Revisiting ‘speed mechanics’ by Troy Stetina . Been approaching 1 2 3 4 wrong all these years

hollywoodrox

This time I notice he says in the final bullet point.

”lifting each finger as the next comes down “  just above earlier he also says ‘the key is accuracy and control , not speed”. 

I have always approached them as  ooh  1234 exercise  and proceeded to start at about 80bpm and approached it like an alt picking exercise putting one finger down after another.

but now approaching it with the objective of lifting each finger as the next comes down (instead of leaving previous fingers in place or allowing them to do whatever they want )

I can see how it must actually work in helping to get your fingers used to being independent as it is much more difficult  than just hammering them down fast willy nilly in order to keep up with the 16th note metronome clicks

This has definitely now got a regular spot for my practice routine, warmup .

anyone else  currently looking at speed mechanics?

soma1975

God I just tried it and it's horrible! I feel like a beginner again. Will be practicing like that for a while. 

roberty

This technique definitely helps to keep your hand loose and tension-free. With hammer on and pull off trills it's slightly different, I find it helps to release some of the pressure on the first finger as the next one comes down, but it's quicker to leave it in place for the pull off

This exercise helped me a lot with finger independence:

https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/minimum-movement-exercise-im-114

hollywoodrox

soma1975 said:

God I just tried it and it's horrible! I feel like a beginner again. Will be practicing like that for a while. 

I know lol ,freakish isn’t it , I must admit though I find it a bit better than 4321 pull off’s  I always get on better with three note pull off’s in the standard 3 notes per string pattern 

hollywoodrox

Thanks for this, this is quite a freaky one from Justin , I will have to add that .
trill’s are a real stamina test aren’t they, it’s like going for a run lol

roberty said:

This technique definitely helps to keep your hand loose and tension-free. With hammer on and pull off trills it's slightly different, I find it helps to release some of the pressure on the first finger as the next one comes down, but it's quicker to leave it in place for the pull off

This exercise helped me a lot with finger independence:

https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/minimum-movement-exercise-im-114

hollywoodrox

Well just done my 5 min of minimum movement, it’s definitely not one that you can do with a relaxed hand , definitely worth 5 minutes a day though and see what you notice after a month

grappagreen

By coincidence I've just revisited my left hand technique as I was tensing up my hand by maintaining too much pressure and not 'unloading' the unused fingers properly. A really great exercise is to play left hand staccato at slow speed (i.e. lift the finger immediately to just touching the string to deaden the note) and really focus on releasing the tension in the whole hand so that everything is just floating above the fretboard. I feel it also improves pick/finger sync as it reinforces the relationship of the two actions.

I've seen a benefit in a month of effort and it's now becoming something instinctive..

One last benefit is you can start to control note duration with the left hand more effectively and this is so important to feel - watch Matt Schofield closely and you'll see that he is doing this all the time in his phrasing..

Si

roberty

hollywoodrox said:

Well just done my 5 min of minimum movement, it’s definitely not one that you can do with a relaxed hand , definitely worth 5 minutes a day though and see what you notice after a month

How's it going with that mate have you kept it up? I've revisited it a bit, there's always room for improvement

hollywoodrox

Ace, YES  I am on day 6 now ,ok on that staccato thing will give it a go next time . I am sure this relatively short period has even been productive  but I aim to do it every day. 5 minutes is nothing to loose is it. Just gave Si’s method a go it’s kinda similar to what I’m doing although unused fingers still have a habit to lift slightly above the strings . Good stuff ,thank you.