Gypsy improvisation

Charles Meadows

Thanks! Sweeps and half rests have never been as difficult. I've played bluegrass flatpicking for many years. The triplets with DUD are the hardest for me because they demand a lot of relaxation.

The one piece of advice you had in a past thread was magic! You said to let the movement between strings in the descending triplet exercise was be from the arm and not the wrist. At that moment I was finally able to find the relaxed feel I had never achieved!

I'm still in amazement of Stochelo, Angelo, Joscho who can hit 250 - but I'll be thrilled if I can get 200!

Charles Meadows

One other question - since I've gotten more comfortable with the triplets I've started using other triplet licks for practice at higher speeds too. Do you think your triplet lick is still the ideal one for boosting technique (the D string to E string jump) or are other Stochelo/Angelo/Adrien descending triplet licks just as good?

Jazzaferri

Practice Mt St. Genevieve. The triplet licks in that go both ways and offer excellent learning platform as there are easy ones and complex ones. The tab used to be on Dennis's site, may still be.

Once you can play that up to 180 you will have downstroke picking down and up and backwards PLUS you end with a great end product.

Charles Meadows

I can do that one maybe 170 warmed up. But yeah there's some great triplet licks in it. I think if I tried it cold at that speed I'd be very tense though! So for me to say I can do 170 - that's only warmed up. To me the ability to throw a quick burst of triplets in makes such an interesting musical statement! The thing is most all these darn songs are about 200bpm! So to play along with many of the vids or records I've yet to hit that critical mass!

NylonDave

Charles Meadows wrote: »

I can do that one maybe 170 warmed up. But yeah there's some great triplet licks in it. I think if I tried it cold at that speed I'd be very tense though! So for me to say I can do 170 - that's only warmed up. To me the ability to throw a quick burst of triplets in makes such an interesting musical statement! The thing is most all these darn songs are about 200bpm! So to play along with many of the vids or records I've yet to hit that critical mass!

Hey Charles have you tried VLC player ?

It will loop a section and you can play at anything from 25 percent to 200 percent speed. It is a great practice tool and you can use it to warm up too, just pick a piece or section and run through it 5 percent faster every time.
If you want faster and more secure results though you can slow it down by 5
percent or so each time then you will learn the calm that will make allow full speed to be relaxed, and you will be getting a slow motion masterclass in the nuances of your favourite players.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vlc/

D.

Hemert

Charles Meadows wrote: »

The one piece of advice you had in a past thread was magic! You said to let the movement between strings in the descending triplet exercise was be from the arm and not the wrist. At that moment I was finally able to find the relaxed feel I had never achieved!

Yes, there's generally too much emphasis on the use of the wrist in (badly explained) instrument technique. The proper advice would be to keep your joints relaxed (not locked) and find the muscle that can perform a certain movement efficiently and consistently.

If you do that then your wrist would eventually move for most movements (because you're not locking your joints) but the movement doesn't originate from the wrist perse. I believe I make this point in the second Q&A video as well. If you study classical violin with a technique expert - and there are plenty in the classical violin world- this is one of the first things you're taught.

A good triplet lick to practice would be a diminished pattern over four strings and move it up in half steps.

for example:
High e string: C A
b string: F#
g string: Eb C
d string: A F#

And back up. So the high C starts on beat 1 and the low F# starts on beat 3. When you're on the high e-string on your way up don't play the high C but instead a C# and back down again everything a fret up and so on). I'd play all of this with three fingers.

This is a very effective technique builder. I still do this one every day and I even heard Stochelo use it in warm ups!

NylonDave

Here is a nice RH only exercise.

EEBGGB (DUD DUD,OR for variety, think DU DD UD )

Try it with a completely free wrist and if you have a pick guard let yourself play a golpe (percussive tap) with the pick on the E string downstrokes.

Here are some accent ideas to play with.

1. Accent the first note each triplet.
2. Bring out a clear backbeat on top of this (ie make the first G really emphatic)
3. Drop those accents and try and bring out the B string like it was a high hat.
4. Anything else you can think of.

Think of it like playing the bongos.

You will notice that there are a whole load of different strokes if you really get into this. And at that point you wont be worrying about speed at all because things will be working well.

When you get bored switch to another set of three adjacent strings. ie EAD
When you get cocky miss a string out, EBD.
When it is too easy EAE.
When you don't need to think at all make a chord study with it.



D.

Jeff Moore

Passacaglia. Your posts are great. Though I learned completely by ear, I also just played mostly with borrowed licks in the spirit of the 60's.
A long long time ago, I learned to read for guitar. Just enough to try for a scholarship, after 15 years of ears only. The stuff I memorized by reading has stayed around in my playing, but I've added my own stuff to those classical and show tunes. I don't read any more but the trick of making up new material comes hard for me, but comes easier out of that classical moment of reading.
It's like the good ear I have didn't let me invent, but my poor and short lived reading ability did to some extent.

Bones

Hemert, how long per day do you recommend spending on each exercise?

For example, how long to play the triplet run without stopping. Then how long to spend on it total (with breaks to rest the muscles)? Thanks

Charles Meadows

Good question Bones. That's a good lick. I find it tricky in that when you ascend back up the A and the C on the high E are (I assume) both downstrokes! For some reason the double down stroke there (with the A being the end of a 3 note 3 string sweep) is a little harder to nail than two "half rest" downstrokes in a row, as in Christiaan's first descending triplet lick. It actually reminds me of the triplet minor lick Stochelo does in A minor starting with A on the 17th fret and working the top note down to G#, G and then F#.