I'm about to give up on buiding picking speed and precision!

[GBR]

I actually found it quite helpful to try out a ton of different picks when I was working on my picking technique a couple years back. (Same as you I was I bit frustrated with my picking). It felt like trying out all of these different variations, and then having to adjust to them, aided in developing control.
And I was surprised with the pick I eventually ended up using.

As a result I also ended up with a lot of picks, and if you PM me your address I could send you a little variety pack (free of charge of course).

I'll also say it's never too late to get a handle on right hand technique, if you put in the time, as I was able to improve it a lot at age 30 plus.

 

[eternal_idol]

As for picks, I have gone through a ton, but a few months ago discovered these Winspear picks and love em.
https://www.winspearpicks.com/

I tried several different ones, but he will do custom ones as well. He made me a bunch of 1mm Amber Shiv's (about the same size as the Jaz III) and 1mm Amber Broadsword (about the size of a regular pick) that's all I use now. I can't recommend them enough.

and a nice little guide on each of the materials he uses: https://www.winspearpicks.com/pages/guide

the Bevel on the amber broadsword and stealth shiv look very reminiscent of the ones i carve into my sanded down Jp JazzIIIs

however @ 10-12$ per pick... ouch...

 

[Jayy]

Troy Grady is fantastic for understanding what exactly is going on. His Eric Johnson stuff is really great. I play JazzIIIs, but I can actually pick faster with a Fender 351 medium. I like snap as well. Just a different thing.

Fender 351 medium is what I have been using the most. Do you know why you can play faster with it vs. others?

 

[Jayy]

Check out the countless 8 to 15 year old boys/girls on YouTube who can all pick with lightning speed and precision......and can also sweep pretty darn good.

It'll make you feel better about yourself for sure

Yeah I've seen the little punk ass bastards... Thanks a lot, man. That really helped! I feel SO much better about everything now...

LOL, wait til those kids are 17-19 they won't practice and they will lose it LOL

After recovering from a Scaphoid fracture (one of the carpal bones) I had to totally re-learn my picking style and make some minor compromises.

my playing used to be all wrist. But since really focusing on my playing after the injury, I've had to make some slight changes in how i hold my fingers while i'm picking. Made adjustments to where my guitar hung on the strap, my guitar rests a little higher on my gut now.

My playing is still mainly wrist, but i've incorporated some finger roll movement on the pick and some elbow work.

grab a gripy pick, kinda like Petrucci"s J III signatures, those things ain't moving or shifting in your grip unless you want them too. this will allow you to relax your grip slightly without losing your pick

and experiment with limiting a little wrist movement and adding in some index and thumb movement to compensate for the reduced wrist movement

Man that sucks. That HAD to be hard to get through re-learning your picking all over. Thank you for the suggestions. I will see if I can try to incorporate some of that into my picking.

 

[Jayy]

I actually found it quite helpful to try out a ton of different picks when I was working on my picking technique a couple years back. (Same as you I was I bit frustrated with my picking). It felt like trying out all of these different variations, and then having to adjust to them, aided in developing control.
And I was surprised with the pick I eventually ended up using.

As a result I also ended up with a lot of picks, and if you PM me your address I could send you a little variety pack (free of charge of course).

I'll also say it's never too late to get a handle on right hand technique, if you put in the time, as I was able to improve it a lot at age 30 plus.

That's very cool of you, but I wouldn't ask you to do that. The music stores here flat suck, but they do have a good variety of picks to go along with their shitty amps and guitars. It's good to hear you were able to improve after age 30. I'm 41 now and if I don't get past some of my road blocks soon I'm going to set my guitars on fire and take up the damn kazoo!

 

[GBR]

That's very cool of you, but I wouldn't ask you to do that. The music stores here flat suck, but they do have a good variety of picks to go along with their shitty amps and guitars. It's good to hear you were able to improve after age 30. I'm 41 now and if I don't get past some of my road blocks soon I'm going to set my guitars on fire and take up the damn kazoo!

It would be absolutely no trouble at all, and I have some more obscure ones you might find interesting to try, plus a plethora of the usual and not so usual suspects. And of course all new and unused. Just let me know

Haha, yeah, I was about to take up the glass harmonica myself

And just so you know I'm not totally full of shit here's a couple of examples of some picking that I had no chance of doing until well into my 30s.

The very last few seconds of this:
https://soundcloud.com/ramberg/friedman-angry-hippie

And the last half or so of this:
https://soundcloud.com/ramberg/electroshred

 

[Rdodson]

Troy Grady is fantastic for understanding what exactly is going on. His Eric Johnson stuff is really great. I play JazzIIIs, but I can actually pick faster with a Fender 351 medium. I like snap as well. Just a different thing.

Fender 351 medium is what I have been using the most. Do you know why you can play faster with it vs. others?

I learned to do the EVH thumb and middle finger, wrist lay-over technique when I was a teenager - including his whole fan-picking thing. I can glide through the strings easier whereas the JazzIII gets hung up sometimes. I compromise with a Fender heavy jazz pick, and it is sorta half way in between.

 

[cardinal]

I spent a long time getting down six-string and other crazy sweeps, and it was a useless skill as it almost always just sounds like someone going "blalalalalala" with their tongue. I stopped doing it and now am terrible at it, but I think anyone who listens to me play is better for it.

Best thing I ever did for my playing, is that I really spent a few weeks really playing with different vibrato techniques. I had to relearn a new left hand grip when I switched to 7-strings, and I ended up spending a lot of time just trying different vibratos.

 

[RaceU4her]

grip pressure is the whole thing for me, the faster you play the more relaxed you have to be. i like thinner picks and heavier strings as well, i like my pick to "bounce" of the string not pull it along and get hung up

 

[Baba Louie]

Everything Stratjacket said is true, and, probably THE most important part of it. You have to strike a balance between picking too hard, or too soft. It's a fine line. It's really a feel thing, and, once you get it, you'll know it. Experiment with different degrees of how hard you're hitting the strings. Eventually, you're gonna "feel" it, where you're relaxed enough to fly, but you're hitting the strings hard enough to not sound like you're just "feathering" them. Once you feel it, remember it, and try to make it a habit.

When you get the right feel, and youre switching from one string to the next, your picking hand will sort of "bounce" off the the last string you picked, and the momentum will lead it to the next string.
Single string exercises are really important. If you're doing a 4 note per string chromatic exercise, you need to be able to just continually play the 4 notes on one string, without trying to move to the next string, and you need to get it to where that is fast and natural. And, accenting the right strokes is imperative. Once you get it down to where you're doing notes, 4 in a row, over and over on one string, at a good, fast tempo, then you can start thinking about switching to the next string. Get it to where you're just switching between 2 strings, back and forth, 4 notes on each string, then add a 3rd string, and 4th, and so on.
Doing triplets with 3 notes per string is a whole nother aspect, which I'm not gonna get into right now.
And 2 notes per string has some quirks that can make it go easier. (Focus of the upstroke).
Some people are just natural at it. Some people aren't. I'm not. But, anybody can do it, with enough practice, AND the RIGHT practice.
Again, what Stratjacket said is really the key.

 

[Baba Louie]

One of the best exercises you can do, and this is one that you can do when you're just laying around watching youporn:
Don't use your left hand. At all. Don't fret any notes. Just use your right hand, and do 4 notes per string, back and forth across all 6 strings. It's boring, but you're not struggling with the coordination of your fretting hand. You'll get the motion down good, then, you can start fretting notes. But, you have to accent the strokes correctly.
Then, do 2 notes per string.
And, the hardest part, 3 notes per string.
It has to be rhythmic. Tap your foot while you're doing it.
Hope this helps.

 

[mbman]

[quote
just bust out a metronome, use a heavy pick ( I use Jazz III's) and run through your scales, modes and sequences. Start slow..gradually increase speed[/quote]

This

 

[born_hard]

[quote
just bust out a metronome, use a heavy pick ( I use Jazz III's) and run through your scales, modes and sequences. Start slow..gradually increase speed

This[/quote]
That is important but what also helps: take a short sequence of a couple notes, start with only 3 than 4 and 5 notes and play it as fast as you can. Be cool and relaxed. Imagine in your brain the motion and baammm: play it. See, this helps a lot, is important for train your brain in coordination and to get the feel for the endresult. Practice lots of variations. Lets say you begin with 3 notes. Do a sweep across 3 strings, each string a note. Than a sweep above 2 strings (downstrokes) and the 3rd note is on the second string with an upstroke. The possibilies/variations are endless.
What you also can do is to tap your quarters with your feet or take a metronome and begin your exercise ( lets say 3 notes) on a downbeat. If these 3 notes would be sixtuplets (six notes during a quarter) then you try to hit these 3 notes always on a downbeat, so you begin always when your feet hits the floor. 3 notes the pause on the upbeat. And so on. Later you begin with an upbeat. What i will say is that you know exactly what you are doing rhythmically. Because thats the most important factor. Even in shredding, timing is almost the main factor.

 

[Jayy]

Thank you guys for all of your input. This gives me a lot to work on, try out, and look in to. I do appreciate it. I just need to get over the frustration and work the problem some more I guess.

 

[born_hard]

Frustration is good cause it shows you something. But you nerd to get over it after a while and do your homework. Discipline and fun. Its a fine line. Everyday 20 minutes . Go for it and report back after 6 months.

 

[TheWhiteShadow]

Get the Guitar Speed Trainer app. Did me wonders.

Edit: http://www.guitarspeed.com/

 

[Jack Luminous]

Just put more time in it. And always use a metronome. It may take years but you will see some results in the end.

 

[ProgFree]

I thought I would give my 2 cents. Much of this I've learned when I was teaching guitar, by my own experience and by chatting with a friend that's an orthopedic surgeon due to a problem I had in the wrist of my picking had.

First what one has to take into account is that the picking movement is very unnatural. The most similar movement that we learn (no, not that dirty one ) is when we learn how to write by hand. Try to remember what it took for you to learn how to write by hand properly, quite a bit right? And most of the folks struggle with hand writing. This means that we need to train a lot, really a lot.
Second it is important to remember that the picking movement is a tuff one for the joint/wrist because it is very repetitive. If you feel discomfort in the muscles/joints of your wrist, stop playing, or focus your technique in the fretting hand while you recover. You will see that after resting a day or two your picking is much faster and precise.

Another issue is that people tend to grab the pick according to what they have seen others do. Don't do that. Our wrists are quite different from person to person. Try to find how you feel comfortable without stressing the wrist. I grab the pick in a way that is very unnatural for most, with the angle backwards, George Benson style. Did put the video below to show how I grab the pick, many say that is wrong to grab the pick like that, still works fine for me.

The problem that I've encountered the most is people that practice a lot but pretty much the same type of exercises. Some cool ones for example: take the major scale, three notes per string, do all the figures in the whole neck until you reached the higher octave. Do all the positions starting with a downstroke, then do them all again starting with an upstroke. Do the same with pentatonics, harmonic minors etc. This can get pretty boring though, learn songs of guys that are good with picking. Steve Morse is very challenging but even if one does not get it right, one improves a lot with the struggle.
One of the things that helped the most for me was to learn some classical pieces, like this in the video below. Because those movements are quite unnatural for a typical guitar track one improves a lot the picking. Hope it helped. Don't demotivate man, everyone has been there.

 

[squealie]

My observations...

'play with a metronome and gradually increase speed' ... this isn't enough direction IMO. I've been playing with a metronome for eons. Until you incorperate concepts like chunking, bursting and isolating pick movement and slanting...just pecking along in 16th notes aint gonna solve the issue once you reach medium-speed.

As others have said, Troy Grady's lessons are stellar. Pebber Brown has some interesting ideas too. Paul Gilbert is the epitome of baddass picking, but he never really talks about the exact mechanics of his picking (that I have seen) I believe his 'turning-the-key' wrist motion gives some insight...that he avoids getting the pick hung behind a string because both directions of his motion brings the pick out of the string-plane... I've been trying to develop that for my playing but it is very awkward at first. I'm also left-handed so it's doubly sucky.

 

[s_swanson]

Troy Grady is fantastic for understanding what exactly is going on. His Eric Johnson stuff is really great. I play JazzIIIs, but I can actually pick faster with a Fender 351 medium. I like snap as well. Just a different thing.

Fender 351 medium is what I have been using the most. Do you know why you can play faster with it vs. others?

The sharper point on the Jazz III's (or similar picks) allows you to pick notes cleanly without having to move your hand/wrist as far. It's more economical, and allows you to pick faster.

Another tip I've heard in the past is to pick a single note as fast as you can. Since you aren't switching between strings, or doing anything you need to think about with your left hand, you can focus in on little details like how you are holding the pick, pick angle, wrist movement/elbow movement, etc.

The easiest thing to pick fast is one individual note, and you will naturally default to your most efficient picking technique. Once you make a mental note of the optimum pick angle and things like that, you can make a point of applying it to actual music. I think this tip was from a John Petrucci video, but I'm not completely sure about that.