Those of you having trouble with AP...this is for you!

[curiousgeorge]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oW1JveshnJg

In the first few minutes of the vid, Paul gives some great advice on developing alternate picking. He says that you should basically built up your left hand speed and strength with legato before working on your right hand and alternate picking. This makes lots of sense, as a lot of guitarists that seem to be having trouble with AP can't get their hands to move as fast as they want to pick, and they don't get that you really need to build up the left hand first...Great advice from one of the best!

[Crossroads]

I agree PG is terrific, great player & great teacher too. :)

But where is that film clip from? I have Intense Rock and Get Out of My Yard, but it’s not from either of those. Maybe it‘s from Terrifying Guitar Trips (which I don’t have), or is it film from some US magazine session?

Of course I’m in no position to nit-pick over anything PG says lol., and of course it’s true what he says about the speed of the left hand. But for me the problem was not so much a lack of absolute speed in my left hand fretting, but more specifically a need for accurate coordination between quick fretting with the left hand and fast picking with the right. IOW, it’s not that hard to pick really fast (say 1/16ths at 200bpm), and it's not even that hard to fret notes quickly, but at high speed the tricky part is to keep the picking perfectly synchronised with the left hand fretting ... once you get out of sync. then of course the whole lick starts to collapse.

The other interesting thing is how willing PG was to admit that he was not always naturally brilliant & how he had to work at everything, inc. not being able to pick fast until about 8 years after he began. But I notice that with all the best players, ie readiness to admit they had to work hard at things (it’s rarely pure natural “genius” ). Even here on the forum guys like JonR said how pleased he was he first learned to play an Fmaj chord, and ChrisJ has said how surprised he was when he first went to study music in the US and found all the new students there were super fast. But most I remember an interview with Clapton when he was asked “do you find you’re still improving?”, obviously the interviewer was expecting a standard response like “oh yes, it’s a life-long learning process and we all try to keep improving”, but instead Clapton said “oh no!, quite the opposite, these days I just try not to get any worse!“.

Ian.

[forgottenking2]

It's not from Terrifying Guitar Trip either. I think it comes from a Guitar Techniques DVD.

[EricV]

It is, and if I am not mistaken, all or parts of this will be on the next Guitar World CD... the new issue coming out soon, with Eddie on the cover. They mentioned a lesson with PG,a nd if you watch the clip they have on their site, it looks exactly like this.

Paul gives great advice there, and it DOES make sense. However, whats funny is is that I DID do exactly what he said when I started out, but I regretted it. My teacher back then (I was 12 or 13) told me "Eddie Van Halen does way more with his left hand than with his right". I had no clue at all, so I figured "OK, so legato is where its at", and I worked on nothing else but legato, completely neglecting picking.
When I started to get into AP, I figured out that I had two problems:
- I had a LOT of work to do to synchronize both hands, big time, as my right hand and the synch of both hands was underdeveloped
- Even when I was tring to play AP, I was basically doing legato. So I was using the same amount of strength Id use for legato even when I was playing something with picking.

So I needed to take a big step back and start out allllll slowly, working on my left hand touch and the synch of both hands to develop picking.
Might not be the same for everyone, but yeah...
I think Paul mentioned in the GW questionaire he did a while ago that a big problem with AP is not that the hands arent fast enough, its that one hand cant keep up with the other, so synchronisation is the big issue. Also, developing the upstroke and crossing strings are usually the tough part, even though I wasnt aware of that for quite some time when I got into this.
Really cool vids, by the way, thanks!
Eric

[DuB]

Similar story for me, Eric... actually pretty much what PG described :p.
I never "consciously practiced" my legato, but I used the hell out of it during the beginning. My picking wasn't up to snuff, so I leaned on legato techniques to fill in the gaps and make my playing sound faster. I got better and better at this to the point where I could pretty much play what I wanted (I was listening mainly to classic rock at the time, so the bar wasn't set extremely high speed-wise), but I would usually have to lean on legato to do it, rather than picking as many notes as I probably should have. Well it got to the point about a year or so ago where I realized that that, like you:
-My actual picking speed was extremely underdeveloped
-My left/right hand synchronization was quite poor
And these were basically the limiting factors in my playing regarding speed. So now my technique practice focuses mainly on these two things... and my left hand is still faster than my right :o but the gap is closing! :D

[Chim_Chim]

The comments on that video kill me.They think it's Brainstew by Green Day and then say Brainstew sucks.Then someone correctly pointed out that it's actually 25 or 6 to 4 by Chicago that Paul is playing.Why are kids today so funny about this stuff. :rolleyes:
I used to listen to Chicago way back in the 70's and I still like Brainstew as well as alot of other Green Day like most of of their stuff except for their last album which was mostly kind of lame for them.And I like Paul Gilbert and have since the early 80's.Brainstew isn't exactly the same as 25 or 6 to 4 either but it is a definate nod to it and it's very obvious to anybody that it's where they got the idea for Brainstew.So what.Big deal.Who cares.

[Crossroads]

I’m not familiar with either the Guitar World stuff mentioned by Eric, or the Guitar Techniques DVD mentioned by ForgottenKing … but I assume those are both sort-of printed mags with attached CD’s &/or attached DVD’s?

OK, well it sounds like we all agree that quick hand sync. is a main issue … though of course when guys first try fast AP there are other probs. such as getting the pick stuck lol!, & sometimes it’s also tricky to keep the alternating up/down strokes consistent, eg you might unintentionally play some notes by legato or unintentionally play 2 ups in a row, … it’s quite easy to do those sort of things subconsciously without realising it, and for quite a while you’re left wondering why the lick doesn’t sound quite right :rolleyes: .

Yep, it’s always worth watching and listening to what Paul Gilbert has to say. ;)

Ian.

ps:- re pick getting "stuck" - we talked several times before about pick angle & the way PG holds the pick ... his method naturaly angles the point of the pick backwards a little towards the bridge, & I find that deffinitely helps to avoid the pick sticking.