Ok sorry I just took what you said at face value.
Maybe I read more into it than I should have?
Peace
Santiago
Speed picking tips??
- Thread starter BenEllerGuitars
- Start date
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Ok sorry I just took what you said at face value.
Maybe I read more into it than I should have?
Peace
Santiago
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Jerich
Contributor
this is a great topic but i must say it is hard to say what you want without others getting offended here!
I spent my whole guitar career tring to play fast sweeps/appreggio's/trem picking and i realized throughout all the going fast stuff i learned normal people only here the slow stuff!
Hey if the jeff Waters style trem picking is your game go for it..but in reality they still cannot write songs to save thier lives.
That video was a great example of the Guy at Home wood shedding his ass off with nothing to prove for it but that video.
I found out that "technique done for techniques sake never is any good at all"
great topic.
I spent my whole guitar career tring to play fast sweeps/appreggio's/trem picking and i realized throughout all the going fast stuff i learned normal people only here the slow stuff!
Hey if the jeff Waters style trem picking is your game go for it..but in reality they still cannot write songs to save thier lives.
That video was a great example of the Guy at Home wood shedding his ass off with nothing to prove for it but that video.
I found out that "technique done for techniques sake never is any good at all"
great topic.
ABSOLUTELY TRUE!
I have made it a point to make MUSIC and not worry about speed. Yea the speed is there but its not the music itself nor my playing's essence. That is one thing I always loved about Chuck Schuldiner & Paul Masvidal & Jason Gobel they could all PICK riffs fast as FUCK...but it was always about the music.
Peace
Santiago
Agree 100%.
I've long since dropped out of the metronome olympics. I think it was Drew who said recently that the fastest players are (with a few exceptions) the least interesting.
Like I said, this thread has brought up a lot of the more important aspects of picking, namely tone and dynamic control, rather than speed.
Jeff, I did a little A-B testing with economy and alternate picking on my classical guitar this evening (it's been a while since I focused on pure technique, as I don't have a lot of practice time at the moment due to exams). I'll stick by what I said that econony picking (for me) yields more dynamic control and flexibility when it comes to note-groupings, but alternate picking is definitely the way to go for the old-school machine gun sound. Isn't it great that we have both available?
I'd like to point out that the discussion has not spent much time in 'look at how kewl my pciking is, lol' and that a thread dedicated to technique is not necessarily promoting technique for technique's sake. Technique is what you use to make the music, and I don't believe I've caught much in the way of shameless self promoted wankery, so it would be nice if we dropped anything that could lead to 'playing fast without soul'/'fast playing sucks'-'no it rulz'-'ur mom'/'the reason metal guitarists play so many notes is that they can't find the right one'/whatever and didn't pick it back up. Oh, and if I see any further transgressions against Annihilator I will napalm your entire zip code.
DR, I understand but clips would still be nice - I set my amp gain very low and use my picking to get me from classic rock crunch to metal rhythm, so if all of a sudden there has been some breakthrough where economy picking became ten times as powerful as it was when I used it predominantly I'll be somewhat amused. If you feel like seeing what we can get away with I'll DI some stuff and we can see more about how this all works.
DR, I understand but clips would still be nice - I set my amp gain very low and use my picking to get me from classic rock crunch to metal rhythm, so if all of a sudden there has been some breakthrough where economy picking became ten times as powerful as it was when I used it predominantly I'll be somewhat amused. If you feel like seeing what we can get away with I'll DI some stuff and we can see more about how this all works.
Yeah, I agree that I really ought to have something to back all this up. Once I get home and have all my recording stuff to hand I'll record something.
Although I do a lot of economy picking I have yest to use it on an aghora album yet. Actually no I used it a bit on acoustic on track "lotus".
But I will use it on solo record and post some clips when ready.
I love the sound of economy on Acoustic instruments.
peace
Santiago
Agree 100%. Actually, Jeff, have you experimented with economy picking on acoustic guitar? It really helped me get the technique down initially.
Just a thought...for heavy rhythm guitar I very rarely economy pick...it's almost all down-picking or alternate picking.
Sorry, I've just realised after rereading all my earlier posts that it must sound like I'm talking myself round in circles...the point I'm trying to make is that IMHO there isn't as big a divide tonally and technically between alternate picking and economy picking as a lot of people assume.
Me too..I never did economy Pickig untill 2 years ago. I was before strict alternate.
I spent months on that (that was what I learned on, and I still warm up on an acoustic quite often) when I was learning it the first time around. It just wasn't loud and present enough, no matter how much I put into it. I could do it perfectly on an electric but with the acoustic I either didn't make enough sound or hit the strings so hard that each note had basically an individual downstroke instead of a sweep - granted, I like things really loud, but I couldn't get it to fit with everything else.
The Dark Wolf
Contributor
This makes perfect sense. I'm having a hard time seeing how it could be otherwise, personally.
Ah...that makes sense...I play with a comparatively delicate touch on electric and acoustic (I still get decent volume out of the acoustic, but I don't try and get it as loud as possible). That's something I've deliberately cultivated since I started playing, as I reasoned pretty early on that if your default dynamic range is somewhere in the middle-zone, you've got more range to go louder or quieter, meaning more dynamic range, than if you start off at one of the extremes.
I started it about 2 years ago as well, although it wasn't a conscious decision. There was a period where suddenly a lot of licks I was having trouble picking suddenly started coming out perfectly, and it wasn't until later that I realised my hands were naturally falling into economy picking patterns. I figured 'fuck it...go with what works' and developed it a bit, as it comes pretty naturally to me compared to alternate picking, although I still practice that too...
Jongpil Yun
Contributor
I started economy picking pretty much the moment I started playing and never looked back. It seemed what was natural -- minimizing how much space you have to travel.
to me its like one is yin one is yang you need them both to fully be expressive on the instrument.
Another thing to remember is that pick-style guitar is still less than a hundred years old (although it has precedents in other things, I know), and so the technique is still very much in its nascent stages. There've been huge technical advances made, but there's still no such thing as a formal, standardised approach to developing picking technique in there is for, say, bowing the violin. However, we're reaching the point where there's been so much pedagogy on both alterate and economy picking that you really could, and should, be able to become at proficient in both approaches.
This is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to Troy Grady's 'Cracking the Code' film.
"economy picking" like sweeping is better for me. To my ears alternate picked solos can easially(sp) sound noodling and annoying, sweeping different patterns sounds better, is more interesting, and has turned out to be more comfortable for me.
The pick itself has been used in many instruments usually in the early days its been a commonpiece of human or animal bone.
