Lateral transitions...

[curiousgeorge]

Hello guys....Haven't posted in awhile. Here goes....I'm finding it difficult to transition licks laterally along the neck....Across the neck is no problem...Open strings licks not included...I'm talking about say, when you do a bluesy pentatonic riff on 2 or 3 strings and then want to repeat it at a couple of different points on the neck swiftly and fluidly, or you have some wild tapping lick that travels up or down the neck (one or more strings). Without using slides, how do you make these transitions fluid and relatively painless? I find that when I play, I don't press super hard or anything, but it's kinda comparable to jumping across a field but your boots get stuck in the mud everytime. I mean, my hand gets kind of "planted" in the position, know what I mean? Anyways, any insight into how to improve my technique in this area would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[widdly widdly]

You can practice playing chromatic scales up and down one string. So you play 1-2-3-4 then shift up the neck and play 5-6-7-8 and so on. If you play with a metronome and keep all the notes even in timing and length it is a very good position shifting workout. I do this as part of my warm up. Start of slow so you can get it accurate.

You could do the same thing with scales and arpeggios. Also try doing without looking at the neck so you can instinctively find the right position instead of looking for the frets or fret markers.

[curiousgeorge]

You can practice playing chromatic scales up and down one string. So you play 1-2-3-4 then shift up the neck and play 5-6-7-8 and so on. If you play with a metronome and keep all the notes even in timing and length it is a very good position shifting workout. I do this as part of my warm up. Start of slow so you can get it accurate.

You could do the same thing with scales and arpeggios. Also try doing without looking at the neck so you can instinctively find the right position instead of looking for the frets or fret markers.

yeah, I've done that chromatic thing for years...Adjacent position shifts aren't really the problem....It's when you have to jump several frets that it becomes challenging...

[Spidervenom]

Just slide up. It's just a case of doing it fast enough that you can't hear the slide as an articulation.

[StephenE]

I think I understand what you mean.

In my opinion there's 2 important parts to getting good at this.

1- Muting the strings
2- Shifting position

As usual, start slowly ( :D ), muting the strings with your picking hand would work best for this, if you were to use your fretting hand then there's a good chance you'd get some of the old string noise in there. Once you can clamp whatever part of your hand down you use to do a 'full mute' on all of the strings (I use the underside of my thumb and fleshy part of my palm) you've then got to work on syncronising it up with moving your fretting hand.

I'm sure it's just something that's getting you mad at the moment and in a while you'll forget it ever bothered you :)