So when you play fast things, what do you have the most trouble with? Keeping speed with your fingers and the position, or picking the right strings at the right time and speed?

Me, I usually mess up with my picking hand. Sometimes with my fretting hand cause I mess up the positions.

How about you?

I know it's boring, but use a metronome. Start slow and as you master them, increase the speed with a single click. That way, you'll get to play inhumanly fast and perfect I play bass and my problem is that sometimes I'm sloppy. I still need to work on synchronizing. My fretting hand gets tired faster and hits the strings a split second too late and with not enough force and it really sucks. The picking hand also messes up sometimes. I amaze myself on how stupid I can be sometimes. Ever seen a bass player shave his strings at 90 degrees, so he actually hits them but they don't ring?!

Hmm...Well the thing that mixes me up the most is probably accuracy, speed usually isnt an issue because I find that I can easily synchronize a good intonation with a certain tempo. Innacuracy of the picking hand during arppeggios gets me off most of the time when performing arppeggios or chords...especially between more than one string per arpeggio.

Arpeggios like sweeping over the strings?

Written by NECURATU on 23.06.2007 at 17:32

Arpeggios like sweeping over the strings?

Exactly! When I have to connect certain notes over like two or three strings...but I found an alternative, sometimes I just work out where the notes are on the same string, but it seems sorta redundant, I guess have to practice more

Oh. I still pluck 'em one at a time and let them ring, and when i need to do chords I just strum 'em with my thumb, dunno how correct that is, but it seems to work.

mostly it's my picking hand, because i can't keep up a tempo for more than 30 seconds and doing the intro for slayer's "black magic" is a pain in the ass

Endurance is a problem for everybody. Practice with a metronome consistently. I know it's boring, I hate it too...try saying 3 times "the metronome is my friend" when you can't take it anymore. But it helps so much...

I voted "All", because truth is somewhere in between. When playing fast, I usualy lose coordination between right and left hand.

I voted "some" because truth be told I mess up with some of it, not all of it. I mess up my picking hand because sometimes I hit the wrong string.
I also mess up my fretting hand because I put it in the wrong place sometimes.

Speed isn't a problem for me, normally it's only the placing, and even then it aint a big deal.

Written by NECURATU on 23.06.2007 at 22:27

Endurance is a problem for everybody. Practice with a metronome consistently. I know it's boring, I hate it too...try saying 3 times "the metronome is my friend" when you can't take it anymore. But it helps so much...

haha! I actually practice with a metronome, but I love it, I like to challenge myself by playing scales at different speeds over it.

Also voted some, my picking hand is rather good, and while playing riffs evrything is ok. But when it comes to solos, I usually mess up something, or everything. So I left solos to better than me

none. i'm god. hell, i'm better than god. i taught god how to play guitar...acutally fuck that. i taught yngwie malmsteen how to play guitar!


actually no. in all honesty, i dont really come across any things i fuck up on. i admit i'm slow when it comes to sweeping/shredding and all that stuff. but i manage

one thing that sort of fucks me up is trying to learn new things. when i first started, i was learning some 2 or 3 songs in a day. now, i barley do quarter of a song in a month. not really a rut, coz i'm enjoying being random.

i voted some, refering to the time when i used to play guitar. i remember it was a liitle bit of everything. i kinda had my days when i messed up on the picking, others when i messed up on the fretting, and obviously days when i just fucked it up all the way hahaha
then i kinda got bored and stopped playing, lack of perseverance i guess...

when i mess up it with my fretting hand, its like its retarded or something, cuz anytime I have a fast song to play the right hand is fine but the left hand is still goin super slow like im a beginner again lol granted usually once i play through a couple of times Im fine.

synchronization mostly, not really problems with independent hands as i have no reason to play yngwie speed, its mostly about getting them to work together.

My accuracy isn't well. Sometimes I miss a string.

my left-hand-right-hand coordination is perfect thus I NEVER MESS UP, but you know even I have my bad times:
sweeping - fretting hand - my speed fails me
shredding - fretting hand - coz I sometimes miss a string and everything gets messed up.
tapping - fretting hand - coz there is no picking hand here looool
chords playing - fretting hand - my pinky just cant stay on the same string for more than 2 seconds.

that about sums up my failures, if they ever happen that is..

mostly the speed with my picking hand. but ofcourse that means my accuary isnt good as well

I'd say it's mostly picking hand. Not fast enough for what I want to play, and when it's within my capabilities, my technique is a little bit unrefined. Working on it now, though .

I mess up both hands but with really intricate riffs it's easier to jump strings with the fretting hand

I have my picking all down really well...but it's the fretting that I'm still quite awkward with...something I fuck the both up...I find that I get clumsy really quickly unfortunately...all due to not having enough time to practice...when I'm on stage though it's always the fretting that I mess up on...I always seem to focus more on the picking hand for some reason while playing live...

I've noticed that my fretting hand sucks 2. very sluggish. Me being left handed and playing right hand I've always thought the right hand will be the problem, but it seems it ain't. Oh well, lots of work solves everything.

So wouldn't your picking hand be messing up?

So are there exercises to help one's picking hand aside from just simply practicing?

When I play fast solos, my left/right hand synchronization gets fucked up...one hand is faster than the other, that's mainly my problem.

I don't usually mess up very often anymore, but I usually do on technical stuff with my fretting hand. I usually focus too much on the rhythm of the picking, and just loosely time the fretting. I also can't sweep pick to save my life.

I am getting better with accuracy, but it annoys me a lot when im playing good and all the other strings begin to ring.

I have many problems with the fret sometimes, but others the pick is killing me because my sweat.

Written by Nighthowls on 11.03.2008 at 18:26

So are there exercises to help one's picking hand aside from just simply practicing?

Try a chromatic scale playing triplets on each string, going up and down, with alternative picking on each string, that means if you pick primarily pick down on the E string, then your first note on the A string you will pick up. I know it's not precise, you'd have to see it to know what i mean, it's an exercise from my guitar teacher.