Re: Forum players under 21
frazer, that beard is cool enough! I honestly can't find fault in your playing. I wish I had spent more time getting my right hand up to speed.. I have some speed with my left, but the 2 are nowhere near in sync. I'm guilty as charged though, as I don't spend the time practicing anymore like I should. BOTTOM LINE IS THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR HARD WORK. I have to remind myself of that from time to time, especially when it comes to being a better musician.
Its astonishing you've developed such skill in only 6 years! I'm sure you're only going to get better and better. If you look at some videos of Joe from even just 4 or 5 years ago, his playing now is over the top (like thats even possible?). I think its cool you're open to peoples opinions, but lets face it; you're on the right track. I'm definitely looking forward to more videos and would be curious to know what type of exercises or what you did to accomplish basic fast scale runs in the standard "blues block" pattern. From time to time, I'll sit every night and practice (very slowly) going up and down a scale using economy and alternate picking. Its a slow process, just wondering if thats what you did. Thanks, -Seth
And thanks Jonny, glad youliked the videos. -S
Thanks man for your comments thats real good of you, i can assure you ive worked hard at it and i will continue to. Although if you have any advice as far as, what i could do to get my playing to the stage where people go 'He's a fantastic guitarist, i want him on my record' then id be extremely grateful (anyones input on that query is welcome, just refer to my previous posts on this thread for links to my videos)
Ohhh man i struggled on my picking speed for sooooo long, took me forever, although i learned a lot along the way.
One thing i noticed when getting your fast picking licks together is that, syncing the hands is the easy part in comparison to getting true alternate picking speed in the picking hand, to get your 2 hands in sync is just a case of slowing down (but not too slow, or you're muscle memory will get too used to playing at slower speeds and trying to speed up will feel uncomfortable) and improvising only using constant alternate picking.
The part i struggled with was getting my right hand to pick fast and loose on its own, because its all about getting a smooth relaxed motion from the wrist joint, and picking lightly to begin with (once you can pick fast easily, picking harder is simple if thats what you prefer).
So yea make sure you can tremolo pick nice and clean and fast without tensing up too much, and then its just a case of syncing your hands together which can actually be fun if you just sit and make up picking licks. But start off with picking sequences on one string at a time, because string crossing is where things can get screwy if you leap before you look.
Which leads me to what you asked about the blues-box patterns. Because theyre mostly two notes per string and all in one position most of the time, which means you'll be doing a LOT of string crossing, and in my opinion the fast patterns Joe and Eric Johnson do are the most difficult because your picking hand is hopping from string to string very quickly. So id work up to those sort of phrases gradually, i still struggle with some of them.
Hopefully those points are helpful however for all i know you can pick as well as Bonamassa himself so sorry if i just mentioned stuff you're already aware of lol.
And i have to say its wonderful to come to a forum where we can help eachother out and ask for tips & advice and get it without judgement and put across in a clear way, so thanks to you and Jonny the more good guitarists in the world the better, it'll raise the standards and make us all get better