I'm Getting Frustrated!!

TSJMajesty

TSJMajesty

Rock Star
Messages
7,851
I am not trying to be a shredder. But several years back I got inspired to get serious in trying to develop my chops to as good as they could be, and I zeroed in on learning all sorts of John Petrucci licks, to use as exercises, and also to help keep my brain sharp as I age, sort of like how some people like to do crossword puzzles.

But there's a few fast licks I do want to be able to play, many of you have heard this from me before, one of which is the 32nd-note run in Home at about 4 minutes in.

I've been at this thing for fucking years, starting with breaking lots of bad habits in my technique, and learning how to pick slant properly, changing my grip, etc. Since I never applied myself, in some ways it was like I was starting anew, which is why it has taken me so long.

I rotate through all sorts of JP riffs, so it's not like I work on one thing constantly, but I have put a shit ton of effort into the Home lick, and I just can't seem to get it down, and it's really starting to get discouraging. It's like the one riff of his I really wanted to nail.

Some days I just feel like, Fuck IT! Just give up. What is the point anyway?

I don't know what to do. After I'm good and warmed up (about an hour), I can just about play it through at 80 bpm, which is right on my edge of ability. I can maybe trem-pick a single note @ 85 for a couple measures, but to play the riff at that tempo, I have to break it into pieces, cuz I can't keep up. I've tried everything.

I even have to back-track some days, and re-work the muscle memory at slower tempos.

Idk. I'm just discouraged and needed to vent a little. I don't want to give up and admit it's simply beyond my reach, because admitting defeat is fucking depressing! But I've put so much time into this, it's like, at what point do you just call it?

This is the lick @ 90 bpm, isolated:


1766588177451.png

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1766588345209.png


Sigh
 
First, that's not an easy lick, so give yourself some credit.

I noticed that for hard stuff you get stuck on, sometimes "just practicing" doesn't cut it. You have to intentionally identify your issue and work on it. Record yourself, slow it down etc. What is keeping you from playing it at speed ? Is it hand coordination, is your pick getting stuck on the strings, are you lacking left hand speed etc. Once you've identified what exactly is keeping you from playing it perfectly, then look on how to improve it, do different exercises. You said you've been at it for years, do you practice it every day ? Consistency is key. If you practice it a few weeks, then don't for a few months etc, that's not ideal, do it 15 minutes a day and add other exercices to address the issues you've isolated. You'll get there, no doubt about that.
 
Uh, JP is not exactly easy for normal humans to copy! Less so as you age. For example, no amount of practice will get me to the point where I can throw a football like Tom Brady.

It's good to push yourself with practice, but not to the point you get discouraged. It's hard to find the right balance sometimes but maybe focusing on some other things for a bit and coming back to it in a few months might help?
 
thatd take me about fifteen years to work that out if i could even distinguish those notes in the first place.

i wouldnt sweat it- theres no test on monday, and thats a high bar for sure. theres nothing wrong with targets- but theres always someone better, faster, stronger- so revel in getting it as fast as y can! ive been banging away at leo kottke songs for thirty years, hell... john hurt songs, and i cant always nail down somebody elses technique after decades. im okay with it.
 
Petrucci is Petrucci because he's Petrucci. I wouldn't get discouraged, but I also wouldn't focus too heavily on it if I felt like progress wasn't being made. I'd move on to something else for a while and revisit it again. But I do think growing as a player means accepting that there are some things you can't do, either because of genetics or because we're trying to mimic other players quirks that don't align with our own. It's not about giving up, it's about prioritizing time. Me personally, I'd rather spend the time honing in on my own intuitions and building something which I feel is unique.
 
That's a pretty terrifying lick even at 80bpm. Without seeing exactly how you're playing it any advice to help improve it is going to be guesswork. There's always going to be multiple, often conflicting, strategies to improve the mechanics as well as different mental approaches.

What I still say is that diversifying your vocabulary by practicing exercises and licks by other players can be a rewarding way to find "what works for you" rather than simply focusing on a single player. Start by going through some of JP's favourite players like Morse and Di Meola for example.

If one of your goals is to stay sharp mentally, having a diverse set of styles and repertoire to practise might be better than hyper fixating on a single lick.

I remember trying to play the fast arpeggios in Tornado of Souls for years and feeling like it was unattainable. I was noodling around with some rudimentary gypsy jazz licks one day and had a realisation I could apply a particular idea to ToS and cracked it. It also made me realise that Marty's unorthodox right hand makes LOTS of sense for what he plays.
 
My suggestion would be find a great teacher. I have been playing for years and still take lessons. There is always someone out there from whom you can learn. Randy Rhoades was taking guitar lessons up until the day he died. Alex Scolnick went back to school to learn Jazz guitar. Even Neil Peart, at the top of his game, was taking lessons to learn Jazz drumming. A great teacher will help you get past those blocks and help you next level.
 
My advice: slow it down and focus on all the picking dynamics… and cheat (ok, not really). JP is a beast at alternate picking Every. Single. Note. But maybe you can benefit from some economy picking, starting with an upstroke instead of a downstroke, mixing some hammer-ons / pull-offs with staccato, etc.

I found out at a NOT so early age that all my heroes did somethin’ (Yngwie with economy picking, Paul Gilbert pulling-off when changing directions, etc). All but… Petrucci. Damn it. Disregard this whole comment.

I hate you John (not really lol).
 
Thanks for all the replies so fast!

To address a few comments...

I don't practice it every day, but not too many days go by w/o me practicing it, sometimes for hours, with breaks to other riffs mixed in. Maybe I should hit it every day, even if for 15 minutes.

I agree about our own natural limits. I use Jerry Rice as my football player analogy, "No matter how much I train, I'll never run as fast as him." BUT, I can play that last upper part consistently at 90 bpm (even if it's only 1 beat, lol), so that makes me feel like if I could just get my picking speed up to 90 for 65 notes, I could get it.

I do vary my exercises a lot, granted it is 90% JP's stuff, I work on sweep arpeggios, tapping, Pentatonic, triplet rhythm crunch stuff, sextuplets, legato runs, the slow melodic stuff, and so much more. I just stay mainly with JP's music because he's my favorite player, and I feel there's enough diversity within his material to last me the rest of my life. Heck, I've found new licks that I've never seen him do, just from the latest album.

I have isolated the tricky stuff, so the mechanics of it are pretty much a done deal. And I am still progressing, but if my progress was plotted on a graph, the curve is almost flat at this point. But I can almost reach out and touch it, which is why I haven't yet made peace with throwing in the towel.

There are other riffs of his that even though I practice them, I'm not even trying to get them up to speed! But they're still good for practicing technique, I think.

As for applying what I've learned to something original, that may happen at some point. But I'm still at the part where I'm trying to get a handful of solos/parts of solos up to tempo. Things that are more within my reach than this particular riff.
 
Couple more replies, thanks so much!

I may very well explore a teacher.

As for the inner workings of this riff- I have explored the various possibilities, and this one is best strict alt-picked. BUT, I am actually sneaking in some hammer-ons, because when I attempt it at 85-90 bpm, my picking just cannot keep up. So if I end up hammering-on 3 out of 8 notes every other beat, I'd be totally fine with that.
 
TSJMajesty said:
I am not trying to be a shredder. But several years back I got inspired to get serious in trying to develop my chops to as good as they could be, and I zeroed in on learning all sorts of John Petrucci licks, to use as exercises, and also to help keep my brain sharp as I age, sort of like how some people like to do crossword puzzles.

But there's a few fast licks I do want to be able to play, many of you have heard this from me before, one of which is the 32nd-note run in Home at about 4 minutes in.

I've been at this thing for fucking years, starting with breaking lots of bad habits in my technique, and learning how to pick slant properly, changing my grip, etc. Since I never applied myself, in some ways it was like I was starting anew, which is why it has taken me so long.

I rotate through all sorts of JP riffs, so it's not like I work on one thing constantly, but I have put a shit ton of effort into the Home lick, and I just can't seem to get it down, and it's really starting to get discouraging. It's like the one riff of his I really wanted to nail.

Some days I just feel like, Fuck IT! Just give up. What is the point anyway?

I don't know what to do. After I'm good and warmed up (about an hour), I can just about play it through at 80 bpm, which is right on my edge of ability. I can maybe trem-pick a single note @ 85 for a couple measures, but to play the riff at that tempo, I have to break it into pieces, cuz I can't keep up. I've tried everything.

I even have to back-track some days, and re-work the muscle memory at slower tempos.

Idk. I'm just discouraged and needed to vent a little. I don't want to give up and admit it's simply beyond my reach, because admitting defeat is fucking depressing! But I've put so much time into this, it's like, at what point do you just call it?

This is the lick @ 90 bpm, isolated:


View attachment 56987
View attachment 56988View attachment 56989

Sigh
Click to expand...


Where do you fall off once you start playing it? Do you have all the notes memorized so your fingers are going to the right frets without having to think before hand?
 
DrewJD82 said:
Where do you fall off once you start playing it? Do you have all the notes memorized so your fingers are going to the right frets without having to think before hand?
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's ingrained in memory, almost without looking.

On beat #2- 10-8-6-8-10, I have a little trouble keeping that in time, and then right after that, getting that next string change clean. Then the next problem area is losing speed on the e and b strings as it moves up.

If I have 3 notes on a string, then an outside string change to a higher string, I can do that up to tempo, np. But when it's 5 notes on a string, then the string change, I have trouble with that. Needs more practice.

And the hardest part is that position shift to catch the last lick up at the 16th position.
 
Counted as 16th notes, I just ran it from 80 to 160, in 10 bpm increments, playing it several times perfectly before moving on.

It gets a little loose at 150, but at 160 I'm noticing my left hand fingering starts to lag a little, before my picking speed starts to fall behind. :unsure: I have to skip a note here and there to be able to stick the ending, and I start to have trouble with that 5-note-then-outside-string-change. But I can pick the whole thing thru at 160. I just trip a little with a couple string changes.

I can get both fixed- the string change by just working on that in isolation at slower speeds, and the finger speed, I just need to do some 1-2-4-2-1, etc. exercises over and over, @ 160. Maybe a good time to use speed bursts- 3x's @ half speed, then twice @ regular tempo. (per Ben Eller)

The bigger problem is I start tensing up way too much at 160. :(

So I gotta get those 3 things worked out before I can go any faster. But that's a big gulf from 160 to 180!! (70 bpm to 80 bpm, counted as 32nd notes.)

I'll just have to tell Mike he HAS to play it 10 bpm SLOWER for me, through that riff. :rofl
 
Man, what a masochist you are, Tom! :hmm


:rofl

I won't give any advice, because I am pretty sure I can't play it, and doubtful anyone
who has replied here could either. So.... good luck, keep grinding, and not a damn thing
wrong with lowering the bar. No one can do everything. Not even JP!
:LOL:


Merry XMas! May Santa bring you more speed and less tension.
:chef
 
Just two points that can't be argued about:

1) There's physical limits for each and every human being.

2) There's different physical limits for different human beings.

That's basically all one needs to know.
 
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