My take on Pavel’s pinky exercise

Hey Rohan, 🙂

Excellent job my friend! I see that you also thought to transpose this drill (like we talked about a few weeks back, when you posted Sean’s Stamina/Picking Drills.) 😉 As you showed then, you show excellent control and subdivision of beat! I can tell that you are disciplined in your work with the metronome, because your timing doesn’t “stray” from the beat! Stay with this, and before long you’ll be busting it out at Pavel’s full-speed of 131 BPM’s! 😎 (Maybe try slightly less “overall” pick motion, and use a little less of the “tip-of-the-pick.” These are two things I am always focusing on, and I know it’s helping me! Two right-hand picking techniques that I look to for inspiration (tone & technique!) are Paul Gilbert and Yngwie Malmsteen! Notice thier “economy of motion,” and also notice how “relaxed” their right hands and forearms seem (even at “terrifying” tempos! – lol!)

Oh yeah, also excellent idea that you practice/record “clean” & “distorted,” as each sound brings out different elements of emphasis to focus on. (For example: clean is great for tone and dynamics emphasis, while distorted is great for note-separation and muting of unused strings!) I recommend this all the time to my students (and myself of course!) 😀

TTYL! 😉

~Bill Meehan~

@arc_of_descent 6038 wrote:

Bill, you’re right about the need to optimize the picking motion and the attack angle of the pick. But to be honest, I like to see it more of a synchronization effort between the two hands, if I want to get faster now. Something i’ve heard quite often here in IG 🙂

About the transposing, I’ve just memorized the intervals between the positions so I can start at any note and play this exercise. 😀

—
Rohan

Hey Rohan, 🙂

Yes, of course synchronization is important for both hands and it’s effect on speed! I guess the points I was making can easily (and should be) applied to both hands (that is economy of motion and relaxation!) Those two things are simple but very important to remember! My favorite example of “left-hand” economy-of-motion is a guitarist from Brazil by the name of Tiago Della Vega! Go check him out on YouTube. He’s STUPIDLY fast! (lol!) It’s actually a bit humorous to see & hear! (lol!) Go to YouTube and search for: Tiago Della Vega Bumblebee guiness book of world records.

It shows official footage of him playing “Flight of The Bumblebee” at various tempos, until he maxes out at 320 BPM’s (Sixteenth-Notes! :eek:)

Just stare at his left (fretboard) hand, and notice his economy-of-motion! It’s NOT HUMAN!

TTYL & Good Luck! 😉

~Bill Meehan~ 😀