Has There Ever Been One Thing That Just Took You So Long To Get

[Isaac Moss]

Hey guys, just sitting in class again and I’m curious to see if any of you all have experienced anything like this. So I’ve been working on the main lead riff in Hail To The King since late December and I typically get anywhere from an hour on it(on days to where I have to go to places and stuff) but at least five days a week I’m able to put two hours in on it, then I work on other things until forced to quit. Joe Satch said not to do any one thing for over an hour a day but I don’t know. I plateaued at 88 percent speed for over a month but then Jak stepped in and helped me, turns out I was playing it wrong by picking every note instead of using pull-offs. Thanks again by the way XD.I’ve been using pull offs since March 23rd and I had to start slow again obviously and now I’m back to that speed range but am stepping into the early 90s on speed in hopes I’ll get it soon. I practice everyday as much as I can and I don’t know it’s just embarassing that it’s took me this long. Although one good thing that came from it is I’ve definatlely started using open strings in my own playing more as Syn does for this riff and I’ve stated writing a song that I never would have came up with if it weren’t for me learning this riff. I’ve also noticed the phrasing in this song is sinking into a my playing as well. Anyone else have similar stories of something taking you a long ass time to get down?

 

[idssdi]

Sweeping in general took me like forever to have down. At least until one day I randomly could do 2 and 3 string sweeps and went from there. There are also some songs that took me a long time in the past.

 

[Isaac Moss]

Yeah sweeping is really different when you first pick it up. For me the hard thing about it was muting the strings while sweeping. Actually muting in general used to be so so hard for me to do, I was so bad at muting when I played Enter Sandman at my school I had to use a fret wrap for the solo XD. I probably confused everyone. Now I don’t have to think about it anymore really, except if I’m learning a new pattern or something. Also down picking, I practice it and the intro riff from Master Of Puppets for five minutes each daily and I’ve been moving up really slow with it. But five minutes really isn’t anything I guess, I basically have about an hour or so where I practice a bunch of stuff mostly techniques for like five minutes each, which idrk how good of an idea that is but yeah.

 

[Noah Berends]

Legato. I couldn’t do it for the life of me, then in a very short time (under a month) it’s like a light switched and I started to make crazy improvements faster than anything I’d done before.

 

[Andrew Fernandes]

Everything lol

 

[Ed Seith]

Everything takes forever the first time you get it. Building speed – at anything – can take a very long time, especially if you’re not gifted for it (or if you’re old, ahem).
Patience and discipline, the two things I really never had enough of.

 

[Isaac Moss]

@andrew I feel you there my dude XD

 

[Isaac Moss]

@Ed yeah you’re right about that for sure. It seems like I had the biggest spped imrpvement on speed when I spent three months practicing nothing but the Enter Sandman solo. I spent all day practicing it and honestly that was the biggest jump in my playing I ever had. Kinda makes me think practicing one thing and nothing else is the best way to improve your actual playing ability. But then again technique only goes so far because like improvising and songwriting steps in and stuff.

 

[AGA]

Lol, I agree with Andrew! In my experience guitar has a tough learning curve in general, but I finally feel like the pieces of the puzzle have started to come together for me and have noticed great improvement. As Ed says, Patience and Discipline play a huge role on that. The trick is to hang in there. If anything, this website has shown me that a lot of people share this experiences, I used to feel it was just me.

 

[Ed Seith]

Also, one thing I’m focusing on right now that’s really helping is figuring out where you’re tensing and work on NOT doing that. I’m working on alternate picking speed, downpicking speed, and small 3 string sweeps to get really going on doing them RIGHT and the thing I’m noticing is that as I build speed on them, I can feel muscle fatigue in a small muscle in the front of my picking hand shoulder. Working on managing that has been really helpful over the last week or so – it is, I feel, the difference (for me) in being able to fairly easily improv quick stuff, but not being able to play sorted stuff as quickly. Mindfulness and relaxation ain’t just for Buddha.