DanielLEE's Technique Critiques
Technique critiques shared by DanielLEE.
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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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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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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I came across this concept of "only focusing on or counting the downstroke" for each pair of up and down stroke picking in the pick slanting seminar. I could not fully grasp this concept back then but was able to picking pretty fast and thus stopped ponder overing it. Now, I am watching the Synchronicity lessons and hearing this concept again, I realize that I need to work on it.
My biggest struggle is that I do not understand how to just focus on the downstroke when down and up strokes are performed and how to know or feel if I am doing it right. I tried my best to not put effort in the up stroke when I shot the "4-note chunking" video.
In order to place more focus on this, I even tried to do some double picking, which is a term I heard from other players, by playing a note twice (i.e. with a down stroke and an up stroke). When I do this, I could not play as fast as I was in the "4-note chunking" video and I was sounding very sloppy as well.
May I know how should I think about this thing so that I can focus on the down stroke only and clean up my double picking. Thanks!
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I have just started watching the Pickslanting Primer and am learning the Death of Blade picking motion. I have been practicing this for a few days and I can now play at 185bpm comfortably. I would like to if I am doing the motion right.
Also, though I know this motion has a high potential to eventually get me playing at 200+bpm, I am not particularly interested in this picking motion at the moment. Should I master this picking technique before moving onto learning and practicing other picking motions? Thanks!
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