Frustration.

mike_l

Actually practising properly.

Can I get a simple, alternate picked riff right?

Can I fuck.

Got a bit closer last night, still not right though.

BahHumbug

Something that nobody taught me, that I just kind of discovered over many years, is tension and bad posture make it so much harder to play and concentrate. If you're frustrated, then you are likely to be suffering both. If you're trying to master a new motor skill, like a riff, the chances that you're going to be a bit tense anyway. So take a few minutes to relax. Try and check your body, top to bottom for aches and tension. Can you release any tension that you find? Can you change your posture to reduce tension and aches.

octatonic

Slow down.

nick_s

I am finding this with a section of Crazy Train right now, irritating the crap out of me, so am slowing it right down, and building up the speed.

octatonic

The case for slowing down is two fold.

First, you understand subdivisions of the beat much better when playing slowly.

Building something up slowly is always learned more solidly than something learned at tempo.

Also, it stops you from putting the wrong thing into muscle memory.

Teetonetal

octatonic said:

The case for slowing down is two fold.

First, you understand subdivisions of the beat much better when playing slowly.

Building something up slowly is always learned more solidly than something learned at tempo.

Also, it stops you from putting the wrong thing into muscle memory.

Yes, yes and yes.

eSully

Using a metronome is apparently the best way to build up speed. I have a tiny cheap one but truth be told when I'm learning something 9 times out of 10 I dive in and try to play full speed rather than building up as I know I should. That is probably why my alternate picking is so shite  :P

DLM

Who says the riff is all that simple? What is it?

thomasross20

I'm half and half on the slow down thing. Yes, it's good. At the same time, you'll never adapt for faster playing - I think to play fast, you have to just do it. That way you'll feel where the real tension is and hone in on quicker. 

I like it when I find something I can't do - it means it's an opportunity to improve. 

DesVegas

Have you tried playing it even faster?

thomasross20

Sometimes you just have to believe you can do it.....

ElectroDan

Is there any way you can change your picking strategy for that lick to incorporate legato or an economy motion?

guitarfishbay

octatonic said:

Also, it stops you from putting the wrong thing into muscle memory.

Definitely.

I had guitar lessons as a kid, then they stopped, then they started again.  I self taught while the lessons had stopped, and when I went back to the teacher he had to completely overhaul my picking technique because I'd learned some bad habits that were preventing me from progressing.

It can be easy to slip in to bad habits at any point, and playing slowly lets you really analyse what you're doing.

carlos

@thomasross20 is right, too. Technique for playing slowly is not the same as for playing fast. There's a point where practicing something slowly will never get you there. I find it easiest to chunk the music and learn it bit by bit at a tempo that's close to the actual tempo of the song. 

octatonic

Unless it wasn't clear, you play slowly as a method to then accelerate the tempo once you'e properly learned whatever thing you are trying to learn.

I don't think anyone expect you to play slowly forever.

Even now, having played for 30 years, I work things out slowly.

Before accelerating the tempo.

And yes chunking too- 8 note blocks seem to work well for me.

Something I got from Steve Morse- I play at around 60% of my top speed most of the time and then give myself a few minutes at the end of a practice session to ramp up the speed.

carlos

I'm an 80% myself for learning. Just find that there are too many mechanical differences between slow and fast tempo. Same way you can't practice running the 100m by running the mile. When I do slow down considerably is when I'm figuring out the best way to navigate in terms of upstrokes/downstrokes/sweeps.

frankus

carlos said:

@thomasross20 is right, too. Technique for playing slowly is not the same as for playing fast. There's a point where practicing something slowly will never get you there.

As someone who does a variety of fine and gross motor activities slowly in preparation and practice for moving swiftly, I'd rather like some morsel of evidence to substantiate this claim.

BahHumbug

Other thing is, chances are there's one or two bits of your riff that you are tripping up on. Concentrate on those bits. Pick out three or four consecutive notes that you have problems with and make an exercise of them. Then repeat that exercise until you die, or can play it reliably well, whichever comes first

thomasross20

frankus said:

carlos said:

@thomasross20 is right, too. Technique for playing slowly is not the same as for playing fast. There's a point where practicing something slowly will never get you there.

As someone who does a variety of fine and gross motor activities slowly in preparation and practice for moving swiftly, I'd rather like some morsel of evidence to substantiate this claim.

At slow speeds you can get away with crap technique. 

Playing fast, you tense up. If you can hone in on that and eradicate it, you can play faster and better. 

You CAN then use that same technique at slower speeds, but I do think it's a tad different. I'm not explaining it well.

carlos

frankus said:

As someone who does a variety of fine and gross motor activities slowly in preparation and practice for moving swiftly, I'd rather like some morsel of evidence to substantiate this claim.

@mike_l sorry for hijacking!

Well, I have zero science papers to back this up, but it certainly was true for all the sports I've ever done (some to a fairly high-level). For instance, if you're doing a slapshot in ice hockey you need enough force on the stick to make it bend. You can't practice this without doing it at less than say 90% of maximum force:

Similarly, in guitar playing I "guess" that due to way strings vibrate and react differently to playing slowly and fast (frequency of strokes on same string) that the feel is different. Also, won't practising too slowly give you a bad "string navigation" for a phrase? At slow speed you could downpick all the notes, use simpler left-hand fingering, etc. but that won't cut it when you speed up. I roadmap it slowly and then try to jump into however fast I can do it with some accuracy. Then just build the muscle memory and pace from that point upwards.

I hate to always mention him and his videos, but several of the guest artists in the Troy Grady videos have different techniques for playing slow and fast. Often they think they have the same technique at all tempos, but that's not what the slow motion camera shows. This leads me to think that practising at slow tempo for some people equals practising a different set of shoulder/arm/wrist/finger mechanics and muscle use than practising at fast tempo. I know that for me slow tempo involves a lot of pick angle articulation which is not possible at fast tempo where it goes into the bigger muscle groups.

thomasross20

Exactly - the Troy videos are great for this...