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Masters in Mechanics

Technique critiques

Public critiques created by DanielLEE.

Feedback on my USX motion

Hi, I paused my subscription back in April this year and just renewed it. I haven't practiced my picking motion for months and would like to resume by submitting a technique critique first. I was practicing DSX before, but recently found performing USX is easier. I recorded myself playing tremolo with USX at my current top maximum speed. I would like to know if my current technique looks okay or if there is anything I need to adjust. Thanks!

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Legato Diagnosis

I am watching the fretting video series from the "Synchronicity" seminar and working on my legato. I have recorded myself playing the ascending minor and phrygian shapes with hammer on and trying to fulfill all three criteria of "speed", "chunking" and "fretting" mentioned in chapter 9. I think I have fulfilled the first two by giving my best shot at the moment. However, when I watched my recordings in slow-motion the notes within the chunk were not evenly spaced and I cannot solve this as the moment because I always thought I was playing the notes evenly. It was not until I listened back to my own playing through slow motion that I noticed the fretting problem. May I know how can I fix this? Also, are my "speed" and "chunking" good in these videos? Lastly, I have noticed I curved my pinky to a greater extent than what I normally observed from other players. Though this worked well for me to have higher accuracy at high speed, I wonder if this would limit my playing ability as curving pinky this way would make it hard to stretch it and play lines that cover wider frets.

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Working on Hand Sync

Hi, I have encountered two major problems as I practiced hand sync. My first problem is about evenness of notes during meta-chunking challenge from synchronicity seminar, and my second problem is about syncing my left and right hands at high speed. Regarding the first problem, I have recorded myself playing the 19-note challenge in two videos, which were recorded few days apart. When I listened to the 1st video in slow-motion, some of the notes were uneven. I notice that when I accented the first note, I would be making a larger downstroke motion which made my pick moved away from the string further than other non-accented notes. This difference in displacement made the notes sound uneven, creating a "swing" kind of feeling for the first two notes of each chunking group. The reverse of this, i.e. a smaller motion to make the non-accented notes sound lighter to create a more obvious dynamic contrast, would also make me rushed the non-accented notes as the pick stay very close to the string after each stroke. This happened sometimes in the video. My problem was if I accented the first note, unevenness would occur. However, if I do not accented with larger motion, I was simply playing tremolo which made me unable to keep track of the number of notes I played. I ended the challenge two notes earlier at later attempt in this video as I lost track of the chunking due to non-accented groups. My question here is: how should I accent the notes so that no excessive displacement would take place? I continued to practice without finding a solution, and somehow the unevenness issue got better. Though the notes were not perfectly evenly spaced, but it was better than the 1st challenge. Please check the "high speed 19-note challenge 2nd" video. Now I got one more question: does this unevenness issue simply get resolved with more practice? Regarding the second problem,I have also tried to apply this 6-note chunking to an actual licks, which is playing a short licks of 12-8-10-12-10-8 on the same string. However, after incorporating my left hand, my playing just slowed down almost by half compared to playing tremolo and the playing sounded very sloppy. I just wonder what was holding me back and what can I do to play more cleanly?

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