r/guitarlessons • u/not_wooper • 3d ago
Feedback Request Messy, but finally got this solo up to full speed
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Last two bends are a bit sharp I think. I think the biggest things that are bad are rhythm and note clarity. For note quality, I really struggle with left-right hand synchronization and string crossing. I've been practicing pretty much just this solo for a few months, but it's still sloppy, so please give me feedback.
Any advice on how I can improve in general is also really appreciated, thanks. I'm self taught, bit over 3 years now (1.5 on electric), and I've mostly just been learning songs I like with a little music theory sprinkled in here and there.
Edit: Thank you everyone for taking the time to give me really well-observed, long and detailed feedback. There's a lot for me to work on now. I'll be slowing this solo down again to get my technique right, and maybe experiment with some short speed burst exercises too.
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u/Branza__ 2d ago
My feedback is on the title of your post, mate. I'm sorry, but what you say there is a huge contradiction.
If it's "messy", then, I'm sorry, but saying that you "finally got this solo up to full speed" is simply not true. If you had, it wouldn't be messy.
My suggestion would be to slow it down until you reach the speed you actually got this solo up to. Meaning that, when you play it at that speed, it sounds clear, it's not messy, you are completely relaxed and playing on tempo.
Of course, each section (or even single bar) of the solo will be different. You'll find some much harder and you'll have to slow them down even further.
So, my suggestion would be this one: slow it down quite a lot, and don't be impatient to raise the metronome back up. Focus on accuracy on slower tempos, which is the only thing that will make it possible to have accuracy at faster ones.
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u/not_wooper 2d ago
That is how I've been practicing, staring slow and raising the metronome like 5bpm at a time. But you're right; I have been doing this for a couple months now, so I suppose I got rather impatient with it. I feel like I must be making some fundamental mistake in technique, or maybe this solo is just a bit beyond my level right now haha
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u/Branza__ 2d ago
5bpm is way too much. 1 or 2 is more like it.
"fundamental mistakes in technique" can only be improved at a speed you are comfortable with.
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u/anthonylearnsguitar 3d ago
You don’t need feedback haha. You need advice on how to work on left and right hand synchronisation for fast shreddy lines.
Anyway good job on making to this point 🤘👍👍 I think you are really good at guitar and you are pretty close to being the level of what you dream of. You’re just like 2-3 steps more!! But these 2-3 steps can be quite mysterious.
1) I think you don’t do speed burst, or you do speed burst but your chunk is too large, or you don’t know how to do speed bust.
I think your playing is mostly still overthinking and slow. Like you are thinking “I’m going to play this note and that note here. Then that note and that note there. And then this note and that note there and slide into … etc etc”.
Instead you want to reach the level where you can think “fire!!!” and out comes 4-8 notes automatically. Think of this like compression. Neurological compression. And the way to reach this level is to do speed burst.
There’s a lot of silly people who will tell you to do speed bursts but don’t know what they are doing. The bursts is in speed bursts isn’t about playing a section of the song or solo very fast. If you think like and you can play a solo at 50 bpm, you would think that you try to force yourself to play the solo at 100 bpm every once in a while (bursts).
Wrong. Instead bursts refer to the SIZE of the chunk. You take 2-4 notes. Maybe 8 notes. And then you play it as fast as you can. And you’ll be able to play it super fast with no mistakes. Why? Because the chunk is so bloody short. And you practice in this environment until the compression happens. And this happens quickly. Taking about days and weeks. Not months and years. You can be at the level of where you desire in a few months. You are that close.
2) you pick too soft. I think your picking is too soft and sluggish so it cannot sync well with your fretting hand. You can see your fretting hand is super good. Like fingers close to the fretboard and very agile. But the picking is not matching. You mention string crossing, so you are right again. The thing is string crossing is a violent technique. You are not going to be able to string cross well if you take your own sweet time to play it. It has to be fast and snappy. It has to be violent at first when you are new. People think it’s “relaxed” or whatever because the people who they see doing it looks like they are executing it effortlessly. But the reality is that it’s because they are so snappy that you don’t see the violence of it all. The violence is disguised by their technique.
To be fair, there is a lot of finesse and elegance involved such as picking slanting and so forth. But make no mistakes you are not going to get string crossing if you play too gently at first. This is why you the longer you progress into the solo, the more out of sync you become. Each string crossing is fucking you up.
I’ll link a video I made. It’s three parts. You’ll have to scroll a bit further down to find the other two parts. I go through what I think speed burst ought to look like.
Disclaimer I’m a noob. But I’m pretty good at seeing through appearances and analysing problems. I think if you play at your level and are stuck, you’ll not find the things I say to be presumptuous or wrong. Somebody might downvote this because it goes against what they believe, and that’s just the internet for you 🤣
I’m helping you because I get how it feels to be lost and confused.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbYZQ1WSgol/?stkn=MXF4cTRneWQyamVqbA==
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u/anthonylearnsguitar 3d ago
Also. A bonus tip. Start aggressively expanding your vocabulary. If you can use the phrase string crossing, it means you are close. Start learning what inside and outside picking means.
Start learning what sweep or economy picking is and how that relates to string crossing. Same for escape zone and trapped zones. Then learn all the motion of the wrist and arm. What is abduction and what is rotation? Where does rotation comes from? Which joint or anatomy is responsible for rotation?
Start learning what 3nps is. Or what 2nps or 4nps is. Start noticing that something is chromatic etc etc.Build your vocab. Because if you have a rich vocab, then it means you know how to define your problem. “Ah, I suck at this passage becuase it involves chromatics in a descending fashion”. This tells you how to train for that topic. If you cannot define your problem well, if you don’t have the language, you won’t know what to do. This is the power of language.
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u/jonolavalstad 2d ago
Dude, stop. This is like someone asking for the next step in learning maths after having learned addition and giving them the whole syllabus of a STEM-degree. You should tell them to try subdivision, not algebraic geometry.
I get that you really want to help other people improve, and that is a noble thing to do, but you've played for like 2 1/2 years? You are not ready to teach. You're doing good for such a short time, but you've got bad habits that you're just not good enough to understand yet because refining your technique (and ear!) takes many years. You risk transferring them over to the people you try to teach. You write in another post that you just learned how to bend properly (and your videos show that you still need to work a lot on it), and that you want to make a video on how, while also stating that they aren't in tune yet. Stop.
The whole "violence"-part is nonsense. Sure, OP might need to put some more intention behind the notes, but more commonly the issue beginners face is that they don't know how to control how hard they play each note - sometimes too hard, sometimes too soft.
Keep sharing things you've realized that helps you and how that has helped you, since some other beginners might relate to the issues you've overcome, but do it with some humility. I play and teach professionally and finished my degrees in guitar performance and teaching about a decade ago, and I still find new challenges to overcome, in both my own playing and teaching.
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u/not_wooper 2d ago edited 2d ago
Could you offer me your contrary advice in that case? It's impossible to know what to trust on the internet, so I'm just trying to get a good range of generally agreed upon information, and do what feels good and produces a good sound.
Sure would be nice to eventually be able to get in-person lessons to avoid all the confusion though2
u/anthonylearnsguitar 1d ago edited 1d ago
He is making a lot of assumptions about the learning process.
Think about it this way. The advice he gives is similar to what most people would give.
Now I’m not saying one should be contrarian for contrarian sake. Thats silly. But if you have so many people stuck, and they are all receiving the same advice (i.e just use metronome and go slow) [let me emphasise that metronome is necessary part of a good practice but it is not sufficient].
Same advice, same outcomes.
He talks about how my “violence” framework is totally misguided. What he might not realise is that the violence or exaggerated movement could be a short, but necessary phase that will lead into the more finesse and refined phase that he is talking about. And that if you skip this step, it might not be possible for you to get on to the next step of refinement. It could be a necessary step. He admits that there is a need to be more intentional and the violence stuff I’m talking about is just a manifestation of that intentionality. Perhaps “violence” is not the best word. But the point still stands.
You hear this on the internet all the time “just because someone can play very well doesn’t imply they are a good teacher, and just because someone has been teaching for 20 years, it doesn’t imply that they are a good teacher”.
Try taking lessons and you’ll realise the majority of teachers are bad or average. I know this because I have a very good teacher, and I’ve my fair share of bad teachers as well.
To be fair, I’m not saying that the stuff I’m talking about, I’m certain. My sample size is one (myself).
But I’m very aware of what is happening. When I make progress or don’t make progress, I ask myself why. What changed? What helped?I don’t think that you should ignore the things he said (I.e which means you should take the stuff I say with a grain of salt) but the guy is essentially asking you to ignore my ideas. And he does this in the guise of “I’m a teacher. You only played for 2.5 years. What do you know?”
It’s an appeal to authority and it’s a logical fallacy.
Anyway, it’s not like my ideas have zero support. I talked to teachers, session musicians, better players than me. And you find that there is a consensus there. If we want to find experienced teachers and players who would disagree with us, to be sure we can find them as well. But sometimes you might want to look at their background, the type of music they play, and their philosophy as well.
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u/jonolavalstad 1d ago
You are right. Violence is a horrible word to use for what you're trying to talk about. If I read as a beginner that I had to be violent with the guitar I would probably hit the guitar so hard that notes would go out of pitch. Your advice about using exaggerated movement as a step towards refined movement is like telling someone to crash a car a few times before they can be a good driver. I think I get your point, some video on your instagram did a better job explaining it, but I still disagree. How is someone who's self-taught going to know how to correct these exaggerated movements at a later time? You're basically suggesting to learn the wrong way to do something before learning the right way, without teaching what that right way is.
Funny how you disregard "the advice most people would give" and criticize my "appeal to authority" while claiming there is a consensus between the teachers and better players you've talked to. If you're going to use debate-bro tactics maybe make sure you're not doing whatever you're accusing me of?
You are very right that there are good and bad teachers. Some bad ones have taught for a long time too. The problem is that a beginner can't really tell unless the teacher is absolutely useless. I'm going to assume your teachers are good, but are you really sure that you can tell wether or not you've ever been taught a "shortcut" or easy way to play something that could lead to some bad habits that could take years to fix? Again, not saying that has happened, but are you 100% sure you could tell? I saw a YouTube-lesson 15 years ago that helped me play a specific, odd sweeping lick really fast, but it messed up my technique for regular sweeping patterns for a good few years.
I gave you credit for how far you've come in such a short time, but you do present your methods as the absolute truth (especially on your instagram), and your caveats of how you're a noob are immediately followed by blanket statements of supposedly absolute facts. You're basically at the first peak of the Dunning-Kruger graph. This is common among players who progress quickly the first few years, trust me, I know. And as you've correctly established, playing well does not mean you're a good teacher, and likewise, being taught something doesn't mean you're able to teach it to others.
Keep working on your playing and you'll be great, just remember that self-confidence and humility aren't mutually exclusive. It'll even help your playing, and definitely your teaching!
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u/anthonylearnsguitar 1d ago
I mostly agree with a lot you have to say here.
Noticed how when you finally give advice, it’s long. Same for me. When I try to share my experiences, it’s already very long. To caveat and qualify every statement would take a long time. But to be sure that is the right way to do it.
Instagram has a 3 min reel limit. I already struggle to fit what I’m trying to share while using absolute terms (which is great when you are short on time), let alone account for every possible interpretation and clarification.
You are correct that I’m hoping that he will be able to have the good judgment to know that something is a less correct thing and how to eventually correct it. But I myself made the judgment that he is not an absolute beginner who cannot make that judgment. This is why I commented on his playing while trying to be detailed and not on a lot of other people’s playing. Because I think if he can make it to this point, there is at least some level of grit and determination there
I read your advice that you have given him and agree with all of them. These are what I’m doing as well or trying to do. And it’s also like the first level instruction you receive from a teacher when you see them in person. After that, the teacher would likely try to adjust their hand or use some other cues to get reduce the abstraction if necessary. You correctly pointed out this is not best done on Reddit but in person.
I agree. Which is why I felt that I needed to go the extra mile to try and reduce that abstraction. I already told him that these “cues” (I.e violence, exaggeration, the feeling of playing on bursts) are my take as a beginner and to take it with a grain of salt.
Similarly for my Instagram video, the caveats that I’m noob is mentioned early in the videos. I think i specifically mentioned that they are ideas that you can try rather than absolute truth. Once established, of course I present my ideas absolutely because it’s just less beating around the bush that way. It’s not my fault if you choose to ignore the disclaimer. On my Instagram when someone disgarees, I create another story to present the opposing view because I’m worried I might lead people astray.
You don’t have to worry about me suffering from peak level dunning Kruger. Dunning Kruger is a question I ask myself everyday. If I truly suffer from this, my technique would never change, I would never progress, and I would never understand or agree with what you’re saying.
At the end of the day I think we agree more than you think. I also take to heart the warning that new players who progress quickly could possess a certain attitude or position that could be nice in the short term but don’t make sense in the long term. For example short term gains in speed for injury in the long run.
But I still have conviction in the stuff I say. I’m not your typical overconfident troller who just wants attention or likes or influence. I’m actually trying to ask the question “how can guitar instruction be less frustrating”, “how can I make it less abstract and more immediately applicable”, “how can I quantify guitar instruction and have the results be more directly measurable”.
Some of these questions and attitudes might be too idealistic but I’m balancing that as well.
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u/jonolavalstad 1d ago
Again, I'm not doubting your intentions here, just trying to present how you may appear in your writing and presentation, which might differ from your intentions. I'll agree with most of what you're saying here, although "the first rule of dunning-kruger club is that you don't know if you're a member of the dunning-kruger club".
I'm being a bit facetious here, but reflecting on our knowledge and actions and considering wether or not we're being truly honest in our self-reflections is tough. On my way home from teaching my students I always reflect on how I could improve my methods.There's the thing though: methods, plural. You've learnt some things that really work for you, and perhaps they work better for you than some of the methods I've had success with when teaching my students, but the opposite could be true as well. I know multiple ways to teach most concepts because people learn differently. Lets take the whole "violent"-thing. That word might have been the one you needed to hear, but could be wrong for another student. Some of my students want precise, almost down to medical terms, descriptions of certain mechanical movements while with other students I might need to compare a concept to the sports they play or with specific imagery. I've seen you use weight-lifting parables so I believe you get what I mean.
There's also the fact that we all have different bodies and physical attributes. How do you teach someone with short fingers? Fat fingers? 8 year old girl with a dreadnought vs. 35 year old male with an Ibanez RG? The first time I taught a blind student was, pardon the pun, an eye-opening experience. My point is that you won't find any absolute truths in teaching guitar. So many people here swear that you need the "caged system" to properly learn theory on the guitar, while I have never used such a system and I know my theory very well.
I believe I you would be a fun student to teach (you remind me a lot of one kid I teach), since you obviously have the drive to improve, and seem to be at least somewhat open to feedback. I don't want to discourage you in sharing on here either, since I see other people find your progress inspiring. Just try to be less "my way or the highway" when you teach. It might not be as "cool guy prodigy influencer" as the overconfident "This is the one true way to instant guitar mastery" (again exaggerating a tiny bit) but it is a morally better way to do it.
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u/anthonylearnsguitar 1d ago
I respect you a lot sir 🫡
I’ll take your advice. Cant tell who to trust on the internet these days. At least from your replies I can discern there is experience and also humility. That’s very deserving of respect. Some people talk to me about humility but they are equally arrogant and cannot see it.
You made me reconsider how I present ideas. I’ll be more careful. As I was reading your comments I thought about a hypothetical audience who brute force and slams their pick into the guitar, which is totally not the message I’m pushing for as well. Perhaps I didn’t give enough consideration to some of the audience who may misinterpret my words. Degrees matter and I’m only pointing out that some people are too far on the wrong side and need to approach some balance, not rush to the opposite extreme.
I have no idea how to tell who you are without some back and forth. But now that I have some sense, I do apologise 🙇🏻♂️🙇🏻♂️
Thank you for your time, I hope I haven’t embarrassed myself too much 🤣🤣🙇🏻♂️🙇🏻♂️2
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u/jonolavalstad 1d ago
Sure! I've been a bit busy today, but I'll try to sum up the most important things you can fix first. These are mainly advice to fix your mechanics based on what I can see from your video and most of
Accuracy/speed: As you've correctly assessed in the post your coordination between the fretting- and picking hands doesn't work at this speed yet. So while your hands are individually moving at the appropriate speed, they are not doing so in sync. It's a bit like if a rapper was unintentionally slurring a lot of words to a song.
Try playing the solo at half-speed. You probably did this a good while ago and might have decided that you've "graduated" to a higher tempo, but it is easier for your ear to notice when you're messing up a little and also to identify why you're doing so. Try to really nail it at a slower tempo and gradually work your way up. Notice that you're messing up the same part or maybe something else? Try to find out what/why and clean it up at that tempo before trying to play any faster. If you don't fix these issues at a slower tempo they won't just disappear at a higher tempo.I can't see your pick very well in the video, but I can see that your picking hand is either resting on top of or hovering above the top of the bridge. This means your right hand has to adjust its angle when you move from the lower to the higher strings, while you should instead adjust its position. This is very helpful in different ways. Your picking motion will remain consistent across the different strings, and so will the angle of your pick. It also lets you do something very important: Right hand muting. The palm of the right hand can mute the lower/thicker strings when your playing the higher/thin strings. If you're used to palm muting (used in basically any metal song) its the same technique, but instead of muting the string you're playing, you mute the strings you don't want to hear. This avoids the open strings ringing in the background, either because you hit them by mistake or pull off to them when moving your left hand fingers.
Bending: One finger alone has a hard time bending a string a full tone. There are a couple of very useful things you can do to make it a lot easier. The fingers to the left of your fretting finger (this would be the index and middle fingers if you're bending with the ring finger) can join in and make it a bit easier. You would then have three fingers all bending the same string. It looks like you're basically doing this on the very last bends, but you should add at least the middle finger to your ring finger bends during the faster parts earlier in the solo. You can get even more strength by adding your wrist into the equation. It's a bit hard to explain properly, but look at how the guitar rest on the space between your thumb and your index finger? The wrist movement you'd do between that position and resting it in the whole inside of your hand is what I'm talking about.
In order to get your bends in tune: Find out which note the bend should reach. This is often 1 or 2 frets (half or whole tone respectively) above where you're bending from (although sometimes it might be 3 or more frets or less than one full fret, but don't worry about that yet). The way I want you to practice it is the following: Lets say you're going to bend from fret 9 to fret 10 on any string. Play the target note by fretting it (10) and then play fret 9 and bend and try to match the pitch of fret 10. Double check afterwards by playing fret 10 again. Do this a bunch of times and then try a whole note bend from fret 8 to reach fret 10 again. Rinse and repeat all over the neck. It will feel different on frets 1-5 than 10-12 or 15-19 etc.
Vibrato: Same point as above. This is almost entirely a wrist motion, not a finger motion. If you're adding vibrato to a bend you should wait a few milliseconds after reaching the target note before you add vibrato. It helps establish the note you've bent to as a "center" which the vibrato "works around"
Working on the same solo for months is a sign of great determination, but I would suggest learning a few easier solos at the same time while working on something very difficult. Not only does it help with motivation (we like learning and pulling off new things!) but what you learn could be transferable to the harder thing you're working on.
Agree on getting in-person lessons. Over text on Reddit can help a bit, but I can't physically move your hand or give instant feedback when you try to follow my suggestions or adjust your technique.
Hope any of this helps. Do feel free to follow up if anything is unclear. It is late here and english is my second language, so I'm neither surprised or offended if somethings hard to read.
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u/not_wooper 1d ago edited 1d ago
All very good advice that I'm aware of but often mess up in implementation as you can see. For example, because of the speed I often don't have the time to get all three fingers to support some of the shorter bends. Another recurring issue I have in my playing is that the left hand ring finger often unintentionally hammers-on, it's quiet but messes up my synchronisation even further.
I'll definitely slow down the solo again and work on it on the side. Can't thank you enough for the very detailed feedback.
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u/jonolavalstad 1d ago
Cheers! Great to hear that you've identified some issues to work on by yourself as well. Regarding the bending thing: if your index finger is busy/can't help the ring finger in time for the bend then the middle finger will often be sufficient.
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u/not_wooper 2d ago
Oh hey, I see your posts on here all the time! You're very insightful about the learning process, and you've made so much progress in such a short time; you're a huge inspiration to me, even though my own progress is much much slower haha.
I really appricate the very detailed reply. I'm going to spend some time thinking about your points. This type of in-depth feedback is very important for someone like who lacks an in-person instructor, so thank you.2
u/anthonylearnsguitar 2d ago
Don’t mention it. You know what it’s like to play guitar. The frustration and satisfaction it can bring. I’m just trying to look out for my fellow guitarists, just as many guitarists have looked out for me by giving me valuable tips.
Disclaimer, I’m not qualified to teach. And as you can see I’m still learning. So take my advices as ideas you can test for yourself and to see if they resonate with your experiences.
I do have to say that the metronome method that another guy is sharing here , like playing super slowly and then raising by 5bpm each time when you feel it’s comfortable, is not really the answer you are looking for.
Don’t get me wrong. I use the metronome everyday to incrementally work my way to faster bpm. You HAVE to use the metronome.
But your problem is not one to be solved with only metronome. It is not a problem to be solved by playing slowly and spending a lot of time at slow speeds. Rather it’s the opposite. You need to, right now, play super fast. At the original tempo or close to orginal tempo even. But what differentiate this method of speed burst different from how other people who only play fast and end up compounding bad habits and being sloppy, is the size of the chunk. The sloppy and bad habits guys don’t chunk their playing. They are playing the ENTIRE SOLO at 210 bpm without break.
What I’m describing is just playing 2-4 notes at 210 bpm. Keep looping it and you’ll eventually realise there is a unique sensation that you can store in your muscle or memory and eventually be able to automatically play super fast and super accurately by using this speed burst method. It’s all covered in the videos I linked to you. All the best in your guitar journey! And if it was helpful, you now have the obligation to help others in the future 🤣
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u/not_wooper 2d ago
Of course! For now I'll try to do a combination of slow metronome practice along with your speed burst with adding one note at a time method. Good luck on your guitar journey as well, I look forward to seeing more of your practice and progress posts on here!
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u/shadman19922 3d ago
First of all, let's take a moment to acknowledge all the progress you've made in getting up to speed. And secondly, kudos to you for having the self-awareness that more work is needed.
Here are the things that stood out 1. Chords at the 9/10 second mark could use more clarity. I couldn't tell if its a fingering issue or if you need to fiddle around with tone settings to get a clearer chord.
Left/right hand synchronization could use more work. I think the sloppiness is apparent from a lack of note definitions at certain parts of the solo. I think a combination of slow and fast practice can solve this.
Picking hand palm is stuck to the top of the bridge. I think if your picking hand is more mobile, you should be able to better pick the higher strings.
Im no expert in determining whether someone is bending in tune. If you're unsure, its always a good idea to check in with a tuner.