Tremolo picking

I can do 16 @ 160 on a single note with just the wrist, but I think at higher speeds some of the arm is necessary. This topic was posted a while back at the Guitar World Shred forum and it tends to depend on the person. Lots of people anchor their pinky, use a heavy pick, and pick from the wrist, but as you get into 200+ territory, I think a fair amount of people incorporate the arm. That's how I was taught. Use the wrist until you start tensing up, then adjust things accordingly. Best bet is to start w/a metronome and work your way up. Your body will tell you what to do as you progress. If you have trouble, ask a good teacher what to do.

Some people don't use the forearm at all; look at Yngwie, he barely moves at all! Just go with what feels right, making sure you are loose and moving efficiently.

Thanks - just to clarify - I'm not aiming at shredding (assuming I understand what it is about - guess it's what you hear when you enter a guitar shop around lunch time and all the long haired guys demonstrate how fast they can play chromatic runs) Dont think I'll ever get there, and dont think I will either, even though the hair is just about long enough ;)

Am looking for nice melodic tunes with tremolo as an effect. Listen to this:
http://home.online.no/~carolbo/musikk/1111.mp3
(The Band's Robbie Robertson on Unfaithful Servant from "The Band" AKA "the brown album")

Your suggestions make sense tho'

Lars

I've always heard that it should be from the wrist with a relaxed, yet firm grip on the pick. Not that I'm an expert or really that good at it, but with this approach I seem to be getting better at it. Lately, I've been working out of 'Speed Mechanic for Lead Guitar' by Troy Stentina. He seems to be fairly widely respected as a teacher. In the book he says to do just what you're doing, that is, holding the pick only a very little sticking out from your fingers. But he does say to keep the pick at a straight right angle with the strings and focus on minimizing all movement in directions other then those back and forth accross the string (i.e. no twisting or anything like that). Though, I have no clue about when you get above 200...that's out of my range for the moment. But for me, around 140-150, what I said above seems to work just fine. Best of luck!

Thanks Jason
*practice, practice*

lars

Trem picking is easier the more accurate you can be, if you can hit a string with a millimenter of your pick for the least ammount of string movement to get a note you can pick into the 300 territory, that technique is especially important in lower tunings like B and A standard where the strings can actually flop on pickups... The only limit on wrist speed is your own physiology. I can manage about 200bpm with my wrist and then to get up much past that I use a little arm rotation, not enough to move my elbow though, its all ergonomics, how fast can you play within physical limits without hurting yourself? And guys like Yngwei... He doesnt move his arm at all or pick that much, yngwei is famous for playing like 30notes with one picking sweep, which is why he can manage such incredible speed, its mostly fret hand dexterity for him. Something like this is very hard to actually define, just however you can handle doing it to get a good sound Id say go for it, play around.

Hmm - cool
Problem is I cant seem to relax - I tense up the entire arm when I try to increase the speed. :evil:

Lars

Hmm - cool
Problem is I cant seem to relax - I tense up the entire arm when I try to increase the speed. :evil:

Lars

In that case, you need to slow it down by about 20-30 bpm bpm and build it up again slowly. What's happened is you've got it so-so at the slower speed and you've tried to go faster without a firm foundation to work from.

Best,

A :-)

Guess you're right - no foundation whatsoever - simply realised a few weeks ago that I could do something that sounds almost like tremolo. Prudence, patience and practice - huh?

Yeah I pretty much start everything in terms of drills and scales at around 60, then click it up each week. Doing so seems to take FOREVER...but it will pay off.

I suggest circles, make circles with your pick and the string come down on the string with one side of the pick an dup on the other side, not just up down uop down, by doing that you have to make your hand come to a stop before bringing it back up even if it only moves like 1mm. circles alows continuous motion and can easily be expanded to include more than one string. As far as locking the wrist or using your arm it's all about preferecnces, some people will suggest planting the side of your hand agoinst the bridge and going from there, just do what comes natural.

also what those guys said about starting slow to stay loose and build up speed, that great advice

LOOSEY GOOSEY

Here is what Eric Johnson himself said in an interview about speed picking.

It's important to develop down-and-up strokes. As you're picking down, instead of going from top to bottom, try to pick at an angle so that you go diagonally from the left horn of the guitar down to the control knobs. On the way back up, do the opposite diagonal. If you were to look at someone doing that real fast, it would be a circular technique. This way, you don't hit the strings dead-on, therefore minimizing the amount of extra noise and friction. You are more like skimming over the string. I hold the pick with my thumb and 1st finger, and I don't use the point end as much as the side of the pick to brush the note. As you pick diagonally, you also pick from the guitar's body up into the air, up and down, perpendicular to the string. You have to have a bounce in your wrist. It's hard to do and it almost works against playing fast sometimes, but that bounce gives you all the tone of the fretted note without getting all of the extraneous noise.

see circles! ^^^^

Wes, where did you read that? GW?

Thanks,
Matt

I must be misunderstanding something. I thought tremolo pick was you had a note to tremolo pick like:

So for each of those notes you'd pick the note for the duration of the quarter note however many times. No set amount of strokes. So how do you get 150 strokes into the duration of a 16th note?