Increasing Speed and Hand Coordination, Which of the Million Techniques Should I Employ?

[sharedEQ]

Idunno - I think where you and I disagree is that while a lot of elite players DO successfully work out solutions to these problems, the fact that elite-caliber guitarists are way rarer than elite caliber instrumentalists on other instruments suggests that a lot of other players DON'T. And, that (and this should be self-evident and as a guy who tends to be very methodical and intellectual about problem solving on his own, I'm embarrassed I never really sat down and reasoned through this stuff myself) a look at the actual mechanics of alternate picking down to the individual components of the muscle movements required to move a pick can allow you to work out approaches that mitigate a lot of those problems.

Thats the premise of the whole CTC site.

However, I would point out that there was a huge surge of top-level pickers from 2008- whenever CTC was made (2017?) So there was a decade of videos showing everyone how its done and that era produced a lot of great players. So I contend that practice and video of great players is what people really need. People will arrive at their own understanding of what they need to do to cross strings, whether it is backed up by cell phone video or not.

Certainly those of us from the dark ages can relate to the whole CTC setup; most of us had very few resources at our disposal back in the 80/90/00s

I had an intellectual understanding of what I thought I was doing, watching CTC initially set off a lightbulb and helped me better understand what I was already doing intuitively, but it didn't change my movement any, and it doesn't change the need to keep expanding my vocabulary and practicing the lines.

I would advise people to watch the free CTC videos and then work on a picking method and covering their favorite shred tunes. I didn't feel like the pay site offered much beyond the primer. And also, it MIGHT trip up a beginner by over complicating something where musle memory is more important than intellectual understanding.

 

[Drew]

I had an intellectual understanding of what I thought I was doing, watching CTC initially set off a lightbulb and helped me better understand what I was already doing intuitively, but it didn't change my movement any, and it doesn't change the need to keep expanding my vocabulary and practicing the lines.

My experience was CtC helped me take something that was already part way there, and make a few targeted tweaks that made it far more efficient. It took a lot of the trial and error out.

And, actually, I'd say the forum is probably a better resource than their videos, which as it happens is free to sign up for.

 

[DeanLamb]

Hey man,
I have found that when it comes to building speed without losing precision/tightness of execution, practicing stuff extremely SLOWLY over and over again has been more effective. Sometimes when I can't play a riff cleanly at a certain speed, I spend a few hours doing it very slowly and as cleanly as possible. Then the next day I go back to it and I am able to play it much better at very fast speeds!
Also, if you need some ideas of what to practice to build up your chops, I have tab packages available here:
https://deanlamb.bandcamp.com/
I hope this helps and best of luck!

 

[chopeth]

Great thread!

 

[JimF]

Hey man,
I have found that when it comes to building speed without losing precision/tightness of execution, practicing stuff extremely SLOWLY over and over again has been more effective. Sometimes when I can't play a riff cleanly at a certain speed, I spend a few hours doing it very slowly and as cleanly as possible. Then the next day I go back to it and I am able to play it much better at very fast speeds!
Also, if you need some ideas of what to practice to build up your chops, I have tab packages available here:
https://deanlamb.bandcamp.com/
I hope this helps and best of luck!

Holy fuck - I'm a big fan of yours Dean! Thanks for the advice. I reckon its a case of building up muscle memory etc before I attempt things at full pace, also I keep getting distracted as I can sweep across three strings (is that even sweeping? lol) and I think "hmm if I work on this I could build up my sweeping!
Rather than working on my speed in general.