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What I don't understand is that someone makes the effort to create a 21 minutes informative video and post it for free for people all around the world to learn; and someone gives him a thumb down!!
you are right about the effort but wrong about the video content. He is very sloppy and not accurate. From a beginner perspective it is a good video. Then if it comes intermediate or pros it is bad.
@@staystrongjoseph It's a free world, If you think that his playing it's articulate and fluid it's ok for me. My comment wasn't to put him down or to be an axx but in my opinion his right hand is sloppy and not fluid. Peace
@@staystrongjoseph You do know that it’s possible that you’re ear is not sophisticated enough to be able to discern quality picking from sloppy picking?
I'm trying to relearn the guitar, properly, and this was the most helpful lesson I've seen. I really have been considering giving up and I'm leaning more towards sticking with it after seeing this.
Ihave been struggling with my picking for years and watched many different vids on this. Thank You so much man. You nailed it. So thorough and detailed. Guys like you and Ben Eller and Troy Grady are so helpful. THANKS!!!!!!
A very useful video for me personally, I'm struggling a lot with precision and speed when it comes to picking. Thank you for clear explanations, much appreciated!
bro after watching your video my picking instantly went from v6 mustang to fucking hayabusa. plus idk how you did it but you made a video that i actually sat through the entire 20mins without skipping. now i’m gonna go spend the week perfecting this so i sound like i know what i’m doing. thank you!!!
holy shit i never realised something so simple as turning your pick could make you instantly way better, trying to self teach myself how to play guitar would be impossible without guys like you thanks so much :)
Wow! Been playing guitar for 38 years, and wish someone as good as this told me about picking when I started. I'd be three times better today if so. Awesome instruction! Thank you so much!
ok, so well that first exercise with the 8 hits per note, already got my right hand figured out, palm on the guitar for anchor and all the rest of my fingers tucked in. for shredding this is the best. onto next lick hehe.
Ian yeah but the thing is I try to pickslant but get confused in between the scale whenever I try to switch pickslant or in another angle. How can I get fast with two way pick slanting
Minimise the slant to the point where it's almost invisible to the observer. You only need to escape the adjacent strings by a fraction of a millimetre for it to be effective. Start small with a lick that cycles over 2 strings then build up from there. Relax & just roll the forearm to change pick slant, while keeping the hand in the same shape. FEEL you way through it, you'll definitely notice a shift in how smooth it feels when you're getting it right. Learning technique is ALL about feeling your way through it & observing what's going on when it works@@tollelege5635
@@tollelege5635 If we pick a downstroke on the low E string & want to immediately do an upstroke on the A string, we have to make an arc that avoids hitting the A string on the way down so that we can change direction & hit the A with an upstroke. That's escaping the strings. We can hook around the strings like that, called outside picking, or we ca do the opposite with an upstroke on the E leading immediately to a downstroke on the A, called inside picking. They are just opposite versions of each other, nothing more than that. Some people think one is more complicated than the other but really they're jus opposite movements. Try to think about the arc the tip of the pick is making. We can go from quite a shallow, swing type motion to a more extreme U shape. Top tip, putting a bend in the thumb joint will create more of a U shape without changing anything else. Try practicing with a bend in the thumb (sometimes called edge picking) & just use a small forearm rotation to escape the strings. Over time you'll be able to minimise the thumb bend & forearm rotation so that the pick is only escaping the strings by a millimetre or so. It's exactly how Steve Van used to do it in his prime. You couldn't really see any of it going on because the movement was so small. Spend some time visualising the arc of the tip of the pick while you make these different movements & the process will get quicker & easier, I guarantee it. It's thoughtless practice that makes things tough. I hope that makes sense:)
Excellent. Two way pick slanting is the key, very good lesson. Where was RU-vid 20 years ago? I only recently discovered this secret. I've only seen a few people talk about it, but is the key to speed without getting "stuck" under the strings.
There are probably thousands of alternate picking videos on RU-vid but this is absolutely one of the best I've seen. I've never had a face-to-face instruction so I'm sure I'm doing all sorts of things wrong, mechanically, but this video is a huge help!
Hey man, Thank You! I know this video is 4 years old now but it allowed my to make a marked improvement in my alt picking after just a short practice session, you explained this in a way that got though to me.
I held the pick the same (wrong) way as you for years! I realized it was wrong a couple years ago but was having a hard time rewiring my brain. These exercises will be super helpful. Thank you so much!
Glad the video helped! It took me about a month or so to get used to the new picking grip. Be patient with it and you'll notice it slowly becoming more natural.
This is one of my all-time favorite instructional videos. I'm trying not to think about how much better I'd be if my guitar teacher had gone over this 15 years ago. Crucial information! Oh well, better late than never. Thank you
Excellent demonstration of picking technique featuring pick angle, wrist action, planting, string crossing, with helpful exercises for practicing each aspect. Definitely worth coming back to regularly for reinforcement.
Been playing for 30 years. My legato is good but my alt picking sucks. This is helpful. Another helpful thing for alt picking when changing strings is ever other string do odd number of notes, the other strings even. So even odd even odd... that way you always start each string on a down pick.
Thanks for the great lesson. I've been playing 30 years and have been trying to add something new to my "circular" picking and legato runs. Quick alternate picking, like your sick runs at 8:16 and 15:16, are just what I was looking for. Thanks again and much respect from the Bay Area. MK
Dude I owe you big time this vid has fucking gone and done it my alternate picking has gone from 110 bmp to 180/90 I used to hold my pick parallel to the string because of a Dave Mustain vid years ago, now it all makes sense it's fluid as water now. Thanks Dude big big love
@@johnnyc.3055 I dont since I've mostly been teaching privately. Lesson ace has about 6 other lessons with me up though...sweep picking and various elements to improve your soloing
Thanks, Ray. I came away from this video with a clear understanding of the points you covered and how they apply to speed picking. I thought your discussion of pick-hand technique was straightforward and very clear.
Thank you for the excellent instruction. This is a ‘must watch’ for any guitar player desiring to master the various scales and relative modes. Establishing bad picking habits can result in errors and limit your composition, running between octaves. I liked the way you describe, illustrate, demonstrate, and reinforce techniques using various scales. Well done.
I kind of feel like alternate picking sounds better than directional/economy picking, at least for some kinds of music, when you want a hard, metal sound. Economy is good if you need to pick super fast, of course, but adding a little more momentum gives you a sharper attack, and you can't really do that unless you use the fuller, back-and-forth motion of alternate picking. If you're playing jazz, though, you might want a smoother approach.
best video on this all in one. Just amazing. thank you so much. I would just ad that for me using a 1.20mm Duralin precision pick has made a huge difference also. Now I am going to practice, thanks again.
Usually it's like this: *man does nice alternate picking shred lick* "Yeah it's in this key and these are the notes, bye guys!" This guy helped me so much with my picking, stellar video!
I recently changed my picking technique to more of an angled attack, like you're talking about. I'm gonna have to work out my palm mutes, and pinch harmonics, using this style. It's like starting over. But... It has helped my alternate picking tremendously. I used to get STUCK, or hung up in the strings A LOT.
WOW man thank all this will help me for sure. Plus those licks are the best licks to practice because they are in almost all great metal solos. So thanks again! Perfectly illustrated. \m/\m/ big love from Canada, Québec.
Hi There, 5:19 was an example of playing too much tension in the right hand. That being said, depending on how we slant our hand (down towards the floor, or with the pinky side of the hand more in the air) where we anchor our hand might change. I tend to use both depending on the picking run that I'm doing at the time. Hope this helped
i've been a counter clockwise guy for 26 years but my thumb is messed up so gonna try to adjust to clockwise... feels so weird. lol.. trying get my pinch harmonics, triplets, chugs all is tough to switch the pick angle lol thx for this vid though. have a friend learning and I don't have the time to make him a bunch of tutorials of how to hold a pick for metal an such. this is great. needs more views.
What a nice man Ray is. He acknowledges the work of Troy Grady. Ray knows each individual has a different hand size and shape, so what works for one person may need a slightly different approach for another. I cut a pick into a circle. It did not help. I thought I could get rid of the pick getting stuck by the sharp point. Oh well, back to work.
Thanks! Glad you liked the video. A sharp tipped pick can help. Try and choke up on the pick so that very little is sticking out of your fingers. This will help you from getting stuck in the strings.
That was actually helpful. Sometimes I'm looking for some generic exercises that aren't too super generic. I think these kind of hit the sweet spot. They're super simple, but they have a splash of musicality. And if you mix them up, you actually have something that sounds almost songish. It helps the monotony of doing what can be incredibly boring exercises. Like the typical chromatic exercise is enough to make your eyes bleed. But doing each in eight, sixteenth notes (or eighths, or thirty seconds, or whatever) makes it a little less madness inducing. Also, using a ghost upstroke on the pulloff on the bottom string of the triads, rather than using economy picking, or alternating between up and down strokes on the top string, or whatever other way someone might choose to pick it, is also a nice exercise. At first, I thought it was odd following a downstroke with a string hopping downstroke, when you're objective is speed. But if you just pretend you're upstroking the pulloff note, eventually you find a nice rhythm. I'm a big fan of alternate picking, and try to avoid economy picking when possible. It helps me keep better time. Also, as I said, practicing this stuff can get pretty dull sometimes, and this is a good variety of exercises to break things up a bit. So these were some good ideas. I think Troy would be proud.
After I watched this I realised that I have been playing my scales wrong. I was doing alternating picking but when I went to the next string I was doing 2 downs. I would do down up down down up down. Because when you hit the down on the first string you go straight into the next string with a down. I have been practicing wrong for ages and didn't know why until I saw this video. However if you are doing sweep picking then you do just go down all the way.
This is not wrong, you can do estrict alternate picking or you can do economy/direct picking. What better suit you. Tell Frank Gambale that he is doing wrong. He only economy picks.
Excellent lesson. Helped me a lot. But why are so many teachers using guitars without fretboard-inlays?!? It's way easier to follow when you actually see what fret he's picking!
You can use lots of different parts of your left hand fingers. It's very fleeting for each individual note and not an easy toolbox of habits to develop within your playing, but not impossible. 😀
Supplement: if you intend to perform: practice standing up. If your guitar is below belt buckle (that's definitely the way you want to look) you will certainly want to tilt the pic downward (as proposed here). However, there's a limit in terms of hanging your guitar low if you want to shred. Trade-off...
