Picking Hand


Kevin Taylor
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Kevin Taylor
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06/20/2000 3:14 pm
I still find that my left hand can do runs about twice as fast as my right can pick em.
Any fast shredder guys got some advice?
Like, which is better, soft or hard pick, large or small, held between thumb and 1st or 2nd finger? How hard do you pick the notes, how far does your pick travel...do you anchor your hand or leave it hanging there, does the pick just graze the strings with the tip or does it travel further down, do you use the tip or edge of the pick... how do you stop yourself from dropping the stupid thing.. etcetara etcetara ....
# 1
ekstasis16
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ekstasis16
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06/20/2000 6:03 pm
The biggest thing to remember is to keep your arm relaxed. If it tenses up, you'll lose control.

Personally, I anchor my hand on the bridge, the pick lightly grazes the strings, I use a Fender heavy pick and hold it with thumb & 1st finger.

I've heard Kirk Hammett say only your wrist should move, but when I play really fast, my whole forearm locks at the wrist and moves at the elbow, which isn't terribly good, but I can't help it.
"When you're a young, long-haired guitarist, no one takes you seriously." - John Petrucci

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# 2
Uncle Istvan
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Uncle Istvan
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06/21/2000 4:58 am
I use, let's see here... uhmm... .60mm Dunlop picks. I used to play with the BigStubby, or whatever they're called, which are 1mm thick. Big ass pick. I think that your pick is mostly just personal preference, but I've been doing better with the lighter picks. They give to pressure a bit easier, making it a bit easier to switch between strings when doing sweep picking things... Yeah... I anchor my hand at the bridge also, and tend to try to keep everything in the wrist. It's a definite must to stay relaxed while you play. That's about it. Mostly it's just practice.
# 3
Buzz
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Buzz
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06/22/2000 4:01 am
Wow.. Y'all like them thick buggers don't ya?
Well I use .38mm Dunlop picks. The point's just a bit too fine. I use the edge. So It works out to be somewhere between the .38 and the .42 Dunlops. I hold it between the thumb and 1st finger. Using the edge provides more gripping surface on the pick and the point just tends to travel too far into the strings. I've gotten a lot of flack over the years for using "paper" for a pick. I honestly can't be accurate enough to either graze the string or go deeper into it. With the thin pick its all got to do with how I hold the pick. A tighter grip gives more weight and a looser grip allows for more speed. For all the crap I get about it I can still out-speedpick most players I run into. Like Uncle Istvan posted.. it also makes things a hell-of-a-lot easier for me when sweep picking. I anchor my hand on the bridge as well. Only my wrist moves when soloing but my whole forarm will move when playing a fast riff. I honestly have had little trouble holding onto picks although occassionally they are dropped but mostly when moving from tapping to picking or vise versa. It's really all just a matter of figuring out what works for you.
That which you can not cure,
you must endure!
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Buzz
# 4
trendkillah
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trendkillah
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06/22/2000 9:52 am
I used to play with 0.88mm pics, wich i thought were fine, but since i started using 1.5mm picks, my technique, tone and speed have gotten better.
I usually lock my wrist on the bridge, while
trying to mute the strings i'm not picking with the palm of my hand.
For getting high speed with high accuracy, it best to get the speed out of the wrist, not the for-arm(wich is faster, but not easy to control).
How you hold the pick, pick your strings, etc... . Thats just a matter of doing it the way it feels and sounds the best to you.
Speed comes with practise, there are no shortcuts,hehe.

Oh yeah, for preventing dropping your pick while playing, try carving a big X in your pick on both sides for more grip, that does the trick for me.
# 5
LuigiCabrini
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LuigiCabrini
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06/23/2000 4:26 am
I dunno, I think your way is right. When I see people playing fast, it is a small motion of the forearm, not the wrist. The wrist has to make a big motion, cause it can't just cross the strong, has to go vertical too u know? Circular motion, that's bad. I've heard some say the actual picking motion comes from the wrist, whereas moving between strings comes from elbow. With me I just pick from elbow and do fine, i find you can just get way faster that way.
Are you gonna trust Kirk Hammet about picking? I've never heard him pick a fast run, he's all legato like his teacher satriani (who blows him away imho, but that's a different discussion.) Different people will tell u different things, but look at somebody good play and I think you'll see most of the motion from the elbow.
As for my pick, I mostly use a jim dunlop 1mm nylon, but I'm not too picky, I'll use the 3mm stubby jazz picks, those are thick mofos. I find that if I angle the pick just a bit, so I'm not picking totally parallel to the strings, the pick glides off the string more, there's less of a clicky click attack, and its easier to get faster cause there's less resistance.

# 6
ekstasis16
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ekstasis16
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06/23/2000 4:34 am
Dude...have you even heard Kill 'Em All?
"When you're a young, long-haired guitarist, no one takes you seriously." - John Petrucci

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# 7
Buzz
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Buzz
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06/23/2000 3:50 pm
uh... remember back then Metallica sped a few things up in the studio.
That which you can not cure,
you must endure!
———————————
Buzz
# 8
LuigiCabrini
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LuigiCabrini
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06/24/2000 2:31 am
quote:
Originally posted by ekstasis16:
Dude...have you even heard Kill 'Em All?


Yeah, when does he pick fast? There are some really fast solos, but he hammers on and pulls off mostly, right?


# 9
LuigiCabrini
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LuigiCabrini
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06/24/2000 2:38 am
quote:
Originally posted by Buzz:
uh... remember back then Metallica sped a few things up in the studio.

Wow really? I never knew that? I'm not surprised though, some of those runs are pretty damn fast, but I've heard others who can do it. Allan holdsworth and satch come to mind, cause like hammet they are mostly hammer ons and pull offs, but i like both of them more than hammet. BTW, ektasis, if he does pick fast in any of the songs in killemall, tell me, cause i'm curious. That'd be a side of hammet i'd never heard.


# 10
ekstasis16
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ekstasis16
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06/24/2000 3:34 am
Try 'Hit the Lights' for starters. You can hear the picking. If you still don't believe me, check out John Petrucci, particularly the Liquid Tension Experiment.
"When you're a young, long-haired guitarist, no one takes you seriously." - John Petrucci

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# 11
LuigiCabrini
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LuigiCabrini
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06/24/2000 4:30 am
Yeah I only recently actually tried doing it. It takes some getting used to, but I imagine that with time I could get it faster and smoother than alternate picking even for scalar passages. I mean it makes sense right, more economy of motion. I'll have to practice it tho, cause it comes a lot less naturally than straight alternate picking. I'll check out your trick magnus thanks. I really suggest you guys listen to jimmy bruno, get him off napster if you want. He's not a shredder, he's a jazz player, so he's not going to be doing fast picking all the time, but when he does, he always uses economy picking, and he does it great. He's also a great guitarrist in terms of improvisation and interesting use of chords played harmonically not just arpeggiated like most shred guitarrists. (Hey it sounds crappy to play them harmonically with distortion right?)


# 12
LuigiCabrini
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LuigiCabrini
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06/24/2000 6:26 am
I was just saying that hammet doesn't pick fast. Not that nobody does. I've heard petrucci, and I've heard malmsteen, and while I don't love their stuff, they pick very very fast, i don't think either one uses hammerons or pulloffs much at all, petrucci almost never if ever does. To paraphrase Paul Gilbert, their notes sound like baseball cards in bicycle spokes. Is hit the lights a metallica song? Does kirk pick fast in it? Most of the killemall solos are very fast legato pentatonic or aeolian scalar runs.
Here's another tip for schmange. It's a technique i'm not comfortable with yet, but if practiced, it can yield some great results. Check out jimmy bruno (an incredible jazz guitarrist, one of the best straight jazz guitarrists around today, with almost definitely the best technique) to hear what it sounds like. In metal it's called economy picking, in jazz, the rest stroke. Instead of straight alternate picking, u alternate pick on each string, and when u cross to the next, continue the stroke. If you are going from the E string to the A string, always use a downstroke, even if alternate picking dictates that you should use an upstroke. If from B to G, always use an upstroke, blah blah blah. I'm not good at it yet, I've always been a straight alternate picker, but it's something i wanna practice. I imagine that it would also help to make one's sweep picking smoother.

# 13
Uncle Istvan
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Uncle Istvan
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06/24/2000 8:03 am
Yeah, economy picking... It's alot like sweep picking, like what's used in arpeggios and all that good stuff. It's hard to get down, but once you do it then it can help you out alot. I still need to get it down good...
# 14
magnus
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magnus
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06/24/2000 10:00 am
When you're talking about economy picking,
check out my Final Fantasy trick for some real hard economy picking. ps. Don't listen just read the tab. ds.
# 15
KingB
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KingB
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06/24/2000 6:14 pm
ALWAYS use a metronome when you practise picking exercises, I use a Dunlop Jazz 3 pick, it seems to work best for that crisp alternate picking.
# 16
Uncle Istvan
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Uncle Istvan
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06/27/2000 4:02 am
Frank Gambale, another jazz player, is a god when it comes to arpeggios. Check out something by him, he has a different arpeggio for any chord you can name, he's amazing.
# 17
KingB
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KingB
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06/28/2000 6:21 am
Yeah, I got his instructional videos way back when, he has some neat ideas and his sweep picking is awesome, I checked out that economy picking he does, and it has some good applications, Magnus has some really good tricks using that stuff.
# 18
AtomicMassUnit
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AtomicMassUnit
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06/30/2000 6:07 am
For maximum speed, try making your picking motion come not from your arm, not from your wrist, but from your index finger and thumb. keep your wrist and arm in a fixed position, and hold the pick w/ thumb and index. To a certain extent the thicker the pick, the more accurate you'll be.
Then again, maybe it's just skill. I dunno. Ever see these bad mothas who play with their fingers? a lot of country, blues, and jazz guitarists can truly burn with their bare hands.
Any tips on incorporating fast playing into music that sounds good? (and i mean that as a joke). Sometimes it seems people (like me when i was younger) overlook phrasing and vibrato in favor of speed. Now i try to play tastefully, but it is nice to really impress other guitarists for a couple bars of a solo. Y'all make some recommendations.

Atomic
# 19

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