I agree with heavy pics definitely. Back when I used to do the shred thing, one thing I learned something that made it a lot easier to play fast. Have you ever seen someone playing really fast, making faces and looking like they're straining their ass off? It looks really cool and all...but it's very unneccasary.If you need to do all that, you have a problem
Tensing up slows you down...a LOT! To play fluidly, relax your wrists and fingers.You only need to strike the string hard enough to make a sound...anything else is not economical. For the right hand, there are roughly three way of going about shred type picking.
One is used by Zakk Wyld (Ozzy) and Vernon Reid (LIving Color) and sometimes Eddie Van Halen does it on fast passages, where you sort of bend your wrist near the high E string, so when you are playing, the pick is slanted downward from left to right (if you pick right handed) rather than right to left (which is what most players do). If it suits you, fine, but I find that the angle is probably straining the tendons in your wrist and unless you are constantly playing, you'll probably fatique much faster than someome using a more natural right hand position.Most pictures of Zakk playing will show you what I mean.
The second is used by a lot of Jazz players. You anchor your elbo on the body of the guitar, keeping your wrist rigid and barely bending it if at all, and the action comes from moving your arm up and down. It's as if you forearm and wrist are in a cast...like a whipping action. It's benefit is that the movement comes from the arm and not the wrist so it's less tiring, but harder to control.
The third is the most used...it's just your standard run of the mill right hand technique. It's probably the most natural position. Some curl their fingers, some don't. If you do any work with volume or tone pots and you can reach them with your fingers...open/splayed out fingers may be the way to go.
While your doing all this picking hand stuff, where is the pick in relation to the strings? Is the tip of the pic going waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy below the strings themselves? In other words, when you look down, how much of the pic is being used to get sound? Is your thumb so close to the strings that 3/4 of the pick can be seen below the string? You only need the tip of the pic to strike the string to get it to sound out right?
For the fretting hand, unless your doing some heavy ass BB King vibrato, you don't need to take your fingers off the fret board more than 1/4 inch or so above the string. I STILL have a problem doing this. Sometimes I'll look down and there's all this open space between the string and my finger...definitely not good for speed. So if your now fretting a note with a finger,that finger shoud
just clear the string so it isn't muting it.Speed is all about economy of movement. Don't waste any effort at all...at least at practice. Once you get it down, you can make all the faces you want.
Hope this helps, J.P.
) Also, I've been trying to figgure out sweep-picking forever, and it just sounds like woody the woodpecker. Any help would be appreesh.
