struggling with crawling in the dark intro

im a somewhat beyond basic guitar player, i would say. ive been practing a good dozen different songs. ive learnt and can play along to crawling in the dark by hoobastank thanks to this sight. i can decently keep up to tempo to most of the song, even if my technique is somewhat sloppy, but the into to the song is a barrage of very fast palm muted alternate picked notes and if i play it up to tempo i screw up big time. i end up getting obsessed with it and playing it for hours, not really making much progress, when i could be practicing something else and getting altogether better with guitar

does anyone have any practice tips for this intro?

Hi tgwal,

Possibly limit yourself to a set time? I have an almost OCD tenacity to overcome obstacles and I'll beat on a problem for hours on end. For me it takes a bit of discipline to put it aside and come back later. I'm betting that at a certain point, all I was doing was reinforcing existing problems by not recognizing that my dogged determination was not getting me anywhere at that time.

I had this problem when I was learning "From the Beginning" (Emerson, Lake, and Palmer). There's a run at the end of the acoustic solo that was giving me fits. I could fake it by hammering (no one would seem to notice) but I really want to play it up to speed properly with a pick.

I fell back to my piano training: grabbed a notepad and a pencil and created a log. I then found the speed I could play it without making any mistakes, took out my metronome and wrote down the date and the setting. I then advanced the setting by a few beats and set my phone timer for 15 minutes. The timer rings and I stop. Period. My goal is to play it up to tempo 10 times in a row. So far, my best is 6 times but I'm progressing.

Probably not great advice, but that's what's working for me. Good luck!

Originally Posted by: theguywithalifebut the into to the song is a barrage of very fast palm muted alternate picked notes and if i play it up to tempo i screw up big time.

That kind of fast alternate picking requires you develop a relaxed, minimal picking motion. There's no way to get that kind of picking done with the wider normal strumming motions used to play chords for example.

That can be hard to do because it's counter-intuitive to play something fast & dramatic while staying loose, relaxed & using the bare minimal motions required to play the notes!

1. Stay relaxed. Any tension in your picking hand (or arm) is only going to make it harder to go faster. Consciously remind yourself to stay loose & relaxed. The more you do this the quicker it will graudally become second nature.

2. Use minimal motion. Just enough to graze the tip of the pick over the string to sound the note is all that's necessary. Don't dig in too far to the plane of the strings. You'll only get hung up & slow down. Just use the tip of the pick to graze the string & right away come back the other way for the next note.

I cover these techniques in a couple of lessons on building speed. These are aimed at playing licks on the upper strings, but the technique is fully applicable to the lower strings for riffing.

Speedy Ideas 1

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=287

In particular check out lesson 2 on the basic technique.

Speedy Ideas 3

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=929

In particular lesson 3 on applying the technique to notes on 2 adjacent strings.

Those entire tutorials might be beneficial to work through in order to get a good workout with those ideas. But at minimum those 2 lessons will help you with the basic technique.

Hope that helps!