The 3rd video has no photo.??? Sorry

Your doing a great job Heyman! One small detail I think you should try to put your thumb behind your sencond finger on the 3rd video I noticed it is behind the first video.

Anyhow man your progressing really fast I wish I would go that fast.


Grtz Ray

Thanks Ray. Sometimes my thumb doesn't move with my fingers. Speed will come for all of us in time.

I have the same issue with my thumb. Specialy with ladder exc on finger 3-4.

I was hoping someone would tell me if I am doing the trills right. Thanks.

Heyman,

When doing trills, I think that you should concentrate on the sound of each note. You want them to ring true and clear each time. If that means you have to cut your speed way down, then so be it. To get them to ring true and clear I find that I have to keep all 4 of my fretting hand fingers tight and in position ready to hit at any time. Also, when your hand starts to tire, stop and shake it off (literally). Maybe switch fingers, or even exercises. When you do trills like this every day, perhaps many times a day, for a long time you will see tremendous benefit.

Here's a video that I posted back in Nov. '12 showing my trill practice during warmups that day. Not claiming it's good or bad, just offering you a look at another person practicing them. You should watch Pebber do them and soak up everything you can detect...

dlraben: Thanks! You do trills really well. I didn't realize how important this exercise is. From now on I will start with trills until pain, then do the picking exercises. I looked for a trills video on Youtube. The one I found was more in depth than the one I was sent. Probably the case for any of the exercises. This will let my left hand catch up with my picking hand. PB's stuff is endless. Lesson learned.

I'm a week late to this, heyman, but you're doing a great job. I particularly impressed by your spiders, ladders, and your scalpel picking is excellent. Most people would do anything to have that kind of control over their picking (expect practice it for hours and hours :D).

On your trills, if you haven't tried this yet, try it with a metronome. Start slow, at 40 or 60 bpm and do one note per beat. Hammer-on, pull-off, hammer-on, etc. At such a slow speed you get a much clearer recognition of the dynamics of every note and you'll learn how to put on more or less force to make all the notes sound equally dynamic.

Regarding keeping your "turkey butt" under control, again, just focus on that aspect of the control (without the left hand) at increasingly fast speeds. I have gotten very good at keeping my fingers in but I still have to concentrate on it. Whenever they start sticking out it's normally because I'm picking beyond my skill level and I'm tensing up to compensate.

I have the same sort of problem with the fourth finger anchor when finger picking, and I've had to slow down some songs I've been picking for 20 years so I can concentrate on picking them with my hand floating.

Basically, the sum of what I'm saying is that what works for me is slowing down whenever my form gets out of whack. It means I'm tweaking myself so I can try and play uber-fast, and my form goes downhill and I sound terrible.

Thanks for the advice. Also the metronome idea works great. I should definitely start using the metronome. Thanks!