Guitar Player's Thread

BucketBanger9000 said:
But is it necessary for me to change my left hand technique? Because I feel really comfortable of how my fingers come off the strings, and it does not feel like I am doing anything wrong. I tried to keep them very close but it doesn't work, I got big hands.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPGA3vjMLgE
Also, it seems that my pinky does the very same thing as Gilbert's. It is high off the fretboard.
Click to expand...

It's comfortable because you've been doing it for so long, doesn't make it the most efficient. I've only just changed the way I hold my pick because I feel that holding onto the guitar or the strings or the pickups like Alexi does is holding me back from playing 6 string, 3 nps runs easily. It feels really uncomfortable now but I CAN notice a difference when I do it so I'm just going to stick with it until it is comfortable because then, I'll be a much better picker and it'll be much easier to do those types of runs.

You say it doesn't work because you've only tried it for like 5 minutes? Compared to how long you've been playing like it, it's NOT going to be easy but you WILL benifit from it if you work hard on it. Big hands has nothing to do with it.
 
ok, say when im changing strings or frets, what should the maximum height be that my fingers should come off? I am just really pissed because I am practicing a song and almost have it down perfectly, so should I stop and just concentrate on my left hand technique?
 
Well I wouldn't say stop learning the song, just carry on playing as usual but just pay attention to how far they're coming off. As I said earlier, I'm only going by what I saw on that video of BoR so it might just have been that song because you hadn't practised it, but if that's how they look whenever you play, I would advise just working on it while practising your normal stuff too.

I was told my my music teacher to keep them as close to the strings as possible without actually touching the strings, which makes perfect sence.

It's the same theory as when you're told to use shallow pick strokes. If you hand is going up an inch above the string everytime you and upstroke and an inch below the string everytime you do a downstroke, you're not going to be able to pick as fast because it takes time to move your hand that far, then you've got to use energy to stop and then come back up. If you just go down far enough to clear the string, then you can come back up much quicker which would equal in more strokes per minute, if you were performing an alternate picking exercise.

Now apply that to the fingers off the fretboard and you'll realise that if your fingers are coming inches off the strings after every note, you're going to be wasting alot of time and energy when you could have them all much closer which would mean you could put them back down much quicker too which of coruse would mean you could play quicker.

I'd say that the 2nd finger is the easiest to control, I can keep that at like 1cm most of the time but I still haven't got the last 2 under perfect control. I'm sure there's players that can get them to stay around a cm or two aswell but that's not saying it's essential.
 
BucketBanger9000 said:
ok, that makes perfect sense, I guess I will just notice and understand how my fingers are coming off, and sooner or later I will get down to correcting it. Though I am still kinda un sure of the height.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2159983775739110419&q=michael+romeo+guitar+world
Take that Michael Romeo vid for example, would that be good height picking wise?
Click to expand...

That's fine. Look at how far his fingers come off when he's down below the 12th fret, they look a bit crazy at first but then watch how little his hand moves when he's playing double time up near the 20th fret. He's got it down.
 
Well it's not really an excuse but you wanna try and keep 'em close anyway. I mean, just because a well known guitarist CAN play well with their fingers coming off pretty far, doesn't mean that you should copy it. I know that now after going through my "omgalexi" phase and actually becoming really sloppy and messing up my right hand. Now I'm working on completely changing, as I said before.

I know this isn't what we're dicussing, but here's a few pics of PG's picking hand . You should be able to see that his hand isn't even touching the bridge but yet, he's picking extremely fast. Buckethead also plays this way.



The other fingers on his right hand don't touch the guitar at all either. This is something that I'm having trouble with because I've played for over 5 years WITH my fingers touching the guitar.
 
Yeah, I do the same thing, I rest my pink on the corner of the bridge pup. Does it really make a difference if it is touching the body or not? Will I have better picking if my right hand fingers are not touching the body?
 
Well for ME, it does make a difference yeah. Watch a 2006 video of Alexi playing a solo and you'll see that his hand is all squashed up down by the high E string and he only really moves his thumb and first finger to pick. That's how I started doing it a few months ago and it really screwed me up.

When I just try and do a "mess about" picking lick without touching the body at all, I can actually kinda do it, but sloppy. Something like this:

e---------------------------------------------------13-15-17/18-17-15--------
b-----------------------------------------13-15-17--------------------18-17--
g-------------------------------12-14-15--------------------------------------
d---------------------12-14-15------------------------------------------------
a-----------12-13-15----------------------------------------------------------
e-12-13-15---------------------------------------------------------------------

And then coming back down. If I were to go back to holding my hand on the bridge of the guitar like most guitar players do, it find it difficult and I can't play from the high E to the low E very easily so in my experience, it IS more benificial to "float" your hand but as I said, it's very uncomfortable now and it'll be like that for you if you tried it too because it's new. I think if you stick with something long enough, it becomes second nature, right?

To get used to the whole floating thing, I'm going to start practising just picking fast one string, something like:

e-8-5-7-8-7-5 or

a-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2

And just getting used to controlling myself. I'm not going to be able to play huge licks like that ^ if I'm not in control.

But then again, people like Petrucci, Laiho, Malmsteen, Batio etc all touch the guitar with their fingers and they're all guitar heroes too. So like most things, just experiment with different things and see what gives you the best results.

:kickass:
 
Well that's up to you. I can't tell which one feels more comfortable. And I'm talking about playing 16th notes at speeds of like 200bpm. I think you'd notice a difference when playing that fast because you don't rely on muting the strings because you're not. If you mute the strings and bit and try and pick fast, it sounds a bit better so it makes you play faster but if you take your hand away, it'll probably sound terrible.
 
Well sometimes when I rest my pinky on the body, I feel kinda scrunched up when playing on the high E. I cannot really seem to find a flaw with picking with the fingers floating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4sg-nzKFIQ
Jani Liimatainen form Sonata Arctica plays with his fingers floating, and he is one of my favorite guitarists. So I think I am gonna go for that.
 
<-Warheart-> said:
Well for ME, it does make a difference yeah. Watch a 2006 video of Alexi playing a solo and you'll see that his hand is all squashed up down by the high E string and he only really moves his thumb and first finger to pick. That's how I started doing it a few months ago and it really screwed me up.

When I just try and do a "mess about" picking lick without touching the body at all, I can actually kinda do it, but sloppy. Something like this:

e---------------------------------------------------13-15-17/18-17-15--------
b-----------------------------------------13-15-17--------------------18-17--
g-------------------------------12-14-15--------------------------------------
d---------------------12-14-15------------------------------------------------
a-----------12-13-15----------------------------------------------------------
e-12-13-15---------------------------------------------------------------------

And then coming back down. If I were to go back to holding my hand on the bridge of the guitar like most guitar players do, it find it difficult and I can't play from the high E to the low E very easily so in my experience, it IS more benificial to "float" your hand but as I said, it's very uncomfortable now and it'll be like that for you if you tried it too because it's new. I think if you stick with something long enough, it becomes second nature, right?

To get used to the whole floating thing, I'm going to start practising just picking fast one string, something like:

e-8-5-7-8-7-5 or

a-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2

And just getting used to controlling myself. I'm not going to be able to play huge licks like that ^ if I'm not in control.

But then again, people like Petrucci, Laiho, Malmsteen, Batio etc all touch the guitar with their fingers and they're all guitar heroes too. So like most things, just experiment with different things and see what gives you the best results.

:kickass:
Click to expand...

I float my hand, it's easier IMO
 
BucketBanger9000 said:
Well sometimes when I rest my pinky on the body, I feel kinda scrunched up when playing on the high E. I cannot really seem to find a flaw with picking with the fingers floating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4sg-nzKFIQ
Jani Liimatainen form Sonata Arctica plays with his fingers floating, and he is one of my favorite guitarists. So I think I am gonna go for that.
Click to expand...

Looks to me like he's resting his pinky on the guitar body.
 
On the whole picking matter, i talked to warheart on msn about it, but i might aswell write it here too. The last couple of days my picking has been really irregular, it feels as if i don't have control while picking, and to me i use the same picking hand as always, but something just changed.

It's really frustrating because it doesn't really encourage you to play.
 
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