Lesson
Lesson: Have you ever wondered why you could never play fast? Have you felt that there is some big secret that has been kept hidden from you?
Not a click bait title. Have you ever wondered why some people seem to achieve speed so easily while you never seem to break past a certain speed limit? Have you wondered if there was some secret formula that you are not told about?
I try to answer these questions here.
However this video needs a thousand caveats and qualifications. First of all, this video is only meant to persuade you to think about your picking method and how strokes more deliberately. Picking is not simply about down up down up alternate picking. There’s a lot of complexity involved to alternate picking that people don’t really talk about often enough. In my video, it might appear that I’m pushing for economy picking over alternate picking but I promise you that is not my agenda. 9 out of 10 times if given a choice, I always use alternate picking. I solve the string crossing challenge by using pick slanting. However for this Metallica master of puppets example, I decided to use economy picking as a vehicle to explain how using picking methods or starting on the certain strokes that is not suited for the material, can cost you a lot of speed.
Lastly, while my delivery of the explanation is original, I didn’t pull these stuff out of my ass. They come from a guy called Troy Grady so he deserves most of the credit. I’m not using some recycled bullshit to generate views (a technical and long video like this won’t generate views anyway) or creating a click bait title. These stuff are important for guitar and represent a small part of the secrets that many people have not discovered yet. Anyone who can play fast knows what I’m saying or can mechanically perform these concepts with their hands. This is more for the beginner who is stuck trying to build speed.
Welcome 🙇🏻♂️❤️
This is a high risk low reward kind of video haha. Usually on Reddit when you explain too much, some people might just recoil from that immediately because it makes them uncomfortable. But I felt I wanted to share it because it will help someone.
I still post those videos but I’m worry that it might be seen as flexing so I pivot to trying to provide value instead by sharing what helped me overcome the challenges I face in guitar instead.
Alternate picking is awesome because try playing fast lead lines like 212 bpm sextuplets with only down strokes. You’ll literally get a stroke haha. But fast alternate picking with string crossing leads to a problem called trapped zone where you pick gets trapped in between two strings and resulting in needing to do a hop or a scoop to clear that string. The first solution which I said I’ll not discuss in the video is called pick slanting. https://youtu.be/KghiVUmZrDs?is=ue5mPqaOy_Tr2swP
Unfortunately, I don’t use a pick when playing guitar, but your explanation really reminded me of some fairly recent advice from my cello teacher. Maybe someone here will find it interesting. The task was to cleanly play at 120 BPM in sixteenth notes, while being allowed to use the bow on only one string at a time and having to shift across half the fingerboard. Classical musicians are extremely strict traditionalists, because there is basically no need to reinvent the wheel, everything has already been studied. I couldn’t manage it even at 80 BPM, and that was when the real lesson began.
Rule number one: keep your hands as relaxed as possible (I think every youtuber says about that). The moment you feel tension, get rid of it at any cost, even if that means going all the way back to the basics.
Second, when shifting at high speed, you don’t have enough time to place each finger one after another. You need to think in positions. All four fingers should move from point A and immediately arrive in a position where they already cover the frets you will need next. In other words, you practise not only the shift itself, but also the position of the hand, so that your fingers are already hovering over the correct places before you press down the next notes. These two rules also helped me clean up a couple of guitar pieces where I used to mess up every time.
It’s actually really useful to study the teaching methods of different instruments. You often come across valuable ideas that are barely discussed at all in the world of another instrument. The example above is only about positions, but there can be many more. Although something tells me that classical guitarists probably have this same way of thinking drilled into them as well. Is that actually the case? When it comes to acoustic or electric guitar, I’ve watched hundreds of hours of different videos and never really encountered it.
And yes. It is actually the case where wisdom from one instrument can transfer and carry over to other instruments. There are a lot of similarities and I’m sure the stuff I’m talking about can be considered extremely rudimentary and fundamental for some instruments for example classical guitar. But for some reason, there isn’t enough inter-instrument mingling and sharing so people like us playing guitar or electric guitar are unaware of these basic motions of the human anatomy and their consequences.
Exactly. When you do come across this kind of knowledge, it is usually from someone who plays several instruments. Otherwise, the teaching traditions and areas of focus are still somewhat different. Music in general is a bit like IT. The syntax of a programming language is just the way you give instructions. What you actually do with it depends on a much broader set of skills and knowledge.
In music, that includes your ear, rhythm, physical technique, the ability to perform in front of people, sight-read, or learn pieces quickly. Most of these skills are transferable across a wide range of instruments.
Changing instruments is a bit like switching to the syntax of another programming language. The only difference is that in programming it may take a few weeks or months, while with musical instruments it takes years :-D
P.S. Someday I hope, that I will also be able to learn master of puppets like that, but cello :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJnWoyjAoOo poor vid quality, but those guys are freaking good
Thank you so much. But the solution, which is the economy picking or pick slanting(which is not good for this Metallica riff) is also a grind fest. It takes time and practice to get used to a completely different picking technique. So I didn’t discuss about this difficulty in my video due to time constraints but the rewards is immense.
All I’m trying to share is that people need to observe and plan how they approach a guitar riff. When guitar parts are slow, you can use ANY pick strokes or method and get away with it. Because it’s slow you have time to reposition. But when things are fast, that’s when you have to be careful. But a lot of people don’t know this and they can never break their speed plateaus and quit from frustration
So keep that in mind if you decide to practice this new techniques. It will still feel difficult and foreign at first.
Thank you so much. But the solution, which is the economy picking or pick slanting(which is not good for this Metallica riff) is also a grind fest. It takes time and practice to get used to a completely different picking technique. So I didn’t discuss about this difficulty in my video due to time constraints but the rewards is immense.
All I’m trying to share is that people need to observe and plan how they approach a guitar riff. When guitar parts are slow, you can use ANY pick strokes or method and get away with it. Because it’s slow you have time to reposition. But when things are fast, that’s when you have to be careful. But a lot of people don’t know this and they can never break their speed plateaus and quit from frustration
So keep that in mind if you decide to practice this new techniques. It will still feel difficult and foreign at first.
Or, now this is a wild idea, start on an upstroke so now you are free and clear and you don’t have to move your pick away. Not everything starts on a down pick.
Exactly. A lot of people think that if they just start on a different stroke then there’s no more lengthy discussion, but that usually just invites a different set of problem.
It’s very easy for people watching from the outside to be like “oh that’s easy, just do this”
The intro to Epitaph is a good one. It's been awhile since I've played it at speed, but from what I recall I start on an upstroke but because there are 7 picked notes the second bar, which is a repeat of the first bar, starts on a downstroke. There's no way to eliminate the inside/outside picking switch on this riff unless you drop the slides or just do downstrokes on the lower strings, which I personally think feels/sounds weird for a tech death riff.
I find the riff easier to play starting on an upstroke, but talking about strarting on a up/down misses the whole pick slanting/wrist rotation subject entirely. Some people do this naturally, but it was something I always struggled with until coming across Troy Grady's material. Great seeing other people share this concept!
Yup. I already addressed this in the comments section. I was too engrossed doing the explanation that I did not check the tabs. I did not realised the tabs are wrong and showing legato.
The new tabs below is the accurate version and is how Kirk is playing it. Sincerest apologies for the confusion 🙇🏻♂️🙇🏻♂️
No tldr. Try not to view the world like this. Sometimes it’s good to be nuance and detailed. Not everything can be reduced. If you do so, it comes at a cost.
I included subtitles. If you are meant to figure it out, you’ll persist through that thick accent. I do acknowledge my enunciation of words is really bad haha.
I just remembered who you are. You are that rude guy who is rude to beginners and is always deleting his account and create a new one when people caught on to you. Haha. I can recognize your telecaster and your beard.
Wait you don’t find my English difficult or annoying to follow? I have been told that my English speaking is not the best and this is something I acknowledged. I was half thinking if I should change my accent. Lol.
I’m so relieved because a lot of my friends encouraged me to try making videos but I was always hesitant because of my accent. And also because I worry people won’t take me seriously and would have embarrass myself.
I decided to go ahead and make videos because I don’t see them as lessons where I’m teaching people but instead more of my personal diary and just sharing my reflections. And also because I’m really passionate about guitar and just want more opportunities to discuss about it 😅
I mean I watched the video admittedly at 3am with subtitles but that sure seemed like what the takeaway was
Edit I guess i can expand on it slightly but that kind of defeats the purpose of the tldr and if you know a little bit of guitar picking, what I said would make sense.
New TLDR i guess: If the next note you need to play is on a lower string, but your next pick should be an up-pick, don’t up-pick. Down-pick. If the next note you need to play is on a higher string, but your next pick should be a down-pick, don’t down-pick. Up-pick.
I dont feel like that’s better than my first tldr but whatever
Haha. If you read my description i said this videos need a thousand caveats and that the topic is very complex. Essentially the answer to your question is yes you are allowed to swoop on the upstroke because the pull off from the 17 to the 12, or the 15 to the 12, buys you one unit of time to do a “swoop”. As long as you adjust my analogy of “costing three units of time “ for “one unit of time”, then you’ll realise how much work this small little pull off is doing and you’ll start to understand why this pull off is even there in the first place. That the small pull off makes this repeating phrase possible. This is when you realise how genius and smart the people who created this are (or lucky).
Also I made a mistake with my tabs in the video. It shows legato instead of individually picked notes (except for that single pull off from 17 to 12 and 15 to 12).
I bought the guitar grimoire exercise book from guitar center a little over a decade ago, the green one. The guy at the counter told me something like "if you learn that whole book you'll become amazing". I took that shit to heart lol
It focuses on Economy picking and 3 note per string scale patterns. There's other stuff, but they build off that concept.
It taught me all the major scale patterns across the whole fretboard and I've practiced it all so much, its helped me as a guitarist more than anything.
Due to the odd number of notes across the two strings (3 notes each) and the unequal distribution of picked notes between the two strings (you pick all three for the b string but only twice on the e string due to that one pull off), using inside picking will force you to go outside picking eventually or you have to resort to a sweep or an extra legato.
If you understand picking mechanics, the above will be the explanation that will satisfy you. But if you are not too familiar or if my reply doesn’t make sense to you, I’ll need to make a video to prove this to you haha. Or you can just trust me that this Metallica example is not a good example for inside picking.
also nice vid but i think it needs a bit more exaplanation like here - when you go to 3 strings and to keep the rythm you have to do down down up, and up up down, etc.
Sure, economy picking can save you couple milliseconds here and there. But the real secret of speed is relaxed synced hands. There is no workaround. Yt teachers make it seem like you can go from zero to supersonic speeds in blink of the eye, just hold a pick in different angle. That is very far from reality. What yt teacher do no tell is about decade+ practicing and playing different music in many tempos, building hand agility, relaxation and synchronization. Speed is like weight, your body has to adapt for it with a progressive load over extended period of time.
I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you say. But in this case, I disagree partially. Two things can be true at the same time. Relax sync hands as a result of progressive overload is right. But understanding picking methods and what they are best suited to do will also help.
More understanding of mechanics can never be a bad thing. And it doesn’t subtract from requiring to practice.
Good guitar player should have many techniques in his bag, understand when to use them. But techniques is a second layer. First is fundamentals, like relaxation and sync here, that are often are not intuitive and neglected. People find isolated lessons on yt and think that's a way. Then get stuck forever without real understanding what they did wrong.
A concept like string hopping is a first layer fundamental. Without it you won’t understand what you need to do. When you know what you have to do, you can lean in and relax in that target. But you have to have a target first before you can relax. Otherwise it’s just advice like “just relax” without a specific goal and target.
I agree a lot with the spirit of what you are talking about. But the thing that I’m taking about is very important. And I come from a position that is actively against YouTubers and am actually critiquing them in the sharing I did in this video.
So to compare me with YouTubers, (if you are, maybe you aren’t hahah) is to not understand the spirit of my arguments.
The speed up recording is true. But even if we assume it wasn’t speed up which is around 180 bpm instead of 212, most people would also struggle to comfortably play at that speed.
Also they speed up the recording because it became very difficult to track and align the different parts. Lastly there are many people who not knowing it was sped up, improved their technique to the point that they can. Now 212bpm master of puppets is not that crazy when you compare to modern players these days.
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u/The_teenager1234 Jul 23 '26
Man you should open a Youtube channel, I find your videos very helpful!!