Originally Posted by: jamesplaysgitarmy left hand speed is perfect, i can sweep/legato like a madman, its just im not sure how to hold the pick =/
i want to be able to switch to tremelo, pinched harmonics, chords and fast alternate picking or sweeping and tapping very quickly, as of now i use my thumb, pointer and middle finger to hold the pick, is that ok? it makes it a lot easier to switch to tapping quickly.
and im still not sure which way to tilt it, if at all, i learned to tremelo by tilting the far side of the pick (that is the side closer to the neck/head) up twards the sky, i can pick insanely fast like this, but i go slow if im doing single notes instead of tremelo and its hard to do pinch harmonics or switch to chords, if i point the near side of the pick twards the sky, i can pick single notes faster but cant really switch to tremeloing fast enough.
that's really funny I am having this *exact same thing* in my playing buddy. I can play legato very fast but I struggle to cleanly pick anything faster than 16th notes at 100 BPM.
I went out and bought "Speed Mechanics for Lead guitar" off Amazon like a year ago or something and had forgotten I even had that book. Then I was watching Dream Theater on HD Net a couple days ago and John Petrucci tore the crowds faces off (sorry that's my metaphor for playing face licks) and I noticed exactly what light487 said happened when he was picking each note. John wasn't player faster than Joe Satriani (I realize that's a whole other debate, but I'm guessing by the speed of movement of the left fingers) so why did it *sound* like Petrucci was playing at lighting speeds? And it appears it's because he's picking every note. (and that's he incredibly gifted of course).
So I went to Amazon again ... bought some Petrucci books and DVD's and noticed I had that book I hadn't looked at yet from over a year or so ago. So for 2 days now I've been literally looking at the first few exercises and WOW what a difference.
To answer the original poster this book recommends being close to parallel with your pick, but not exactly parallel, which is what many of the very skilled folks here have said. And use a metronome and take it SLOW. And I'm still trying to figure out whether to anchor my pinky and or ring finger or not. I see Satch and Petrucci anchor their hand with teh pinky and ring finger most of the time when they aren't picking fast runs. But when playing a fast run Satch picks up his anchored fingers (and whole hand at times) while Petrucci seems to be able to alternate pink anchored or not anchored equally well. So perhaps it will really come down to whatever you are more comfortable with, and honestly there might be cases where 1 is better than another (for muting unplayed strings for instance).
I've always had a bad habit of trying something where it's comfortable and then pushing up to impossible speed too quick because I get bored. But this time I resigned myself to stay within my reasonable boundaraies. In my case I started off playing chromatic scales (1-2-3-4, 2-3-4-5, 3-4-5-6, ...) up and then back down (15-14-13-12, 14-13-12-11, ...) on a single string (once per string) alternate picking 16th notes (4 notes per CLICK on the metronome) at around 90 BPM yesterday and today I'm already up to 120 BPM. I realize by the standards of the guys here that's laughably slow, but it's progress and I can literally feel myself getting faster. It's all clean and I finally for the first time in life feel like my right hand is taking control of the strings instead of getting in the way of my legato lol.
And james if it's any consolation I think all that legato you've been playing will help you make large gains quickly as long as you have the discipline to start slow and make small steps up in speed. One book recommned starting at 80BPM 16th notes, then move up in steps of 2BPM until you reach your "clean execution" limit, then back it down 1BPM and repeat your exercise on each string and try moving it up again.
Anyway, I hope this helps