I have been practicing the warmup etude that Tomo introduced in this video (at 4:03):
I recorded myself playing it around 10x the last 3-4 weeks. Here are some things I learned:- Soft picking: I thought I was picking softly, but when I watch my first few recordings it sounded like I was hitting the strings so hard. I was so surprised.
- Muting: After playing some notes, instead of moving my finger off the string right away, if I leave it there it makes less string noise (and can help muting other strings). Also, the low E string rings so often -- I feel like I have to always mute the low E string unless I'm playing it.
- Thumb position: I sometimes lose good thumb position (from chromatic exercise). At least I am catching myself now.
- Picking position: My neck pickup is sitting high because I have to replace a screw. That makes it hard to pick over the pickup. I will fix that, but for now I picked more toward the bridge.
I am still at a basic level — I want to the notes to be more legato, for example. But I can see some progress. For example, I am not looking at the fretboard. In this recording, I challenged myself to turn up my amp and see if I could play soft enough not to wake up my family — they stayed asleep!
Hi Andy, what a great job!
Soft picking, no noise, and playing the fretboard without looking—that’s amazing progress!
Thanks for sharing such a great exercise.
P.S. If your family didn’t even wake up, it must have sounded like a lovely lullaby!
That's fantastic Andy! I have the opposite issue with palm muting. I tend to "over mute" the lower strings when I am playing descending patterns, so I accidentally mute notes that I'm trying to play.
Great job Andy! This etude is not easy! Sounds so good! Now you can sustain each note full as possible and pick a little more toward front pickup. This etude was in my More Accelerate Your Guitar Playing DVD. I am not sure that it is available or not now?
Tomo
Oh I do that too for sure, and not just lower strings!
Thank you, Tomo. I have really been enjoying this one, also as a chance to work on alternate triplet picking, which I learned in Leavitt. I am working on this piece every day. I will work on sustain. And I will go to the hardware store to get a new screw so i can play over the neck pickup.