OK, I finally did it. After a little over a year and 1/2 of playing, I want to get faster / more accurate, so I went and bought a metronome. Anyone have any exercises / ideas that really helped them develop right / left hand coordination with alternate picking.
Ive been doing the 1-2-3-4 chromatic exercises for a while now, and I have been using the metronome with the 3 note per string natural minor scale up and down the neck. That is helping me stretch things out.
I guess I'm just hoping that someday I get over this can't alternate pick at high speed hump. Its like my picking hand wont go any faster without being sloppy.
-Dustin
I've been imitated so well I've heard people copy my mistakes.
- Jimi Hendrix
I suggest getting a copy of "Speed Mechanics for Lead guitar" by Troy Stetina. It basically just outlines tons of different lessons you can play with a metronome, and it comes with a CD so you can hear how they are supposed to sound at different speeds. I got this a couple of months ago and it's done wonders for me, especially the section on picking mechanics (different combinations of alternate picking you'll encounter when playing on more than one string).
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Dustin: it's just your picking hand you're talking about right? I mean as far as speed. The fingering hand is okay, being in sync with the speed picking?
I'm just thinking it might also be how much pick tip is contacting the strings, or maybe the angle of the pick, or even the shape of the tip, as well as the stiffness/thickness of the pick itself. All these things work together to get that floating bee sort of picking going on. It also has to do with how much wrist action you're using or whether there's forearm in there too.
You might also try circle picking, which was mentioned somewhere in another thread. One jazz guy I read about said it's basically like writing little circles on a piece of paper, and where the pencil point is, is where the pick tip is.
What's your hand/wrist motion like?
What shape and thickness are your picks?
How much tip is peeking out from your fingers?
Where are you picking on the string - toward the bridge more, or toward the neck?
What's the angle on the pick as it goes across the string?
Best
