1 Month Technique Challenge: 30 Days of Wrist Pain - It's not what it sounds like!

[ghost_of_karelia]

Inspired by 80H's One Month Theory Challenge (http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/mu...s/236337-one-month-theory-challenge-game.html) I've decided to start my own similar thread, both to hopefully demonstrate to the myriad of SS.org readers interested in practice-riff-with-metronome practice regime and also to aid with self-motivation and give me a goal to aim for and a means to document my process towards achieving it.

The Challenge:

Having just completed recording rhythm guitars for my band's debut, one of the major areas of my technique currently lacking is my ability to pick fast - not anything as complex as alternate picking during solos or smooth and accurate sweep picking - even picking in excess of 125BPM on a single string is very difficult for me. I tense up enormously and often enjoy the luxury of awful pains in my shoulder and wrist. Thus, I want to spend the next month working almost exclusively on my technique using a number of riffs that I love hearing but cannot for the life of me play. The main areas I will be concentrating on are:

- Stamina
- Muscle relaxation
- Sound consistency
- Change in position (sitting to standing and vice versa)

The Thread:

Depending on whether or not I feel the need to stroke my ego, I'll be updating this thread with either daily or weekly updates on my improvements. I'll be listing the exercises I've used, the warmups I've developed, the change in metronome speed/usage, recording various examples of the riffs chosen in order to see progress, recording how much time I spend daily on working and just sharing bits and bobs that I come across during the process that may help out others that are curious.

The Riffs:

The riffs I aim to be able to play consistently and well while maintaining a relaxed posture by the 15th July are:

Wintersun: Sleeping Stars (1:33 onwards)



Amon Amarth: The Last With Pagan Blood (opening riff)



Wintersun: Sons of Winter and Stars (2:24 onwards)



Mastodon: Divinations (2:12 onwards)



Above all: Why on SS.org? Why not keep it to yourself?

Because in my perusings on the site trying to learn more about our craft I've seen an abundance of questions about how to speed riffs and picking up over time, mostly using a metronome. The folk on this forum give some great advice, and I thought it was about time to take some of it on and practice accordingly, and I thought I'd broadcast the process to give curious guitarists of all skill levels an opportunity to see the techniques applied first-hand to a regular routine. An experiment, if you like, to see what kind of results can be gained!

Also because I have nothing to do now I'm in the break between college and uni, so it's time to put the pot noodle in the bin, put the dr pepper back in the fridge and get my hands back on the axe and start improving in a serious fashion.

SS.org, I hope you enjoy following the thread and seeing progress!

The challenge begins tomorrow (Sunday 15th June) and will continue for a month - finishing on Tuesday 15th July.

ENJOY!

 

[Maniacal]

Good plan. Summer is great for this kind of stuff. I'm interested to see your progress.

 

[ghost_of_karelia]

Thanks man!

 

[octatoan]

Good luck!

 

[chopeth]

In case it is of any help for you. Good luck with your challenge

 

[OmegaSlayer]

Doing more or less the same thing.
Good luck man!

 

[Static]

good luck bro, I'm going through something similar myself, cause I took a long break from playing guitar and I'm getting back to it now..Let us know how you progress!

 

[crankyrayhanky]

Try incorporating a Stylus pick for your training. It is a powerful tool to adjust your right hand

 

[ghost_of_karelia]

Thanks for all the great responses guys - Chopeth that cover is fantastic!

Day One:

Started at about 3pm today after a night rife with glorious insomnia.

First order of business was to get the riffs tabbed and tapped so I knew which tempo settings I was aiming for. All of the following are in sixteenth notes:

Sleeping Stars: 155BPM (3/4 time)
The Last With Pagan Blood: 115BPM (slightly awkward, 4/4 time but the notes are grouped into triplets)
Sons of Winter and Stars: 145BPM (4/4 time)
Divinations: 210BPM (4/4 time - the hardest of the bunch)

Set to work also recording myself playing all four riffs at current skill level, in order to show progress at the end of the month.

Work begins today with Sleeping Stars - breaking the riff down and finding the benchmark at which I can currently play it without tensing up. Beginning benchmark for SS is 100BPM - can play it at 110 but the tension starts to creep in and the riff loses smoothness and muting starts to drop off a bit.

Current technique is to start at the benchmark that is causing me problems - AKA 110BPM today - and play the riff through 8 times. Then shift up to +5 (115BPM) and play it through again 8 times, to try and increase stamina and wake up my muscles. Then shift down to -5 (105BPM) and play it through 8 times again, to increase cleanliness. Finally, I return to the benchmark and play it again 8 times.

I noticed after a few runs of this exercise that I was happy enough to shift the benchmark up to 115. I also noticed almost straightaway that my timekeeping was improving - the riff sat well with the metronome and didn't feel like it was pushing or pulling at the taps. My muting also improved very quickly. The benchmark itself actually flew up to 120BPM after about half an hour's solid work, though I could feel the tension affecting my shoulder and wrist - prompting a swift break and a look at exercises in relaxation of the picking motion.

I'm trying to limit practice to an hour a day at this stage to avoid joint problems and muscle strain. I'll be easing into longer and longer practice sessions as the process continues.

Day one has been pretty successful, I think!

 

[Maniacal]

Are you spending any time actually working on your picking technique? Relaxed grip, not dipping, small movements, wrist isolation etc

 

[ghost_of_karelia]

That'll be a goal for the inbetween days. Structurally I'm aiming for: riff 1/technique/riff 2/technique/riff 3/technique/riff 4/rest day type of thing. Tomorrow will be major exercise-building day!

 

[ghost_of_karelia]

Speaking of which, does anyone have any ideas about some good exercises to build on technique? Specifically ensuring full relaxation and consistency of sound?

 

[Maniacal]

The endurance routines from my books has worked for lots of people.

A short version of it would be to focus on picking a single note for 3 sets of 3 minutes. Go up 1bpm a day. Picking for long periods of time ensures that you are totally relaxed. You can also use this time to focus on small movements etc. Watch your picking hand when you do this, not your fretting hand - hence 1 note.

 

[80H]

Nice man, good luck Much respect for anyone that pushes themselves like this.



As for relaxation, paraphrasing something I learned from Shawn Lane vids: You want it relaxed, yeah, but you still need enough tension to get it done sometimes. Once you start moving to higher and higher speeds, there will always be that little bit (or sometimes a lot) of tension that you just need to apply for short areas. Excessive tension causes RSIs, yes, but tension is part of the natural system of building and developing muscle memory and advanced musculature. Think non-newtonian fluid!


Efficiency of motion is also one of the end goals that nobody will really tell you about. I got lucky on this subject and had a friend that really really really emphasized the whole-life significance of the concept of efficiency when I was ~16, and I've carried it along into every skill I've learned ever since. Less motion = more efficiency, so I would definitely recommend spending time on seeing just how little motion you can use to play a note. I ride right into my strings on down and upstrokes, my pick never goes much more than 2mm away from the string after a pick-attack, even when I'm hitting the notes fairly hard. When you learn to close that distance, you will start to realize that cutting travel time by 50% (from 1.5mm to .75mm, for example) doubles your travel speed in a vacuum. If travel speed is 80% of the time it takes for you to pick each note, you're looking at a 40% increase in speed (100 bpm to 140 bpm without any other adjustments). The edge of that string needs to be your bitch.


After you have an efficient, accurate technique, endgame is momentum and unique articulation. There are so many crazy things you can do with a pick and physical motions/gestures, and a lot of them have yet to be discovered. There is still plenty of room for innovation with this instrument despite what trends might suggest.




String skipping and substitutions though. Do not miss them. For example, play fret 5 of the lowest string with your pinky and then move your index finger to fret 5 and play them both as quarter notes, then go back and forth. That should plant the seed for complex motion real early...takes a long time to develop, so you may as well get it in the dirt now !

String skipping is just way easy, 6th to 4th, 5th to 3rd, 4th to 2nd, 3rd to 1st string as your single skips, then you have 6th to 3rd, 5th to 2nd, 4th to 1st, etc. Then you get to deal with skipping in and skipping out (inside/outside picking applied to larger distances, both have their uses and you will have your preferences). Just do it picking hand only, get that shit down smooth and fretting hand will take care of itself later. Takes a long time to develop omnipresent accuracy (for the record, I've been skipping regularly for like 3~4 years and I still miss strings on occasion during improv)

 

[ghost_of_karelia]

Cheers for the awesome post, 80H. Efficiency of motion is the name of the game from now on!

 

[OmegaSlayer]

Speaking of which, does anyone have any ideas about some good exercises to build on technique? Specifically ensuring full relaxation and consistency of sound?

I think that if you want to master the picking you should check some Paul Gilbert stuff.
A lot of time he does things that really seem counter intuitive but they do really help you to control your wrist as you wish.

80H mentioned string skipping.
Most of the times we all study outside and inside picking movement when alternating, which is good.
Very good.
Still Paul Gilbert has an interesting take.
When his skipping are descending (from 1th string to 3rd to 4th for example) the direction of his picking is always a downstroke, while when he ascends (3rd to 1 st string) he uses upstrokes.
It's the exact opposite movement you would make for a sweep.

It's also interesting how Satriani plays triplets.
His triplets are most of the times down-up-down, down-up-down.

That is particularly important for accent and dynamics, without which your alternate picking just sounds like a buzzsaw.

Most of the time economy picking is seen as a shortcut, which in my opinion is not, it's just another thing to learn to have more voices and control.

 

[thesnowdog]

Are you spending any time actually working on your picking technique? Relaxed grip, not dipping, small movements, wrist isolation etc

What do you mean by dipping?

 

[Maniacal]

Dipping into the strings. This dipping motion will slow you down and waste energy.

 

[ghost_of_karelia]

Definitely been a while since I've updated this, don't worry folks - work has been continuing! Just been hard to find a moment to pour the required detail into an update post. Next few days, definitely!

 

[TeeWX]

Great idea! I'm currently doing a similar thing, but with different rhythms of course. I"m basically implementing Maniacal's shred training endurance exercises using some tricky rhythms I picked out from Meshuggah, Fear Factory, and a couple others. It must be work on your right hand month here on SSO.