Idea for a group effort:

[szulc]

Let get some volunteers together to study our picking progress for say
3 months giving weekly reports on each of the following exercises.

I'll give powertab of each to make sure we are all playing the same thing.
Lets all be honest about our progress on BPM.
So the rules are as follows:
Each person who joins in must start at the beginning of the time period so
it is fair. I guess an alternate way is to get everyone to log these exercises weekly
for 3 months and publish their results. But it would be more interesting to get
everyone in at the start.
I think if anyone is showing exceptional results they should be required to demonstrate proof via
mp3 to their claim. That way those who are behind won't get too discouraged, and we won't have any
ridiculous claims that can't be substantiated.
The guitars should be tuned within 1 whole tone of E to make the determination of fraudlent MP3 entries
easier.
So join in by the start time and log your attempts at these exercises.
I think we should give a week or so for everyone to learn the exercises and then begin
the study.
I'll have everyone e-mail or PM me with their desire to participate
The entire exercise must be played twice at the stated BPM and executed
in time with no mistakes or errors (missing picking strokes flams etc...)

I think this would be a good experiment to see where everyone is at with this
and to encourage those who are seeking to impvove their technique.
It can serve as motivation to keep up so you can be forced to improve.

Ascending pattern of nonuplets on EAD strings in C major.
Ascending pattern of nonuplets on ADG strings in C major.
Ascending pattern of nonuplets on DGB strings in C major.
Ascending pattern of nonuplets on GBE strings in C major.

Descending pattern of nonuplets on EAD strings in C major.
Descending pattern of nonuplets on ADG strings in C major.
Descending pattern of nonuplets on DGB strings in C major.
Descending pattern of nonuplets on GBE strings in C major.

Ascending pattern of nonuplets Descending on EAD strings in C major.
Ascending pattern of nonuplets Descending on ADG strings in C major.
Ascending pattern of nonuplets Descending on DGB strings in C major.
Ascending pattern of nonuplets Descending on GBE strings in C major.

Descending pattern of nonuplets Ascending on EAD strings in C major.
Descending pattern of nonuplets Ascending on ADG strings in C major.
Descending pattern of nonuplets Ascending on DGB strings in C major.
Descending pattern of nonuplets Ascending on GBE strings in C major.

Alternating/Ascending pattern of nonuplets on EAD strings in C major.
Alternating/Ascending pattern of nonuplets on ADG strings in C major.
Alternating/Ascending pattern of nonuplets on DGB strings in C major.
Alternating/Ascending pattern of nonuplets on GBE strings in C major.

Alternating/Descending pattern of nonuplets on EAD strings in C major.
Alternating/Descending pattern of nonuplets on ADG strings in C major.
Alternating/Descending pattern of nonuplets on DGB strings in C major.
Alternating/Descending pattern of nonuplets on GBE strings in C major.

Ascending Chromatic across all strings.
Descending Chromatic across all strings.

Ascending Chromatic Descending across all strings.
Descending Chromatic Ascending across all strings.

Ascending Chromatic Alternating across all strings.
Descending Chromatic Alternating across all strings.

[szulc]

First File
All of these exercises re supposed to be executed with strict AP.

[szulc]

Second File
All of these exercises re supposed to be executed with strict AP.

[szulc]

Third File.

[szulc]

Fourth File

[szulc]

There will be more files posted but I am off to work now!

[Bongo Boy]

I think the overall idea is pretty cool, but I have a few comments:

a) I've never seen the word 'nonuplet' before and can't find it anywhere
b) I think the requirement of 'no mistakes, etc' takes away from the exercise.
c) what does 'log your attempts' mean?

Comment b) is probably the more important one. To me, you've already restricted the participant to a particular BPM. For me to participate, you HAVE to allow mistakes. The judgement of progress then is simply a comparative one--between first submittal and next submittal, for example.,

My point is, if I have to comply with a BPM restriction and a 'no mistakes' restriction, then I simply can't participate. It probably won't happen. That's okay, I guess, but it restricts the exercise to only those who feel they make no mistakes--as opposed to those who want to demonstrate improvement. See what I'm sayin'?

I think it's useful to see that a participant is nearly-perfect at 100 BPM, but is making quite a few mistakes at 120 BPM, for example.

Plus, how will you know if we're doing strict AP? And what IS strict AP--that's a serious question& not a rhetorical one.

[Bizarro]

Too strange. Why did you choose 9/8 time? It's too out-there and I don't find it useful.

I would suggest 8th notes, 16th notes, and some 8th note triplets. People actually use those groupings often! I'd omit 16th note triplets since it's sort of overkill.

Cool idea but I think it needs some serious restructuring.


Bongo, honesty alone should be enough for alternate picking! Plus you can't go very quickly with all downstrokes!

If someone is an economy picker they shouldn't be excluded in my opinion, as long as they follow the other rules.

[szulc]

I could have used 3/4 and used triplets! I just thought it was easier to keep track of in 9/8 since all of the figures are triple- triple. I can redo them in 3/4 if it really bothers anyone.

SSDD

As long as each person specifies the time sig and BPM it doesn't really matter whether it is 9/8 or 3/4 with triplets.
The idea is to get everyone on an even keel.

[szulc]

There was no intended restriction on BPM only mistakes.

[szulc]

Plus, how will you know if we're doing strict AP? And what IS strict AP--that's a serious question& not a rhetorical one.

Strict AP: Pick every note, odd notes are picked down and even are picked up (actually your choice of starting stroke is arbitrary).

[EricV]

James,
I think that´s a great idea, and it would be a good chance to use the possibilities we have through the internet and this side... it´s an interesting experiment, and I think it makes sense to work on something like this after all the articles about picking etc.

Hopefully, some people will participate and continue to do so for the peiod of time this is upposed to last.
We really didn´t have any "group effort" other than the "Ibreathe Of Life" Jam, which unfortunately never really came together
Looking forward to seeing what happens
Eric

NP: My Morse-Winamp-Playlist

[bagman]

Interesting concept. In response to Bongo maybe charting the most improvement over time should be considered.

I'm also only trying to improve

[szulc]

I wasn't intending for this to be a contest!
I just thought it could be a great motivator and show those who wish to improve real values with real tangible exercises and results from a broad spectrum of players with varying degrees of pre-existing technical proficiency. So the whole point was to chart the improvement over time and show that those who started out lowest on the scale are likely to be the one with the most improvement. If you got Thorsten to do this he would start out pretty close to the top from the very beginning and in BPM would not show as much improvement as someone less skilled.
Ideally we would have many participants who would all improve and learn from each other how it wokrs for other people. There might be one of us that starts out very slowly and rapidly increases. It is dependent on human factors. I am thinking of reducing the study case down to just the four I already submitted tabs for just to make it easy for everyone to participate.

[szulc]

Eric,
The "Ibreathe Of Life" Jam had only three official entries one was mine I think Captian Carma and LoveGuitar were the others. Basically I couldn't get enough participation with the official entries to do much with this. I still have the submissions, but It just didn't seem right with only three of us. Some of the guys who submitted trials could have made wonderful entries but never did. I needed them with no backing tracks so I could mix them down and that seemed to be a problem for many people.