How do I practice speeding up my alternate picking?

Doodlegame

Hey,
I set myself a challenge of learning the solo to 'Practice What You Preach' by Testament....  aaaand I've got stuck on the first lick

The phrase starting at around 2:20 sounds like it is played all picked, and I'm pretty sure that's how Alex played it when I saw them live...  This phrase is 16th notes at 190bpm
My problem is that my limit with alt/ hybrid picking (I don't pay too much attention to which I'm using) is 120bpm 16ths, and I'm currently working on my endurance at that speed, so speeding this up another 70bpm seems pretty daunting...

So has anyone got any tips to improve speed and endurance in altternate picking?  I tried holding down trem picking in the right hand and just using my left hand to determine note length, but if you watch the video below from 1:44 you can see that he is clearly alternate picking from the wrist, not the arm and it doesn't sound clean enough at that speed...
https://youtu.be/GEXDgMBpiOY?t=105

Appreciate any tips anyone can give, not looking for a magic solution but just some input on how to best go about it 

stratman3142

I think you'll probably get the best answers on the Troy Grady forum (link below), which is more focused on picking technique.
https://forum.troygrady.com/

digitalkettle

stratman3142 said:

I think you'll probably get the best answers on the Troy Grady forum (link below), which is more focused on picking technique.
https://forum.troygrady.com/

Agreed...dive in to Troy's material!

digitalkettle

Probably should elaborate with what I've gleaned from Troy's research...

• Play as relaxed as possible...watch for tension...breathe!
• Pick from the wrist
• I barely ever anchor with fingers now...it's all base of hand on bridge
• Understand the concepts of 'pickslanting' (this terminology might have been updated)...most importantly, you need to be aware of how your pick escapes the plane of the strings when changing strings. Once you get your head around this, you'll understand why you find some things easy and why some things seem impossible
• You might bias towards upward pickslanting (escape on a downstroke) or downward pickslanting (escape on an upstroke)...or you may employ a mix of both. If you play a passage entirely in one pickslanting direction, you'll want to arrange the notes so that string changes occur on an escape motion, e.g. use an even number of notes per string. You can't argue with it but I didn't like this idea much: I didn't want technique to dictate where and what I played...I'm not that organised...so I went straight in and started trying to put together two-way pickslanting
• You don't necessarily need to be a slave to the metronome but sometimes I use one to stay honest
• There's a saying: 'to get fast, you need to play fast'...while I still think it's tremendously useful to build speed with a metronome (helps you to stay honest and put the moves together in your head), a different picking posture is required for playing fast and you can only get it by diving in, experimenting, and feeling it. You'll get flashes of it working...that's when you're onto something. Someone said 'you don't practice running by practicing walking faster'
• Be mindful of everything: watch out for wasted up/down movements like 'bouncing'. If it feels bad...or you hit a top speed...or feel like you're locking up...you're probably doing it wrong: go back to the material...change something...keep trying
• Don't overdo it

Disclaimer: I'm not a shredder at all

stratman3142

digitalkettle said:

Probably should elaborate with what I've gleaned from Troy's research...

• Pick from the wrist
• I barely ever anchor with fingers now...it's all base of hand on bridge

I've got the Troy Grady Pickslanting Primer (amongst a number of his other products) and my impression is that he doesn't dismiss other options.
https://troygrady.com/primer/

But I'm not a shredder either by modern standards.

digitalkettle

stratman3142 said:

I've got the Troy Grady Pickslanting Primer (amongst a number of his other products) and my impression is that he doesn't dismiss other options.
https://troygrady.com/primer/

But I'm not a shredder either by modern standards.

Do you mean regarding the anchoring?

I’ve noticed there’s no hard & fast rule...I just liked the tidy picking hand. I still feel slightly better balanced with some light finger anchoring but sometimes it gets in the way or adds noise. It’s work in progress...I’ve changed a lot over the last year.
Certainly, with ‘elite players’, it’s quite common to see more contact...but they probably arrived there without overthinking it like we all have to

Doodlegame

That's all great advice, thanks!  I'll have to check out Troy Grady's stuff...  is the pickslating primer worth a look at getting do you think @stratman3142 or anyone else that has it?

digitalkettle

Doodlegame said:

That's all great advice, thanks!  I'll have to check out Troy Grady's stuff...  is the pickslating primer worth a look at getting do you think @stratman3142 or anyone else that has it?

I think you can get the principles without any outlay. Sign up to Troy's site and have a poke around.

If, after that, you want more detail, you could buy the primer as a one-off or get it as part of a 'Cracking the Code' subscription.

Another good source for this approach is Ben Eller's YouTube channel where there are plenty of dedicated alternate picking exercises and loads of other stuff.

stratman3142

Doodlegame said:

That's all great advice, thanks!  I'll have to check out Troy Grady's stuff...  is the pickslating primer worth a look at getting do you think @stratman3142 or anyone else that has it?

As @digitalkettle said you can poke around on Troy Grady's site and there's plenty of free stuff from him on Youtube. I felt I owed Troy Grady something as I'd watched loads of his free stuff, so I signed up to Master of Mechanics for a while. IIRC I think I got the picking primer from that. I've since purchased other products.

But, while my picking has improved, it's still a bit shit, but good enough for what I want to do.

Vibetronic

stratman3142 said:

Doodlegame said:

That's all great advice, thanks!  I'll have to check out Troy Grady's stuff...  is the pickslating primer worth a look at getting do you think @stratman3142 or anyone else that has it?

As @digitalkettle said you can poke around on Troy Grady's site and there's plenty of free stuff from him on Youtube. I felt I owed Troy Grady something as I'd watched loads of his free stuff, so I signed up to Master of Mechanics for a while. IIRC I think I got the picking primer from that. I've since purchased other products.

But, while my picking has improved, it's still a bit shit, but good enough for what I want to do.

yeah, I think it's the hardest thing to get right! I've sort of had to find my own way to do it as I was never really taught a decent way of doing it, so have some sort of economy picking thing going on. Works ok 97% of the time, but slowing it down and looking at it, I'm doing little things like making the first line of a run legato to start it off - with the rest of it picked, and it's a bit odd. I'm taking lessons with a chap who's an amazing picker to learn it from scratch; it's the one thing I really want to improve more than anything else.

stratcat

There's a simple exercise that you can do.Basically you play first finger first fret, second finger second fret etc, up to the fourth fret. Then you repeat all the way to the sixth string, alternate picking all the way.
Once you've done that, you play it back up. Keep doing it until it is absolutely second nature.

Then the fun starts mix up the fingers choose a different set of finger 1324 etc, keep to the alternate picking.

What you are training is for an automatic response from your right hand. By mixing up your left hand you, hopefully make your right hand more autominuos! 
The next big step is dealing with economy over correct picking. Force yourself to do both and you'll master what you need to do.
Practice does indeed make perfect!

clarkefan

One thing I find very useful, and I probably picked it up from one the youtube guys above, is what someone referred to as a "hummingbird" sound.  

Aiming to adjust your grip on the pick (close to the tip) and playing fast and lightly, to a point where you start to hear the sound you think of when you think of hummingbirds, very light and very fast.

It doesn't help with syncing with the fretting hand but I find it helps with the strength and speed of the picking hand. Light/fast.