Stupidly sloppy playing

[Dan Shipway]

Through playing lead I finally realized how sloppy my playing is and I narrowed it down to the main things I suspect
Uneven picking dynamics
Dead notes or notes not ringing correctly
Fingers lifting too much after fretting notes
Strings ringing when they are not supposed to be and after muting strings
Right-hand placement accidentally mutes or unmutes notes.
Pick strokes getting smaller and smaller with tempo and making economy picking impossible without unnecessary arm movement
I don’t really know what to do at this point because it has been a problem for a while and I don’t really have effective practicing routines and strategies to target these.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Calvin Phillips]

Sounds like you just need increased finger strength. Might be time to slow it down and work on that for a bit. Maybe take a week and go annoyingly slow but pressing as hard as needed. And stay at that tempo. Dont increase just annoy yourself. Then give it a shot again at normal tempo.

 

[Dan Shipway]

Thanks Calvin, I will definitely try this, do you know a comfortable way of being able to anchor your hand as its really uncomfortable playing anything when I return from the high e my arm feels really uncomfortable and wants starts coming into my body rather than staying put and I also have an issue with playing in general as when I appreciate or do anything picked instead of my hand movement is a straight line it is a curve that ends up with my hand being at a near 90 degrees angle.
I have neglected a lot of things up until now but I may try starting from ground zero and finding something that works.

 

[Ed Seith]

Slash and Jimmy Page made gajillions playing sloppy.

 

[Jak Angelescu]

@dan I definitely agree with Calvin. Finger strength and dexterity are the NUMBER ONE reasons for sloppy playing. I’d also like to point something out though: It’s great that you want to fix your mistakes but don’t let it destroy your confidence. There are hundreds of legendary players that are actually quite sloppy, but they’re still just SOOOOO damn good. They find their niches and no one gives a shit if they’re sloppy or not. But, since you DO want to fix it, let’s fix it!
First, I’m a little concerned when you mentioned “anchoring” your hand. Which hand? The rhythm hand? There is no style of music whatsoever where anchoring the entire hand is beneficial. Letting it ‘rest’ against the face of the guitar, yes. But you don’t want to actually anchor anything down. This will make cross-string work nearly impossible and will cause severe damage to the wrist and strain when rhythm playing. Your last statement about starting from zero may unfortunately be what you should do. You have to ‘unlearn’ bad habits and it sounds like you have learned and developed bad habits. But please don’t be angry! Papa Gates talked to me about how he too had to unlearn three decades of bad habits but made astonishing improvements in less than a year. I did the same! Your picking technique and rhythm hand is, in my opinion, far more important than the fretting hand when it comes to technique and speed in the beginning. If you can upload a video for us in any way, that would help. But I think from what I can gather you are in desperate need to fix your technique. if you’d like to Skype or go live with me on Instagram, we can do it that way too

 

[Dan Shipway]

Thanks for the huge amount of support first of all, I have unfortunately skipped over things that have been quite important and have as a result had very little groundwork on which to build on to ensure clean and easy playing. In a way it is a blessing that I have some knowledge prior to starting again but it is something that does need to be done to benefit me in the long run.
I will try and pot more often in the riffs page or elsewhere so my technique can be criticised and advice can be given.

 

[Dan Shipway]

I dont know if it may affect anything but my guitar is a dinky so it is 7/8 size so could that affect how I rest my arm and how much resistance the body gives?

 

[Ethan Keeling]

Totally agree with Calvin. I heard something that Syn said I think, that when you slow something down, it works on muscles which arent usually trained as well as others. It’s like a 100m sprint compared to a marathon, they train similar things but in such a different way!

 

[Firsty Lasty]

Imo the way to fix sloppy playing is slow down and listen carefully to what you’re doing, focus on the details, and get good by doing correct good-sounding practice relentlessly. You can give yourself incredible results with very basic foundational exercises. Try this:
e 7 8 10 7 8 10 repeating as triplets.
It looks pretty easy, right? That’s not even a lick, it’s not even big enough to be a “picking exercise”, it’s just three notes. However, you’re probably going to have to slow way way way down below your top speed if you want it to sound perfect. Move this around to different strings or frets as you please.
Basic exercises like this are powerful. They require a large number of repetitions (start thinking in thousands or tens of thousands), but the benefit they bring is no joke.

 

[idssdi]

I second Ed
They are incredibly good songwriters though

 

[Dan Shipway]

I think in terms of anchoring my hand the problem may have been sorted, instead of keeping my wrist level with my arm i raised it slightly and it is slightly fatiguing as it is not my usual position but it makes going across stings easier so I will try that and see how it goes

 

[Calvin Phillips]

Maybe take a video dan. I’m having an issue understand how your arm moves on the high e.but if you cant keep it steady on the high string it’s a good chance your muscles arent used to being hoisted while picking there. That’s my guess atleast. If you do the exercise firstly suggested that may help. Just play the three notes for now.
Then maybe do like 7 8 10 7 8 12. Get all 4 fingers in. Or you can keep with three and do 7 8 12 14 15 17 and work your way up. Either way you’ll definitely get stronger.

 

[Ed Seith]

I think everyone has their own balance of precision and sloppy that works for them. Most of us who tend to be sloppy wish we had what it took to NOT be sloppy, but it’s just not a natural part of how we approach the instrument. I do still work on it, and I know that my “metal minute” Instagram videos (https://www.instagram.com/edmaninaz/) are sloppier than usual, because I’m using those to get comfortable with myself and my playing in front of a camera, which I haven’t had a lot of exposure to.
Regardless, I find a lot of the YouTube players and younger people out there to be way too precision and mechanical for my tastes, and there’s a part of me that finds my sloppiness almost a “rebellion,” but I can also acknowledge that’s at least partially an excuse. Syn is usually REALLY precise, but he’s comfortable with a little sloppiness to get a point across or to be in the moment. I find that guys like Misha, Mark and Jake (Periphery) are a lot more focused on laser precision, and often at the expense of spontaneity or feel (The new album, Hail Stan, is fucking BRILLIANT though).
I guess what I’m saying is that perfect technique is a nice and important GOAL, but don’t let it interfere with being MUSICAL.

 

[Dan Shipway]

I think one of the large issues is that my arm rests on the edge of the body quite a bit and it means to reach up to the high E, I have to do it all with my wrist because its hard to move my arm on the body, I have my syn custom coming soon which is matte and has an arm contour, my strat seems easier to play with the arm contour so maybe that will help but feedback on the video is greatly appreciated as always

 

[Calvin Phillips]

Could honestly be as small as your guitar shape not being what you need. But if you are resting the arm you may wanna try to separate it. That may be creating unwanted tension on your wrist.

 

[Sayonil Mitra]

Your picking hand position is not conventional but that is ok. Its somewhat Marty Friedman but not completely Marty, just a little bit. In that case, your wrist needs to be much more flexible and loose than players who pick in conventional way. I am not experienced enough to completely gauge the situation from this video. But still I think you are not loosening your wrist, which I myself had to struggle with some years back. There should be no tension whatsoever in your wrist. You may need to go back to basic picking practices (like playing chromatics) to reduce your wrist tension.

 

[Dan Shipway]

It seems that the main barrier was my picking technique, I adopted a flat picking technique and for the longest time It worked but it took so much work from my arm to move the pick and it just didn’t work, I am working on playing with this new style but the first barrier is down and now it is technique.

 

[Sayonil Mitra]

Yeah. take time to adapt to these techniques, don’t rush. results will show.

 

[Dan Shipway]

It’s such a small thing that can make such a big difference, my pick is still virtually flat with a slight difference mas made it a lot easier to play, can’t wait to see how everything plays out.