I.) Accents I have noticed that when I accent parts of the beat with my picking I am, for lack of a better word, putting extra "oomph" into that particular pick attack. This manifests itself in one of two ways: If I am scalpal picking it usually results in my picking motion to have too much follow through before I can tell my picking hand to stop, halt, and reverse direction. Unfortunately, I am starting to notice that this extra omph is coming at a price that I dont think I am ok with...namely it causes a very small hiccup or latency before my picking hand can hit on what ever was left in that beat...this can cause my little phrases to become less tight and sometimes it can cause unwanted run-over of that picking phrases remaining picking attacks into the next beat...this is obviously a bad thing.

ii.) Have any of you experimented with displacing the picking attacks from the trilling to create extra notes in the trill (creating extra notes per beat w/o having to increase either picking hand or fretting hand speeds)..the best name I can think of for this concept is "end picking" ~basically picking the upper and lowwer ends of the trills.

A very basic example of this idea would be the following


d u or as pure 16th note pure trilling
e|---------------|-----------------------------|
b|---------------|-----------------------------|
g|--one-beat-o|-----------------------------|
d|--------------o|-----------------------------|
a|---------------|-----------------------------|
E|-5h7-8p7----|--5h7h8p7--p5h7h8p7-|

*So with regard to the trill idea with two picks/beat I noticed that by simply holdiong off the second picking attack untill the C has been freted, that it adds +50% speed to the idea w/o out incurring any extra movement from really either hand.....also it morphs the trill into a triplet feel

original phrase, but now with "end picking"

D U

d|---------------------o|
a|---------------------o|
E|-5h7h8-8p7p5-----|

Obviously this adds no new burden to the picking hand/ still just 2 even pick attack per beat....and it doesnt require the left hand to fret any new notes that weren't going to be freted in the original idea anyway.

*basically the idea could be described as re-alligning the trill-to picking motions so that the picking attacks now fall on the moments of the phrase where the left hand is reversing the type of slur: either hammering to pulling, or from pulling to hammering.

*Also something really cool that I notices when doing this, is that when just a wee bit of picking hand mutting is aplied to the string. The phrase takes on a very percussive sound that is not typical of legato phrases...(this becomes really exhagerated when the phrase is being executed w/ distortion.) Almost as if each note was actually being picked.

Has anyone else on the Forums tinkered around with anything similar to this? Because I think it is a really cool concept which if developed and assimilated into my soloing style could result in some really interesting ideas....Especially once the type of alternate picking that I become accustomed to is the lightning-fast SAROD picking.

Good question. Accents are very important. Lane would refer to accented upstrokes as a good way to keep up with where you're at in terms of picking strokes. Similar to Frakh's "Flight Patterns" idea. You have to be aware of the strokes at all times. If you should be on an up but you are on a down, then you need to start over. Accenting can be a good way of keeping track. Plus, it brings out dynamics in your playing which is always a plus. Once when I was studying with a fairly heavyweight jazz player he told me that dynamics would help you create your own style and set you apart. So, I've always spent a lot of time on that. Regardless, if you have some hiccups in your picking because the accents are tough, there is no way around it other than starting very slowly with the metronome and gradually increasing speed over time. Do that for many hours a day and you'll have no problems.