
But the other part is staminabeing able to do something for a
(01:25):
longer period of time, not justshort bursts, although that's
okay, but over time we want todevelop the ability of being
able to do something fast for alonger period of time, which
we're going to talk about.
And then we've gotsynchronization, okay, the
ability of both hands being ableto find that medium space in
(01:46):
which they both can coexist andwork together.
Okay, and again, you can keepworking on this and elevating it
by understanding.
What is it that I need toincrease ability, my skill set,
right?
Do I need to make my pickingfaster, cleaner, more articulate
, dynamically, whatever it mightbe?
Or is it that my fretting handexcuse me needs to develop some
(02:08):
more strength through legatoexercises, through finger
independence, all of those kindsof things?
What is it that I need?
Because, in reality, whenyou're doing speed picking,
you're mostly doing what we callthree note per string patterns,
which means you're dealing withone, two and four as a
combination and one, three andfour as a combination, and it's
(02:28):
the one three and four thattends to give people the most
problem.
So, again, all the practice inthe world of this can
synchronize more, but ultimatelywhat's going to really make a
benefit is being able to isolatethat problem and develop the
strength and the speed and thestamina of said finger or groups
of fingers, if that makes sense.
And then a little bit differentidea of an issue that someone
(02:52):
might have as you get into thisis going to be string changing,
switching strings.
So once you start developingthis idea, being able to connect
it to the next adjacent string,and so on as we keep going
through it.
Okay, then, the other thing Iwanna talk to you about before
we get started here is mindset.
So when you're trying to learnhow to do this, you have to
understand that you're gonnahave great days and you're gonna
(03:14):
have less than ideal days, andthe most important thing is this
understanding that you can workthrough those.
But the days that aren't ideal,you're gonna have to work
through those, but the days thataren't ideal, you're going to
have to work through it.
Not every day is a great day.
Not every day is consistent.
It's not like, every day youget better and better.
It doesn't happen that way.
You've got to be able to workthrough the ebb and flow of the
(03:38):
psychology, of what happens inyour mind when you have a great
day and then the next day mightnot be quite as good, but the
practice still needs to beconsistent.
Okay, and I always try and tellpeople there's a difference
between practicing to maintainand advanced practicing, or
elevated time practicing tooffer the ability to elevate
(04:01):
Right.
At the very least, we need tomaintain and if you think about
it, it's kind of like being arunner.
Okay, I've been a runner mywhole life.
There's a difference betweenrunning every day to maintain
and running because I'mpreparing for a marathon.
It's a different kind of thing.
Everything about it, everythingabout the training is different
(04:22):
and with speed picking we haveto understand that there's all
these small little nuances thatwe need to become aware of,
which we're going to talk about.
And then we need to develop allof these little nuances because
if something's not clean orsomething's not clear or
something's messy or, you knowagain, a finger combination is
struggling or whatever, we needto be aware of those, identify
(04:43):
those and then we need toisolate that and practice that
so holistically, we can make thewhole thing move forward.
But depending on the focus thatyou have, the availability of
time that you have and all thesesorts of things are also going
to determine whether or notyou're, at the very least,
maintaining, so you can continuedoing what you're doing, or you
need to elevate and once youget to that elevation point
(05:06):
again, you can decide whetherit's time to maintain or whether
you want to try and keep going.
Oftentimes, as you keep tryingto keep going, it requires more
of your time, more of yourconcentration, right, all of
those kind of things.
That's how we get there.
The next thing I want you toknow is that there's a
significant difference betweenpracticing something slow.
The next thing I want you toknow is that there's a
(05:27):
significant difference betweenpracticing something slow and
then practicing it fast.
You might develop a particularway of being able to pick or
finger or do whatever at aslower pace, and once you start
moving that metronome up,everything changes, it morphs.
The concept is still there, butthe execution, the approach,
might change drastically and youneed to be okay with that.
(05:47):
You don't want to just say toyourself well, that's the way
I've always done it.
That's fine.
But that may not work when wemove it into the realm as we
keep moving faster and faster.
So it's just again a mindset.
You got to get used to beingable to think about that.
And the other thing I want tomention too is the importance of
warming up warming up your mind, warming up your body, getting
(06:08):
yourself focused, that sort ofthing before you really try and
hit a practice regimen for theday.
So for me, for instance, I do apre-practice, which is the
first thing I have to do when Iget to the studio or when I
start warming up or whatever youknow at home cup of coffee,
whatever it is I'm doing I haveto get myself in the right
(06:28):
mindset and I've got to get myfingers warmed up and all of
those sorts of things before Ireally hit the training, if you
will.
And once I get there, you know,then it might be going great,
it might not be going great,every day is different.
But I have to go through a warmup routine of just getting
myself organized.
So as we go through thesethings, you're going to hear me
(06:49):
keep talking about really tryingto think about what you're
doing, how you're doing, whyyou're doing it that way, and
really become hyper aware ofevery nuance of what you're
doing.
Not just I'm going to do thisas fast as humanly possible for
five minutes and then move on tosomething else, but really
becoming aware, because if youwant to learn how to do this,
you can, but we've got toconstantly be doing a mop-up.
(07:11):
We've got to clean up behindourselves all the time.
Is this getting better?
Is this getting faster?
Is this getting cleaner?
How's the synchronicity going?
We need to think about thosethings.
Now, some things to think about,to be mindful of as well, just
to get you in the right place is.
We've already talked aboutbeing clean, okay, well, clean
can also mean deadening out theother strings right, keeping the
(07:34):
string changes clean, all ofthese other elements as well
that aren't just directlyconnected to the picking and the
moving of the fingers, butmaking sure that everything
sounds clean around theexecution of what we're doing.
Are the other strings beingdeadened?
Are you getting unwanted noisefrom that stuff?
Think about the pick angle atwhich you're playing, right, you
want to think about where thatpick is and again, I can't give
(07:56):
you a right or wrong answer.
You're either playing flat oryou're turning in and turning
the pick a little bit.
Okay, we also have theavailability of turning this way
a little bit.
Now there's all kinds of thingsthat we can learn about and read
about of all these differentspecifics on pick angles, and I
think that's wonderful.
I'm not going to get all crazywith that stuff right now.
What I want you to do is, whenyou start learning how to
(08:18):
practice, the things we're goingto talk about is I want you to
explore pick angle and pickdirection, okay, and start
thinking about how does it workwhen you're on one string.
What feels most comfortablewhen you start trying to connect
to the next string that stringconnection, which is gonna be
really important.
How does it feel then?
Do we need to readjust a littlebit to make that smoother as we
(08:41):
go across there?
So those are things I want youto think about as we do this.
The other thing is pick depth,not just the angle this way or
the angle this way, but how faryou're pushing the guitar pick
into the string, where you mightbe doing some strumming and
stuff and you're really diggingin to get an aggressive sound,
but when it comes to speedpicking, you might need to learn
(09:02):
how to just graze that stringto get over it.
So these are things we want tothink about.
We also want to think about theguitar pick itself.
The size of the guitar pick,right.
The thickness of the guitarpick Do these things make a
difference For me?
I want a really sharp point onmy guitar pick.
(09:22):
Okay, not ridiculous, right, Idon't need it to be like a pin,
okay, I just need it to be sharp.
If it's really dull, if it's,you know, like a jazz style pick
and it's really rounded on theedge, I'm not going to get any
attack off that string, right,it's going to sound.
However, it's not going to havethat attack that I want.
(09:45):
So I want the pick to be sharp.
The point I want the pick to beheavy because I want to be in
control of the pick and as itmoves through the string.
If the pick is really really,really, really light, for
instance, every time I try andpick, the pick's going to bend
and that's just going to take memore time trying to get through
this guitar string.
(10:05):
So the thicker that guitar pickbecomes, the more the pick is
forcing itself across thatstring and then I can decide
with pick depth, how far in orout I need to be to get the
attack that I'm looking for andthe speed that.
I'm looking for speed, that I'mgoing to be.
(10:31):
If I start pushing in too far,it's going to get stuck.
If I'm using a really lightpick, it's going to bend and I'm
going to get stuck.
So I have to think about thosekind of things.
I'm not going to tell you howbig the pick needs to be.
I'm not going to tell you howthick the pick needs to be.
I need you to think about thatand figure out what works best
for you.
Now I can give yourecommendations of things, but
ultimately you need to figureout what works best with your
execution, with the way that youplay.
(10:53):
So, finally, before we getstarted here, just be aware of
every nuance.
Okay, be aware of everything.
Be aware of the way you'resitting, the way you're holding
the guitar, the relaxed state ofyour body, from your neck on
down.
Are you focused?
Are you thinking aboutsomething else?
Right, are you trying too hard?
Are you not finding thatcomfort zone?
(11:15):
Okay, we're going to talk aboutdifferent levels of practice in
terms of whether or not we'reactually trying something just
to hammer out as rough and rawas it is, hammering it out to
start making some sort ofconnection.
And then there's preciseness,clarity, right.
That's a different practicethan just hammering it out,
trying to, you know, makesomething out of nothing and
(11:36):
start developing it from a rawperspective, versus really
refining it.
Okay, versus practicing atincredibly fast speeds, as
opposed to always starting downhere and working our way up.
We can actually learn how tostart up here and work our way
down.
So there's lots of differentways that we can do that, but at
the end of the day, the mostimportant thing is you got to be
honest with yourself.
Okay, messy is messy, but messycan be cleaned up.
(12:00):
Okay, we can refine that.
So, be aware, be honest aboutyour playing.
If you're struggling withsomething, find answers, find
out why.
Find out if it's okay right nowthat it's not as good as you
want it to be, but you're on theright track.
That's what you need to do, allright.
So the first thing I wouldrecommend is that you get used
to what's called tremolo picking.
(12:21):
Now, in the picking boostercourse, it does talk about this.
All right, so you can always goback and review there too.
But the big thing with tremolopicking is you're just trying to
isolate a string and you'retrying to explore your palm,
muting your pick, attack, pickangle, pick depth, all that kind
(12:43):
of stuff.
And you're not limited by whatyou're doing with your fretting
hand, because it's not even partof the equation.
So you're just trying to workon how does my neck feel, how
does my shoulder feel, right,all the way down as I play,
(13:08):
right?
So I have an unlimited amountof time to just be hitting this
string with an alternate pickingapproach down and up picking.
Do I need more work on myalternate picking?
Am I attacking the string bothwith the down and the up with
the same kind of dynamic?
Okay?
So, as much as you might think,well, you know, think to
yourself.
You know, I remember learning.
(13:29):
Again, always remember there'sa difference between renting and
owning.
Don't rent ideas when it comesto your skill level, your
confidence.
Don't rent it, you have to ownit, okay.
So when you're trying to learnsomething like this, don't say,
oh, I've done alternate pickingor I've done tremolo picking.
I want you to be honest withyourself and really dial in in
(13:50):
your mind, in your body, yourability to be able to execute
this technique of tremolopicking.
See if I dig deeper, see how itgets thicker and maybe a little
(14:13):
bit messier.
Now I'm not saying that thatcan be bad.
Depends on what I'm doing.
But I do want to be aware that,depending on how deep the pick
goes into the string, it changesthe tone.
Right, it makes it fatter as Idig deeper into it.
Okay, which is gonna slow medown.
It's gonna make each noteinstead of being this big, it's
gonna make each note this big,so they might start getting
(14:34):
really close to each other.
If I back off, each notebecomes thinner.
Therefore, I can hear a littlemore space in between each one.
I can also explore where I needto be, this direction as I play
.
Where do I need to be to getthe best kind of sound that I'm
(15:03):
looking for?
I want to be aware of that asI'm playing so tremolo picking,
just grabbing your guitarthroughout the day, whenever it
might be, it doesn't have to.
Again, you might need to warmup, as we talked about.
Right, just grab the guitar andyou start doing this, and it's
not just how fast can I go?
And then I'm done.
Am I making a connection?
Am I sensing any irregularities?
(15:26):
Are my dynamics off a littlebit?
How does it feel?
Am I loose?
Am I tight?
You got to become aware of thesehyper aware of these things.
See, and that's a prime exampleas I slow down, the technique
(15:53):
completely changes, my approachcompletely changes.
I'm picking wide all this kindof stuff because I've got to
play slower.
When I'm playing faster,everything comes.
It's not that the action isn'tdifferent.
Of course I'm picking down andup, but the specifics of how I'm
doing it changes drasticallyfrom playing super slow to
(16:15):
playing super fast.
And I need to become aware ofthat.
If I'm not used to playing fast, I'm used to playing slower.
I've got to get used to playingfaster and the differences in
feeling between doing it slowerand doing it faster.
So right now I'm not worriedabout a metronome, I'm not
bringing that into the equation.
Right now I'm just practicingin a raw state, I like to call
(16:36):
it.
I'm just trying to get used tohow things feel.
Now, a lot of that is going todevelop your ability of being
able to pick cleanly, accurately, quickly all of those kinds of
things, Focusing on the thingswe are talking about, not just
watching it as a Netflix videoand spending two minutes and
then going back to somethingelse, but focusing,
(16:57):
hyper-focusing, zooming in witha magnifying glass what is
working, what isn't working,what feels good, what doesn't
feel good, what sounds good,what doesn't sound good Small,
tiny, minor adjustments that youcould do to develop that speed
picking, that tremolo pickingthe other part is legato
exercises and, again, betweenthe picking booster and the
(17:20):
technique course and all thesedifferent kinds of things that
you can do that we have here.
You've got to develop those.
If you're struggling with yourthird and your pinky, which most
people do, you need to work onthat and I'm not going to spend
any time talking about it rightnow because you can study the
rest of this picking boostercourse has got stuff like that
in there.
But you need to be awarebecause most people struggle
(17:41):
with these two fingers.
Well, let's be honest, if youstruggle with these two fingers
in any level, right, that's asfast as you're going to get.
That's going to be yourlimitation, that's your
bottleneck.
So, developing this isdeveloping independence in
certain areas and then, as youcontinue to do that, you start
(18:02):
trying to bring them together.
But they're still only going tobe as fast as whatever your
slowest issue is, whatever theslowest element is.
So you need to keep that inmind.
So there's not a day that goesby I don't work on picking and I
don't work on most certainlywork on legato stuff with my
fingers, keeping them strong,keeping them fast, working on
(18:25):
the independence.
All of those kinds of thingsare absolutely crucial.
All right, so we're going to doa little practice that I call
getting your ya-ya's out, andthere's a million different ways
that you can do this.
This is a raw practice to seewhere things are before we start
moving into the actualrudimentary elements of the
three note per string stuff.
So the first thing I would do,for instance, is I would take
(18:48):
and create a four note perstring pattern.
So I might do something likethis where I go to let's just
say I go to the seventh fret ofthe fourth string.
I'm going to turn off my reverb.
(19:22):
Now what I'm trying to do is I'mnot going Because it's just
chaos.
Okay, what I'm doing is a groupof four, and then I'm stopping
and then doing a group of fouragain, and then I'm stopping and
doing a group of four.
In that, stopping and doinganother group of four.
It doesn't need to become arepetitive pattern.
(19:42):
Rhythmically, we as musiciansare always drawn to that.
The problem here is I'm notfocusing on that.
What I'm focusing on is theexecution, in a raw sense, of
these four notes, and what Iwant to really think about is
how are they connecting?
How does it sound, how does itfeel Now, as I'm doing this?
(20:10):
This was crazy to me becausewhen I was younger, I'd never
even thought about this.
It wasn't until I'm older.
I got older.
But when you're practicing this,there are times when you might
need to take, for instance, yourpicking hand and slow it down
just a hair to find thatsynchronization, even though
your picking hand can go fasterand you keep wanting this to
(20:30):
catch up and to do the speed ofyour picking hand.
There are times that you justhave to slow down your picking
hand a little bit to find thatsynchronicity and then you go oh
, there, it is right and, yeah,I want to be faster.
I want to get that.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
But I need to find that Now, inpracticing what I'm doing right
now, I want to do this in avery raw get your ya-ya's out.
(20:53):
I want to do it in a really rawway Because what I want to come
to the surface here is whereare the limitations that I'm
experiencing and I'm hearing,and I'm being honest about this
with myself.
So, as I'm doing this, forinstance, I'll do the best I can
with this.
So, let's say, I was doing thisand I'm playing and I go uh,
okay, but what I actually windup hearing is that which happens
(21:18):
a lot to guitar players so thethird finger is being too slow
and so, ultimately, when I speedthis up, you're not hearing
this finger.
You're hearing and you becomeaware of that.
Now you have two choices Eitheryou can just slide by that and
(21:39):
go I just want to impress myfriends or you can say, boy,
there's a problem there which isgoing to lead to a bigger
problem down the road, so Ishould probably fix this, okay.
So that's where you starttrying to figure out well, what
do I need to do?
Do I need to do more legatoexercises to develop that.
And of course, I'm going tokeep doing this raw practice
because I want to keep trying toget that third finger to make
(22:01):
contact before the pinky comesin, right.
I'm not using a metronome, I'mraw practicing getting my
ya-ya's out right and I'm justtrying to get this to line up.
Do I need to relax a little bitwith my picking hand?
Do I need to play softer ormove the pick out a little bit?
(22:24):
Or what do I need to do?
Or slow down or whatever?
You'll notice I'm palm mutingbecause I like to be able to
hear everything.
If I go, sometimes it gets alittle noisy, depends on what
strings I'm on, but sometimes Ilike to palm mute it.
(23:01):
Okay, now all of this is alsoleading to the discussion of the
comfortability.
We already talked about thepick, but we also need to talk
about the comfortability of theguitar, especially the guitar
neck and the strings, and it'suber important when you're
playing and it doesn't matterwhat style of music you like to
play.
Comfortable guitar obviouslywould be very important.
(23:23):
If you're a marathoner andyou're wearing shoes that are
three sizes too small for you,that's not going to work If
you're wearing shoes that arethree sizes too big for you,
that's not going to work right.
You've got to find the rightfit, and so you know all the way
around with guitar playing.
But certainly when you'repracticing stuff like this, you
need to make sure that thatguitar neck feels good, those
guitar strings feel good, theguitar is set up properly for
(23:44):
your kind of playing, yourattack.
All of those things make adifference.
You know, if my strings aregoing to be this far away from
the neck, it's going to bereally hard to do this.
Logically, if the strings arecloser to the neck, it's going
to be easier for me to do this.
Now, if they get too close, Imight run into issues because
maybe I'm a really heavy-handedplayer and I need to have those
strings, you know, a little bitfurther away.
(24:05):
Okay, listen, that's fine.
You need to find what works foryou, just like being
heavy-handed.
Some people are reallyheavy-handed when they play and
some people are really gentlewhen they play.
There's not one that's betterthan the other.
You know, steve Ray Vaughan wasvery heavy-handed.
Joe Cetriani is not.
It's not right or wrong or blackand white, it's what are you?
(24:26):
What do you need to do.
What do you want to do?
And how do you adjust theguitar to fit who you are?
Those are things that you needto ask yourself.
All right, so, moving back intothe four note thing.
So I'm becoming aware of myshortcomings and what's working.
I've got my guitar tone dialedin, I got my guitar,
everything's feeling good.
(24:46):
So here I am, doing the thing.
It doesn't matter what string,it doesn't matter what fret.
As a matter of fact, I do wantto try this on different strings
, because I might be able tohear some of those
inconsistencies better on ahigher register or a higher
string or something you know.
So it's again.
(25:18):
It's not always how fast I'mgoing, it's.
Can these two meet in themiddle?
Can they find each other andwork this out?
And what are the problems?
Now, once you've got that kindof developed, the next thing I
would strongly start doing isstart working on connecting to
the next string.
This is profound.
So it's not just oh, we'regoing to do it on two strings.
Yeah, we are, but the movementof the pick from one string to
(25:40):
the next is a big hang up forguitar players because it takes
time to get used to.
When you're on one string,everything's small.
When you need to move toanother string, you gotta
connect, you gotta shift down.
So there's a larger motion withyour hand and with the pick to
connect to the next string.
So I don't want to worry aboutconnecting to the next string
until I've got my ya-ya's workedout on these first four notes.
(26:03):
I've got to work on that.
Being honest, no, that's notgood enough.
That's really messy.
I've got to try and figure outwhy it's messy.
This hand's going too fast,this hand's struggling with
whatever.
The pick is really noisy whenI'm picking.
It's really messy.
I have way too much distortionon my amplifier.
I have way too much distortionon my amplifier, whatever it
might be.
We need to work these outBecause as we keep moving toward
(26:25):
the actual techniques of speedpicking, you know the skill set
that we need to do that.
We've already worked out theseother problems by the time we
get there.
Otherwise we're gonna get thereand we're still gonna have the
same problems.
Okay, so now what I'm gonna dois I'm gonna move in, and I'm
aware that I might need to slowdown a little bit, because now
(26:45):
I'm going to make a connection.
So because of this one littlebump, this one little change.
It changes everything about mypractice.
When I was just doing four, itfelt a certain way.
Now I've got to do four plusone, and that plus one is huge
because it's this new movementto the next string.
(27:05):
Are my four still together?
Are they becoming loose?
Is it getting muddy?
Right, and that's okay, becausewe're getting our ya-ya's out
Again as we start adding thisnew plus one, this new string in
.
We're going to start gettingused to being able to move up
(27:26):
into that.
So we might start losing theseback four a little bit because
we're focusing on this.
That's okay, but we are goingto have to come back and clean
this up.
So what do we need to do?
If we're trying to do all ofthis way too fast?
We shouldn't be trying to makea connection.
We should be back on thesefirst four and developing that.
And if I'm really strugglingwith a certain finger, I need to
(27:47):
back up and really try and workon that.
And that is the reality ofplaying guitar.
That's what it is okay.
Be okay with it, actuallyembrace it, because that's how
you, that's how you get betterat it.
You understand the problem andnow I'm working on fixing the.
Okay, I can still do all theseother things in between, but
that's going to be the problem.
That's what I got to work on.
So as I do this now I got myfour plus one Are all the other
(28:21):
strings being quiet?
Am I keeping all of that stuffdead?
So now I get there and now Icould do.
But I'm coming from thisawkward down that came from the
string before the 4 plus 1.
So I'm going to have to getused to being able to do four
(28:44):
plus one, which connects to thenext four.
So there's going to be that bigshift from string to string
that I've got to get used to.
And again, that's what playersmiss.
They just try and work on thisstring and then they expect that
they can play it across allthese other strings.
No, you've got to get used tothe awkwardness of connecting to
the new string and that weirdjump that happens in between.
(29:06):
And that's okay, there's nohurry, this is what we got to
work on.
So I've got four, I've got fourplus one, and then I've got
four plus one that connects tothe four.
Right, that's what it is.
So I've got to work my way backand figure out where the
problem is, and then work my wayforward again.
That's what I gotta keep tryingto work on.
(29:26):
Okay, so no hurry, I can dothis slow, I can do it fast,
right, however, it is to try andwork these bugs out, but that's
what I gotta focus on.
So there's the connection.
(29:51):
To that string, right.
And then when I got my 4 plus 4, the 4 plus 1 plus 4.
So there's that big jump inthere, right there, big jumping.
So a lot of times what you'redoing is you're just ironing
(30:12):
things out.
You're just ironing it out.
It's.
It's rough, hey, it's okay,it's tuesday, right, or whatever
.
It's rough, hey, it's okay,it's 8 am the morning, whatever.
This is.
What warm-up is is we're justironing things out, we're just
ironing it out.
If we do this for 10 minutes,15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30
minutes, and we're aware andwe're working and we're
(30:33):
concentrating, we're going toiron it out.
That's what we're doing.
Okay, that's okay.
You could talk to any shredderout there, john Petrucci, and
he's going to tell you he doeswarm-ups Right.
You've got to get yourselfsynchronized, your brain, your
hands, and some days suck morethan others and that's the way
it goes, right.
(30:54):
But the more you're aware ofall of this, the more progress
you can make.
Now I call that revving like.
What you're doing is you'restarting like, because people
(31:16):
always try and target all sixstrings and then moving all over
the fretboard, which is theworst thing you can do.
If you can't play four notes ona string.
How are are you going to do allthe rest of this If you can't
do four plus one?
How are you going to do all therest of this If you can't do
four plus one?
Connecting to the four partright, two strings, how are you
going to connect to the next oneand the next one, and the next
(31:36):
one and the next one?
You're not.
It's just going to wind upbeing a mess.
Now, as I said before, when it'sa mess, it can be cleaned.
And that's the crazy thingabout speed picking is that it's
okay if we're kind of startingfrom the top side, the messy
side, and we keep refiningdownward, as opposed to the
traditional mentality is alwayswe start slow and we work our
(31:58):
way up to keep things clean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great,we want to do that.
But there's nothing wrong withstarting up here and then just
cleaning things as we move downtoo.
That's okay, as long as we'recleaning, as long as we're
getting things better.
(32:22):
Like you got to keep justdialing it in, dialing it in,
dialing it in.
You know what feels awkward.
Is there too much distortion?
You know you got to slow thishand out a little bit, you know.
Whatever Do I need to go backand just do some legato stuff
for a while to get my hand inthe game, because I'm really
struggling today?
That's the reality of this.
So working with getting yourya-ya's out in a group of four
(32:45):
is a really great place to start.
All right, so now let's startlooking at three note per string
, which is what people tend touse when they're trying to learn
how to speed pick.
Okay, we use what's calledspread fingerings.
So let's explain that for asecond.
When you're playing, forinstance, pentatonic, you're
dealing with two note per stringpattern, which is great, and
again, we can learn how to playthose fast too.
But where things really starttaking off is when you start
(33:07):
playing three notes on a string,like a diatonic scale.
Now, if you were playing what Irefer to as a closed position
diatonic scale, you'd be playingsomething like one, three, four
, one, three, four, one, three,and then we we back up and do
one, two, four.
You know one, two, four, one,three, four.
So there's some, there's somemovement in there, and then we
(33:29):
also have some strings thatmight not have three notes on
them.
So somewhere along the line,somebody started creating this
thing called a spread fingering,which is where we play three
notes on every string, so we canstart developing consistency
with the guitar pick andanticipate consistency with the
fretting hand, because we'realways using the same group of
fingers.
We're always using one, two andfour, or one, three and four.
(33:52):
Why?
Well, because you're not goingto be using one, two and three.
That would give you like a youknow a bluesy kind of thing or
two, three and four, which wouldbe the worst finger combination
on the planet.
Right, that's not what we'redoing.
We're using one, three, fourand one, two, four, which are
the common things that we see.
So we develop our positions ofthe fretboard, of the scale, and
(34:13):
in a little bit different way.
So, for instance, instead ofplaying, let's just start with
something like G major or Eminor Same thing, right, if you
know your theory.
So if I was playing G major, Imight do this, right.
So I'm playing two notes onthis string, three notes on this
(34:33):
string, three notes on thisstring.
But if I moved it into a spreadfingering, I'd be doing three,
five, seven, three, five, seven.
So there's synchronicity there.
You see, it's the same thingtwice.
Three, five, seven, three, five, seven.
Now we call it a spreadfingering because I'm playing
three, five and seven.
It's wider than you might beused to Three, five and seven.
Now the struggle you're goingto have, if you've never done
(34:56):
this before, is whether or notyou should be using three with
your first finger, five withyour ring finger and then seven
with your pinky.
Now, most people don't do itthat way because the stretch
between these two fingers is alot smaller, right, where, if I
use my one and three or one totwo like this okay, I've got a
(35:16):
wider spread and then I've gotmy pinky Again.
It might feel awkward at firstbecause you've never done that
before, but I can't tell youwhich way you have to do it.
I'll do it, you know.
However, I need to as I'mmoving across the fretboard, but
if I have my choice, I would beusing one, two and four to play
that Because the spread, thedistance between the fingers,
becomes easier if I do Now, inorder to do the spread fingering
(35:39):
, of course my neck needs to beup a little bit, my wrist needs
to be down, like I might need torethink the way I'm doing this.
I can't be in a blues, you knowstance like this with my thumb
over the top.
There's no way I'm going to beable to reach that.
I got to come down and get thatwide reach going.
So even that needs to be atopic of discussion, as needed
(36:02):
in the placement of the handproperly.
Now I don't want to spend anhour talking about that, but I
want you to be aware of thatbecause if you've never done
that before, that needs somegetting used to.
So now I've got my G major.
Instead of doing this, what I'mnow doing is this Same notes,
but I'm playing 3-5-7-3-5-7.
(36:24):
Then I'm going to do the nextoctave.
It would be 4-5-7-4-5-7.
So again there's anothersymmetrical pattern.
And then 5-7-8, 5-7-8.
So again another symmetricalpattern.
So I can get used to not onlyvisualizing the symmetry but the
(36:46):
comfortability of playingsymmetrically, so I can make
things faster.
Also, because there's threenotes on every single string,
the pick is going to want to dothe same thing over and over and
over.
It's just going down, up, down,up, down, up, down, up, down,
up, down, up, down, up, all theway through.
Now, of course, the differencewould be is that if I was doing
(37:08):
this slow motion, I'd be goingdown, up, down, up, down, up.
So every other string startswith an upstroke, because I'm
going down, up, down, up, down,up, down, up, down, up, down, up
, down, up, down, up, down, up.
So I'm training the hand justto do this.
And the reason that that'sbeneficial is because we're not
(37:29):
always starting.
We don't always know if we'restarting at a group of three or
wherever it might be, or whatstring or what fret or all these
kinds of things.
We're just trying to train theguitar pick to just do this,
just like when we strum theguitar.
We're just trying to train itto do this.
We're not trying to train it todo this and then this and then
this and all these other things.
We're just training it to go.
(37:50):
I'm running a hundred yard dash.
I'm just moving my legs leftand right.
You know, left leg, right legas fast as I possibly can to get
from point A to point B.
I'm not trying to hop and jumpand skip and all these other
things in between, because it'sjust going to slow me down.
That's what you're learning.
How to do is just develop thisraw element of being able to
push through.
That's the way this works.
(38:10):
So you've got spread fingeringand the technique involved in
being able to execute that, thecomfortability of where your
guitar neck needs to be, allthat kind of stuff.
And you've got theunderstanding of the reason why
you're doing that is to create acommon style movement with your
fingers, this symmetry thathappens and the availability for
the guitar pick just to keepmoving along, just alternate
(38:32):
picking the entire time.
But if you dig a little deeperinto that, you recognize that if
you were really doing thisacross the fretboard you'd be
doing groups of two strings Downup, down up.
Down up is a group of six.
It's two groups of three rightWith a plus one in between, that
connection that we were talkingabout before with the four
notes.
(38:52):
Only now we're doing threenotes.
So the big difference here isthat when I do that connection
to the next string it'shappening on an up strum Right
Addams Family.
That's what it is.
(39:12):
So what we want to do in thenext section is we're going to
isolate exactly that and starttrying to get used to that.
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