Legato vs Picking

Satriani

Anybody out there having the same trouble as me. My picking is relatively sufficient, but I am so legato influenced that my left hand seems light years faster than my right, so I'm trying to slow things down now and get my picking hand to try keep up with my left.

Guy-Onraet

i totally relate. My legato, Sweeping and Tapping is way faster and cleaner than my picking.
what i've started doing is practicing half of my picking drills with all up strokes for a month, then all down strokes for another month. seems to be working well so far.

Martyr

what i've started doing is practicing half of my picking drills with all up strokes for a month, then all down strokes for another month. seems to be working well so far.

sounds like quite a good idea,but doesn't it get annoying?could you share some of your picking drills ??

Guy-Onraet

good results are never annoying ?

Arjun and i are working on lessons for the forum. most will be drill based with a few different ways of applying them creatively. ?

Martyr

ok cool,i'll keep a look out on the forum ?

Satriani

Picking fast on 1 string with s scale run or something is extremely easy, but when u have arpeggios with string skipping for example. it's another story entirely when u want to pick each note!

andrewjbryson

Inside Picking is a bitch

Try Putrucci 's Rock Discipline "inside picking" exercises

Renesongs

my left hand seems light years faster than my right

I have been struggling with this for years - for me it has become a simple equation that 4 fingers will always outrun one pick. To console myself I've watched masters Satch and Vai in slow motion and found that there is a reasonable amount of hammer ons and pull offs in their shreds besides if you have enough gain and a good compressor in your effects chain you could just about throw the pick away

deanBailey

I only started noticing my Right hand sucking around two months ago (regarding lead)

But when I play Rhythm, My right hand is almost flawless, and I'm playing 16th triplets notes at 140bpm most of the time. I started practicing my right hand (for lead playing) religiously over the past month and It's really helping.

I just approached it like...well...technically everything physical. Bodybuilding for example, you want to bench 120 kgs but you're barely able to lift 70 kgs. Start light till your body is comfortable with it and increase (that goes without saying) now in this case, start slow, develope your technique till it's muscle memory then start speeding it up. Don't force your body into a speed it can't reach comfortably.

Like this video of Frank Gambale for example:

He's clean, consistent, smooth and comfortable ?

A freind of mine, Werner von Waltsleben, who plays drums (and is probably the best metal drummer in the country without exaggerating) did a similar thing. He RE-taught himself drums because there were nights where he could play 16ths at 240 bpm and some nights he struggles with 200bpm and it was REALLY upsetting him to a point where he wanted to give up drums.
After taking everything back to 120 and starting from scratch and building his way up. He can play technical 16th and 8th notes that change every count at 250 bpm tempo perfect. (it took him around just under a year I think)

I applied the same method to my lead guitar playing about a month ago and I'm up to 16ths at 150 bpm comfortably (+/- the top speed of Symphony X's - Inferno except for the solo's) after starting at 120 (excluding sweeps which are easier)
But when it comes to Rhythm playing I can do 220 bpm 16th notes comfortably and 140 once really really warmed up.

Dunno if any of that info will be helpful ?

EDIT: I read earlier into the lessons thread and I saw Francis Viviers already made most of the points I did lol and did a much better job, whoops.

Satriani

Holy Cow. Didn't recognise Gambale with a shaved head!

NorioDS

LOL, I know what you mean ? Got a skrik the first time I saw a baldy vid of him too.

deanBailey

Actually there was a rumor that he was bald for a while but just wore a wig.