efficient way to practice reststroke

stranded horse

I just started practicing this technique, and I play the guitars for 6 years now, but it makes me feel like I just picked up the guitar, so it's frustrating me a bit, and makes me doubt my ability on the guitar in general.
I have to admit, I never really used a pick before, but I am quite content with my ability in various fingerpicking techniques, and using a soft pick und playing alternate picking isn't really a big obstacle for me, though I never really practiced it.
Maybe I did the mistake of practicing songs I can already play without a pick, or with just alternate picking with rest stroke, but it only works so painfully slowly that I feel set back 5 or 6 years.

What should I do? Just practice scales and arpeggios with rest stroke until it becomes natural and then attempt to play the songs I already using rest stroke?

steven_eire

everyone goes through that stage. it is frustrating but if you follow the exercises in Michael's book with a metronome and make time for regular practice you will get it. learn the minor blues solo in the book and pay attention to the picking suggestions. pretty soon the basics of it are all 2nd nature.

stranded horse

Which one of Michael's books?

steven_eire

I meant Gypsy picking. it has some great exercises for developing this technique.

Elliot

Horsey:

Listen, whenever you have trouble learning something you need to break it down to the simplest phrase you can achieve. This is the first thing I tried, a waltz fragment so it goes [b]ONE two three ONE two three, ONE [/b]for the accent starting at the first beat ending at the last, each string starting on a downstroke (but then feels weird at first to do the next accented beat on an upstroke!):

-------------------------7--8
-------------7--8--10-------
------8--9-------------------

I did this until I could get it to a decent speed and feel really comfortable. Then with more practice I could glue the next one to it, then the next one, etc. Waltzes are nice to use because they are pretty basic and you know where they're going but any song will work. Hope that helps.

Jazzaferri

If you get Stochelo's DVD there is an exercise that he shows which I have found very helpful.

Plan on taking a year or two to get there. I'm a year and a bit in at a couple of hours a day and the technique is feeling comfortable now

Jim Kaznosky

Jazzaferri wrote:

If you get Stochelo's DVD there is an exercise that he shows which I have found very helpful.

Plan on taking a year or two to get there. I'm a year and a bit in at a couple of hours a day and the technique is feeling comfortable now

That same exercise is in the Rosenberg Academy. You explained it elsewhere in the forum, but it is a great simple exercise to warm up with. It isn't all about speed either...it is very difficult to get all of the notes even and clean.

sketch

i played fingerpicking as you did for almost 5 years, and actually played without learning how to play... i mean, i went for the hard songs, learning very hard things, but still i didn't learned a schale nor name of the chords, nor many chords at all... First picked the pick a year ago, and played alternate untile a couple of months ago... Maybe i'm a quite fast learner, but just exercizing triads in the right way with metronome, in some weaks i progessed a lot. Yes, the first days where frustrating, and seamed i couldn't pass this phase, but if you aim the perfection, and challenge yourself day by day i strongly believe you'll soon begin to have fun learning it, and you'll end doing it very soon... To me really helped the "Montainge saint genevieve" and "la gitane" tracks: i find them a compendium of strong and fast restroke picking. If you play them evryday with restroke i believe you'll have fun while exercizing, and very soon you'll be able to switch from alternate to restroke at your will... But i'm a beginner with a very small repertory and maybe there are better tracks for progressing the resstroke...

To me it seams a matter of intention: i mean, i i want to play the harsh dry gipsy sound, i start to play naturally without thinking with restroke, which leads me playing ternary and with the right axcent... Still, i'm not able to do the most extremely fast phrases in reststroke, but playing the second part of the montaigne genevieve (the major G arpeggio) really helped, and it's a great excercize..
In the end have faith in your hands, after the very beginning if you take it asa a challenge and find the better way to practice you'll have fund and progress very fast!

a couple of obvious suggestions (if you already know about posture don't bother reading, but repeating he importance of them wouldn't hurt i guess): aim for the strong tone, because if the guitar shout then it's very likely you are playing good, but at the same time relax your right hand and shoulder, because i've suffered some wrist pains the first days just because i played rigidly. Just use the weight of the shoulder and gravity, don't push the elbow and the wirst...

Jeffrey van Gils

Hiy'all
As a novice, it seems that when playing rest strokes is like hitting through the string in a 45 degree angle - great volume is produced

Also, the glassy sound is distinctly pronounced. It's even getting easier on non-selmer like acoustics. Resonator guitars sound like canons using this stroke. :twisted:

But, it also seems that every string vibrates so hard that it sounds as if the glassiness is derived from the strings hitting frets. I think it is even getting too pronounced - can't seem to play a note without the biting glassiness.

Is this common or is it a flaw in my rest stroke practice :?:

All the best, Jeff

Jazzaferri

FWIW for the first several months I was overpicking. Too much force and not enough speed. AS my hand relaxed more and more I get a different fuller richer even perhaps a bit louder sound. I beleive that the stroke is happening faster but I am not forcing the pick through so not "twanging' the string any more.