Picking and fretting speed

[Psyence88]

Heya, I'm curious to know if it's normal for the fretting hand to be generally faster than the picking hand, for example I do a lot of hammerons and pulloffs to voice my leads and licks, picking the first and last note, it's a habit I guess. But is it a normal one? Should one rely on hammering and pulling the strings for speed of a note? Like if I wanted to ascend a scale should I pick every note? Or pick the essentials and hammeron the rest? Bare in mind that I alternate pick and I can do it quite fluently(well by my standards haha.)

Thanks in advance.

 

[Pink Unicorn Horsey]

Re: Picking and fretting speed

I'm not sure there's a "normal" proficiency of one hand -- say, the fretting hand -- over the other. Like you, my friend is much better with his fretting hand than he is with his picking hand. I, on the other hand, have an easier time with my picking hand and more trouble with the fretting hand. In my opinion a guitarist should strive to have equally good proficiency with each hand. Professional body builders seek symmetry in their body and would never accept having, for example, larger biceps on the right arm than on the left arm. Similarly, a professional basketball player should be able to dribble and manipulate the ball just as easily with either hand.

Regarding your question about hammer-ons and pull-offs (legato phrasing) vs. individually picked notes, it's all a matter of what you'd like to achieve with your particular sound and style. EVH uses lots of legato phrasing, which sounds very cool to my ears. Of course when I hear someone like George Lynch play a phrase in which each note is picked at high speed I'm quite impressed. Again, the ideal guitarist is able to take advantage of both techniques so that how he/she plays is dependent upon the desired sound rather than the ability to perform one and not the other. It's always better to have more tools in the toolbox.

- Keith

 

[brukakis]

Re: Picking and fretting speed

If you find one hand is faster than the other, then you have something to work on to get them up to speed.

Don't know how disciplined you are about alternate pickings, upstroke downstroke upstroke, but some exercises to use that over some patterns with a metronome will help you.

Start at 60-80bpm and work up to 140-160 or higher will help.

 

[Ocifer]

Re: Picking and fretting speed

I find that it's not that one hand is faster or slower. You can probably hammer on faster than you can pick, but then again, you can probably tremelo pick faster than you could change notes while doing it. It's all about getting the two to work together.

I agree with KGMESSIER in that it's good to have a variety. There's nothing really 'wrong' with being better at legato. Conversely, if your legato playing isn't up to par with your picking, it's no biggy. As long as you're happy with where you are in either skill area, it's all good.

No excuse not to practise, though.