My picking is in need some help, I've been doing chromatics, but i need to see bigger improvments, i am taking it slow, but any exercises? Or tips, im already taking a look at stuff in shredzone.
Go to www.chopsfromhell.com and buy the CD-Roms of Rustey Cooley...
Definitively great to practice alternate picking!!
I've bought all his CD roms, and I will still have plenty of hours (or months) of practice in front of me
Total Guitar's shred special from earlier this year if you can get it - the full Steve Vai 10 hour workout + a number of Paul Gilbert video and audio lessons + the full For the Love of God tab. Dunno if you can find it in your neck of the woods.
I think my biggest problems are not able to sync my hands and accuracy. I have FTLOG tab, I got PG's Guitars From Mars and Intense Rock 1&2. I have a the 10 hour workout, but it's from Ultimate-Guitar, but on the comments, someone said it was made by morello, the tab on UG.
The metronome is the secret, you can do all the excersises you want, but without the metronome your progress will be slower and not as easy to keep track of.
i reccomend this also. also the angle of your pick is important too. look at some vids of paul and you'll notice his pick is angled down. that's what made the difference for me, was the pick angle. also Jazz III picks helped alot too.
I would recommend playing with slight distortion. Not much, just enough that it makes an unpleasant sound if you, for example, hit an open string accidentally while picking. Also, it's probably a good idea to turn delay and reverb off completely while practising, it makes the mistakes easier to hear and to correct.
I've got tons of exercises, but now i wonder about the picking angle. Should it be like how PG does it?
or something like
I asked my guitar teacher , and he says li should do it the way i did in that picture, but i always did it the PG way, he said there is less catch doing it my guitar teacher's way, but i dunno, should i keep doing it like PG or my guitar teacher's?
You should angle the pick with the front side pointing to the floor like paul gilbert explains, especially if its the motion that feels more natural to you.
Your guitar teacher seems to be forgetting that alternate picking involves picking up as well as down. There will be a LOT more 'catch' his way.
Pick should be flat to the string, you want to pick the note scrach it. Learning DT songs did wonders for my alt picking, I allways found it easier to practise by learing songs rather than sitting there playing to a metronome.
I use to allways practise clean but I'm starting to find a little distortion with the volume down is good to practise with.
I've always thought that people put too much emphasis on a cookie-cutter approach to the "right" way of holding a pick. I asked Rusty Cooley about this and he said the same. A classic example is Marty Friedman and his awkward picking technique.
The "right" way is the way that is most comfortable for you. If you hold your hand behind your head yet find that this is the way you can alternate pick the fastest and cleanest then that's the "right" way.
People can argue "don't anchor", "angle your pick like this", etc, but ultimately when you're playing a long set you're going to do what feels best. I'm not belittling everyone's valuable advice. I'm just offering my 2 cents.
You definitely shouldn't change your picking technique just because someone else does it differently. As I said before, if angling the pick forwards is what comes naturally to you, then do it.
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Ibanez JEM Forum
1.3M posts
69.6K members
Since 2000
A forum community dedicated to Ibanez JEM guitar owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about collections, displays, models, styles, scales, reviews, accessories, classifieds, and more!