This is one for those of you who pick at insane speeds:
How do you keep up with your left hand?
Although I still struggle to cross strings at speed, I can now comfortably pick on a single string much faster than I can fret individual notes. I've been practicing trills for the last couple of weeks, but I'm not sure this is helping. So far as I can tell, trills mostly improve strength and are useful for hammer-ons and pull-offs. Seems to me that for very fast playing, the left-hand fingers need to be as light as possible, so it's more about speed and accuracy rather than strength.
What do I need to work on?
Thanks!
Cliff

I would say starting slow really slow neoclassical, patterns, ladders X-patterns all help
oh and practical picking

but yes the trills do help
with strength comes the feeling of lightness

for a start trills may make it feel harder than usual to play
but that will go as strength improves

Practice with a metronome. It will come together in time. Many years. Many decades.

Thanks guys.

He he - will do. Chances are I'm fucking up :). As someone told me quite recently: practice doesn't make perfect; *perfect* practice makes perfect. I've spending a lot of time doing the first of the two.
BTW I think I read somewhere on here (lost the thread now) you were studying for an exam? Good luck!

Here it is:



The first segment is me trying to play a simple 4-note chromatic sequence at 100bpm, 16th notes. This illustrates my problem pretty well, I think, particularly when I'm descending. The notes are frequently unclear - I'm not sure if it's my left or right hand that's out of time.
After that is slightly more ambitious sequence, played first at 80 then at 120bpm.

Thanks - I appreciate your feedback.

I am really digging all the video posts. This is the best way to see where everyone is at, problems, etc.

I think everyone needs to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN. Practice much slower. Much much slower. Slow enough so that it is perfect. Then speed up.

Take a minor pentatonic scale. Play it 16th notes at 60bpm for 1 minute. Then go to 61 for 1 minute. Then 62 for 1 minute. STOP when you cannot play it PERFECTLY for the entire minute,

Do this every day.

Slow the speeds down.

That bad, huh? Bitchin' guitar though, right!?

Thanks for the feedback Ursin :).

I tried saying it, then I listened back to my vid, and I see what you mean. I knew it wasn't great when I posted it, but sometimes I need someone else to tell me just exactly how bad it is :).
FWIW I tried playing 16ths at 60bpm today, getting the synch as good as possible. From what I can tell, my left-hand fingers were being somewhat lazy - if I concentrate on making them hit the beats just as much as I do with the picking hand, then things seem to work out better.

Regarding the right arm being stiff - thanks for pointing it out. It's definitely something I'm aware of and working on. It's actually much better in this vid than it used to be, thanks to my recent (failed) attempts to learn sarod - that seems to have loosened things up at least a little.

If you are having trouble with 16th notes at 60bpm for 1 minute NO PROBLEM! Just take it down to 8th notes at 60 bpm for 1 minute and build it up that way...8th notes at 61 bpm for 1 minute then 62bpm etc etc etc making sure that you are playing it correctly with the metronome (ie PERFECTLY)

Hey Ursin,

What I meant to say was my fingers were being lazy in the vid I posted. When I slow down to 60bpm, I have time to concentrate on them and ensure they fall on the frets precisely in time with my pick. I tried this last night and worked my way up to 92bpm (i confess in increments of 4 rather than 1bpm) before there were problems. So this will be part of my practice routine from now on.

Anybody do most of their practicing on acoustic? I find this helps tremendously. Acoustic is VERY unforgiving. Try it. Works wonders in my opinion.

About 90% of the practicing I do is on an unplugged (and since February, semi-hollow) electric. If that counts, then yes.

I do as much scale practicing as I can on acoustic and I find it helps a lot. However, I do need to practice on the electric guitar too to get used to the different string tension. Actually, because of this sarod picking seems a little harder to do on the electric guitar after a long session on the acoustic one.

Btw, what's the reason for the difference in tension? The higher gauge strings on the acoustic?