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It's a bitch on our instrument, especially for us Jazz players who like to play single lines above 200 BPM (8ths) with chunky strings and actions while trying to play Bop lines (as opposed to linear "scales" like metal or fusion heads). Consistency from day to day is a challenge. I notice it's a little off on some days, for some (still) inexplicable reason. And when it's off it disrupts your flow which distracts your mind and makes you feel "it's not worth playing today - the Gods have not turned up".
And then some days, it clicks and you feel invincible which makes you wonder why it can't always be like this. Some of you chaps can relate to "there are good days, and some days which are not so good" thing, but do you, like me, put it down to inconsistent synchronisation of the left and right hands/fingers? I notice it in my recordings. Some days the picking and fretting is precise, the quality of the tone of each note is clean, like a piano. When it's off, the pick may strike a nanosecond either before or after the fretted pressure, it really is a very subtle difference and some people may not notice or care. But it's there, an ever-so- slight "smear"
TBH, I hear this "out of sync" sound with most players actually, and find my self drawn to players with a solid synchronised tone - CC, Wes, GB, Django, Pat Martino, Billy Bean, Johnny Smith, Hank Garland etc. I used to think part of this sound involves appropriate force in both hands (CC, Django and Martino sound like they use more force than most players), but as was revealed in Beato's recent GB interview, GB uses minimum pressure with his fretting hand. So I suppose it depends on our unique physiological attributes.
Anyway, Is this aspect of our playing a studied thing? I mean, with so much written, blogged or podcasted about picking mechanics, has much been said about synchronisation, it's challenges, and how to improve it? Does Troy Grady go into this?
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03-15-2024 02:19 PM
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I was actually going to say "I bet Troy Grady goes into this."
It's really THE thing, regarding fast playing...
The big thing I've found (and take this for what it's worth, I'm not a great fast player) is the amount of movement in both hands needs to be minimized. And then figure out where you are on the continuum of "fretting hand is faster" vs "picking hand is faster."
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Johnny Smith said he would practice in front of a mirror to get his hands to move gracefully. I think it’s in that hour long interview on YouTube.
Is that on topic?
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I took classical for a few years eons ago to learn some new approaches. My teacher had me playing scales to a metronome at around 60 BPM or something. He told me to really pay attention to making the note last as long as possible before going to the next. IE: practise making the quickest and cleanest change possible. Then start sub-dividing the beat.
And really work at putting the notes right on the beat. When you're truly synced and in time the click can disappear. That's the goal anyway.
I know going slow to get fast has been beaten to death, but the quicker and cleaner you can change a note the faster you can play. And if you zoom in on that, you can improve it. Fast=quick change.
If I feel my sync is sloppy I still do this exercise from time to time a half century later. I think it's a warm up actually. And one that isn't too hard on my poor old joints.
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My classical students hear me saying “legato” in their nightmares
Originally Posted by ccroft
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Synchronization means happening at the same time; that idea may not quite strictly apply to fingering and picking for sounding of guitar strings. Both fretting of a string and picking of a string take a short period of time. The quality of the sounding of the string varies with the overlap of those those two short times.
The common overlap is to lead with the fretting finger so that the sounding length is mechanically established before the string is picked. This is used by beginners and intermediate players on slower tempo lines; it is overly "safe and secure". More advanced players develop the technique of "closing the fret finger leading overlap" not by picking earlier but by fretting later... closer to synchronization.
However, true synchronization is not the end goal because the picked string takes a little time to determine the string length and establish the standing wave fundamental and its harmonics. With faster playing, this "loading delay" has to be anticipated by now picking the string slightly early and fretting very slightly close before that (which fretting may now feel more like fretting earlier than latest possible because both the fretting and picking shift to earlier). Eights at 200bpm is likely the peak of the curve where approaching true synchronization is possible (like the speed at which ignition timing of top dead center), but faster playing needs "spark advance" where the pick is earlier and the fretting needs to back up a little earlier too.
Eights at 200bpm is an ubiquitous tempo wall. Just my suspicion, but I think deliberately seeking synchronization leads you right up to the foot of that tempo wall. I imagine fast players are successful in surpassing that wall by sending their execution command to either the left or right hand, but not both (so the one that does not get the command gets directed what is needed from the one that does... not serving two masters, at least at higher tempos).
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I always notice that Kenny Burrell plays unsynchronized on some of his fast licks. You know, when you can hear the pick attack some notes more than once.
Last edited by Jimmy Smith; 03-16-2024 at 01:12 PM.
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Interesting thoughts, seems like you've thought about this. How did you arrive at your conclusions? I'm never sure if I'm picking either slightly late or slightly early, or a bit of both. All I know is that some days the articulation is crisper than others... Originally Posted by pauln
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Assuming you're picking in the widdly-widdly range, the 12th fret on the high has a fundamental frequency of 600+Hz. If you\re telling me you can adjust your picking by units of the order of 2 milliseconds to compensate for the time for a standing wave to take shape, I'd love to see a screen capture of a DAW with your playing perfectly matched up to a metronome. Originally Posted by pauln
I don't think picking 8ths at 200bpm is particularly fast, to be honest. 'Shred' players will hit 16ths at 180bpm or so, nearly twice as fast. And modern shred involves lots more complex lines than sequencing scales. Eg sweep picking for string crossing. Folks like Govan and Eric Johnson use lots of string skipping too. These are similar to the sorts of problems we face trying to play fast bebop lines. A few years ago I spent way too much time trying to improve my speed on some Yngwie-style lines. I pretty quickly got to the point where I could cleanly and reliably play 16ths at 120bpm. My success at speeds higher than that was hit or miss, good days and bad, just as you've experienced Prince.
Eventually I gave all that up and focussed instead on learning jazz and making music (to paraphrase Jens Larsen) and had a much happier time of ti. But my ability to play fast has degraded in the meantime. A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days getting the head and a few composed lines of Groovin High up to speed, and can now play the the 8th note sections reasonably well at 180bpm. I'm pretty sure getting to a higher speed is possible if I choose to put in the work. (My time feel sucks and I'm working on it, but I think that's a slightly different problem than left-righthand synchronisation and clear articulation at speed.)
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I've found that slurs, or any non-picked fretted notes, are the most difficult to get exactly correct, when synchronising with the music's time feel.
I've spent an inappropriately large amount of my time trying to improve the timing of my non-picked fretted notes over many years, I'm still unsuccessful most days.
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Interestingly, i find slurs much harder at slower tempi. But then, that's not the same kind of sync issue, it's muscular control of a different kind... Originally Posted by GuyBoden
I've found that slurs, or any non-picked fretted notes, are the most difficult to get exactly correct, when synchronising with the music's time feel.
I've spent an inappropriately large amount of my time trying to improve the timing of my non-picked fretted notes over many years, I'm still unsuccessful most days.
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Sure, I was a rock/blues shredder in a past life, and yeah, all the teenagers on my block were playing *8ths at 150+, but with skinny strings, low action and playing BS, that wasn't so hard, especially behind a wall of distortion that smeared everything anyway, so it didn't really matter how clean your articulation was! Originally Posted by CliffR
But speedy legit Bop lines with a Jazz tone are tough to get real clean. I also think there are comfort zones for picking that varies for us all, I'm more comfortable (16ths) around 125 than I am at 100 or 150. Still don't know why, even after I put in a lot more practice at tempos other than 125. I wonder if it's a brain thing, or a nervous system thing, or just a "getting older" thing. I notice some older players into their 70's and beyond don't seem to lose their clarity at speed, while some definitely do. What's the mechanism at play here? Where are the studies? Doesn't have to be a study of musicians, but any discipline involving hand and finger synchronicity?
*EDIT: sorry I meant 16ths, not 8ths...
Last edited by princeplanet; 03-18-2024 at 10:01 AM.
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There are two things that helped me with synchronization generally:
1. Keep the exercises simple. My go to for working on pure alternate picking synchronization is 6s through 3nps scales (in C, CDE CDE FGA FGA etc). This keeps the string change consistent and allows you to specifically target the synchronization part. It's not very musical but that's not the point. In my experience the feeling of good synchronization will translate to actual music.
2. Isolate and analyze each hand. Taking the previous example, can you execute the left hand with just hammer ons and pull offs? Can you consitently pick 8ths or 16ths on an open string at the goal tempo? No amount of synchronization practice will help if there's a deficiency in one of the parts.
Beyond that, synchronization in specific musical lines might not actually be a pure synchronization issue. A difficult string change can derail something that would otherwise be cleanly played, and the issue is not that the hands aren't synchronized generally, but that you can't perform that specific mechanical task. Having irregular combinations of hammers and picked notes could do the same. It's useful to try different fretboard layouts of the same line to find ones that fit your mechanical preferences and abilities the best.
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When you release the string from the pick, that point of release on the string is the apex of a very flat triangle where the base of the triangle is the distance between the fret and the bridge. That triangle's two shorter segments each side of the pick are not the same length. Originally Posted by CliffR
At the moment of release, that string apex develops a growing flat spot that stays approximately parallel to the triangle's base. The edges of that flat spot proceed toward the fret and bridge terminations of the sounding string length where they reflect and invert (and this happens at the nearer one before the further one). The string's shape and motion is chaotic for a while (the "thump" sound on an arch top, the "plink" sound on a solid body) until the string between the fret and bridge determines how long is its sounding length, determines the fundamental frequency and the placement of the nodes that make the harmonics.
If you think about it, musicians make very small adjustments all the time in their playing to synch with what they hear. When they set their amps far apart on a big stage, they are all getting each other's sounds through different distances and there is no possible synch; but if all the amps are put together by the drum kit, the source sound that they all hear (the source itself) is itself in synch, then no matter the variance of distance from that, each will adjust their playing to sound in synch (and since the source is in synch, the combination of adjustments of each player will be dead on).
The adjustment to synch with higher playing tempos is not just about the string loading delay. The mechanics of the fingers and hands also need to be "advanced forward" to anticipate and provide for the inertial accelerations of movement. That is also done naturally by the player because they know when it sounds right. These adjustments to one's execution spot in the tempo beat can be very small and make a huge difference in the overall clarity and coherence of the music.
So that's string loading delay, acoustic path delay, and ballistic fingering/picking delay... probably not the whole list of possible delays to overcome, but we do learn how just by listening and adjusting, naturally, until it sound right. Another good reason to perform live.
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Except that in reality each player is a different distance from the drums, so each person's impression of where the beat lies in time will differ on the order of several milliseconds. Further, the amp and drums are spatially separate from each other, so each member of the audience will have a different distance between themselves and the various sources of sound, adding another separation of milliseconds between each. So no, I don't buy what you're trying to sell at all.
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It’s actually a three way synch in guitar which is challenging, possibly why guitarists are notorious for having flaky time.
You synch the hands but you are also meant to be synching to the beat… so it’s a triangle, with beat at one corner, left hand and right hand at the other two. It’s good to address all thread sides
Left hand - right hand
Right hand - pulse
And more often neglected
Left hand - pulse
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I guess these wouldn't hurt if given a try:
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It's pretty common to play guitar through an audio interface and a plugin, which introduces latency. I dont do this much anymore, but from when I did I believe 10 ms is pretty much imperceptible. 20 ms is about where it starts to become apparent iirc.
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Yes, I've had to really seriously practice my left hand fretting timing, because I don't pick many notes, I mostly slurs notes (commonly known as guitar legato). Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Posting this thread and hearing everyone's thoughts has made me think more about my own questions, and yeah, perhaps it's not so much about picking synchronisation as it is combining picking and mini sweeping on the right hand whilst combining fretting, slurring (hammer, pull off etc) and sliding on the left. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
No one exercise can cover it all as every line you play has its unique idiosyncrasies. But yeah, the left hand is sometimes where the problem with inconsistency lies, when it's off it's either slightly rushing or lagging so that even if, for the picked notes, the pick is in sync with say a metronome, the tiny mistiming smears the articulation by a hair. Not surprisingly, seems to be more of an issue when the pinky is asked to do something awkward
. When I played lighter action my pinky was not moving as high as it does now. This is because it needs to come down from a greater height to sound a note with enough force. I've always been aware of it, but noticed how Pat Martino's pinky moved around more than my own so thought it must be OK, and most of the time it is, but some days it's just not there...
Hmm, I wonder if it's time to go to lower action again...?
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indeed....leave the fast stuff to the sax...i think you could push it up to 130-135 at a pinch..I'm more comfortable around 125 than I am at 100 or 150. Still don't know why, even after I put in a lot more practice at tempos other than 125.
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typical medium-tempo coffee shop jazz is around 120–150bpm...120..Factories that play music for the workers prefer that speed as anything slower lowers the work rate . Anything faster stimulates the production of adrenaline, and makes you either want to hit the boss or run away !
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Yeah, that's a useful range, and I can hang, but the awkward lines start to lose clarity. I really like clean articulation, so I'd rather spend time sounding clean with 16ths at 135 than sounding smeary at 150. But if I can't achieve that every day, then I'll find my useable top speed and stop pushing it. Playing faster than your true comfort zone is BS, and one should never let anyone hear you do that! Originally Posted by voxo
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Slur more then
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Not necessarily the solution, for many reasons. Of course it's so dependent on what is being played, for example, if you learned Martino style lines, but with lots of slurs, it may not sound as compelling. Sometimes lines "pop" more with more picking, and sometimes they sound boring or stiff without slurs and slides (imagine alt picking Holdsworth lines?). Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I always try things as many ways as I can, and in the end just go with what feels and sounds best. It's a science long before it begins to resemble art!
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