right hand problems

[Mike Bunting]

Did you look though all the Moore exercises, starting at bar 15, they are all designed to work on the problem under discussion. Is there some thing that I'm missing in the original question? It seems that it is a fairly straightforward exercise in muscle training by repetition (not to diminish the original question). Since you brought up the topic, I've gone back and worked on them, so thanks for that.

[mandolirius]

Did you look though all the Moore exercises, starting at bar 15, they are all designed to work on the problem under discussion. Is there some thing that I'm missing in the original question? It seems that it is a fairly straightforward exercise in muscle training by repetition (not to diminish the original question). Since you brought up the topic, I've gone back and worked on them, so thanks for that.

Muscle training by repetition is a concept I'm quite familiar with. But there are certain situaions where this move must be executed very rapidly, say 5th fret on the A string to open E, then 5th fret on the A string again. I think there's a passage in Grey Eagle that requires that.

What I'm wondering is if anyone has any insights into those type of situations. If it's just a matter of repetition and muscle memory, I'm working on that. But what I'm asking is if anyone has anything else to offer. It is a discussion board, after all.

This is such a common problem, I can't help but feel there's more to say about it. But, I could be wrong about that. This thread hasn't generated a lot of interest so far. OTOH, you can get several pages about the best mandolin for under $300, or something like that. Maybe this is just the wrong kind of topic for this forum.

[Markus]

I would try the Moore open string exercises (the last ones) while fretting 0_2_3_2 and repeat. Combined with a metronome, this added enough difficulty for me to cause me to slow way down .... which has gotten things a lot cleaner for me. 100% right or slow and repeat.

I found some of these exercises immensely frustrating, but slow persistent daily practice, with some extended sessions have helped me round the corner. In my opinion, making this infuriatingly hard (and thus slow to play clean) was essential personally

[Mike Bunting]

In an earlier post, you mentioned loosening your grip on the pick. Did this yield any positive results? It seems to me that the more relaxed the muscles are, the faster they can respond to the brain signals.

[mandolirius]

Mike, I'm experimenting with grip. At first it was too loose and I didn't like the tone I was getting. I'm finding a looser grip helps a bit on the fatter strings. Doesn't seem to be making much difference on the A string. But I'm used to pinning the pick against the bone of my index finger so this "loose-grip" stuff is a new technique for me. I may try a lighter pick. I'm trying to decide whether to order a 40 or a 50 guage Blue Chip.

[Mike Bunting]

bump

[mandolirius]

bump

Thanks for the effort Mike but I don't think this thread is going to generate much interest. I'm a bit surprised. I thought this would be something a lot of people would have had experience with. It's funny, ask which mandolin to buy and people will be all over it. Ask a question about playing mandolin and you don't get much response. Maybe there just isn't much to say. I'll just keep "working the upstroke" and hope that time will help me eliminate this problem. Thanks to all who did contribute their thoughts.

[Mike Bunting]

Well, I've been scratching my head over this since it's one of the few topics these days that holds any interest to me, and I can only think of the old muscle training thing. Maybe there are no short cuts? But the thread has helped me 'cause I've dug up the Moore exercises to work on.

[mandolirius]

Well, I've been scratching my head over this since it's one of the few topics these days that holds any interest to me, and I can only think of the old muscle training thing. Maybe there are no short cuts? But the thread has helped me 'cause I've dug up the Moore exercises to work on.

Without naming names, there are a few contributors to this site I was hoping might respond to this appeal. But hey, no one's obligated to do anything so I really have no complaint.

As for shortcuts, I'm not a shortcut kind of person. I used to be but I am no longer. I made a deliberate change. Muscle memory and repetition is clearly the main solution for this particular problem. I guess what I was hoping for was a sense of perspective. I'd like to know what others were thinking and feeling as they grappled with this problem. How did they counteract the boredom that inevitably arises when doing the repetitive exercises like John Moore's?

Comraderie, support, empathy....I'm not sure what I was looking for. Maybe just basic interest in the topic, I don't really know. I'm feeling disappointment and I'm not sure why. Anyway, enough of that.....back to the John Moore exercises and the Mike Marshall video.

[Mike Bunting]

I don't think that these exercises need to get boring. This kind of learning is cumulative and a short period of time each day will add up in the long run. I've been trying to use chords while playing those 3 string patterns and stuff like that.
What's the Marshall DVD like, by the way?

[mandolirius]

It's good for technique, posture, fingering and that kind of thing. It doesn't get into teaching tunes, licks or anything like that. I only have volume one.

[ColdBeerGoCubs]

I would try the Moore open string exercises (the last ones) while fretting 0_2_3_2 and repeat. Combined with a metronome, this added enough difficulty for me to cause me to slow way down .... which has gotten things a lot cleaner for me. 100% right or slow and repeat.

You don't mean fretting them simultaneously, do you?

And I agree, these exercises can be mind blowing. "Walk away from the mando, Tim, walk away from the mando."

[ald]

You know, Mandolirius, I have a similar problem (amongst others) with the pick technique, particularly since I've adopted the "floating hand" technique, so I'm writing out of solidarity really. One thing I do, and have been doing for quite a while, is to take those parts where I mess things up and make my own exercises out of them to be practised daily (it is getting better). I also tend to think (all guess work of course) that tension is a key factor in tripping me up (I am working intensively on that, putting some of Fred's advice, in another posting, to good use. I think it is a good idea to watch your plectrum closely (only during exercises of course) to try and seize that moment when you trip up and try to make a mental note of what kind of feeling there is in your wrist when you stumble and how low or high you are poised. Another tip from Fred is to make sure your plectrum waggles a bit rather than just being a rigid piece of plastic as you slide through strings. I think Don Stienberg also spoke about making sure your pick hits in the same way every time rather than being hit and miss, so to speak (I'm paraphrasing him very badly). In fact if you use the search engine here and type in various key words you will no doubt discover a mine of information. A few suggestions to cheer you up a bit, I hope. I'm never going to be Stienberg, Bush, Grisman, Jethro, Delgrosso, Richter....(in no particular order) but I keep braving the problems and even if I never completely lick them I'm learning lessons from them all the time (don't take that as an airy-fairy suggestion, I think there are genuine benefits). And I do, as you obviously will in the future, notice various small and large improvements. How I stopped worrying and learned to love the... problems.

[Pikalot]

If I understand your problem correctly, your right hand probably feels like it's getting out of sync with that upstroke, going back and "grabbing" that upper string in a kind of jerky way... I am understanding you right? Whole right hand seems too lift up when you go back up?

[Markus]

You don't mean fretting them simultaneously, do you?

And I agree, these exercises can be mind blowing. "Walk away from the mando, Tim, walk away from the mando."

I explained that poorly to say the least.

On some of the later exercises, where you are playing patterns on two open strings going back + forth with proper up/down strokes - on one of the strings instead of having both be open, fret one of the two 0 -> 2 -> 3 -> 2 and back to open as the pattern repeats.

Instead of doing measures like this:

0---0---0---0---
--0---0---0---0-

Make them this:

0---0---0---0---
--0---2---3---2-

It doesn't matter if it's the higher/lower string - it sounds fine with both.

You could easily add the 5th fret, or make two of each note, or add any complexity you'd want ... but the second looks a lot closer to something I've played in a tune [or attempted to] than the open strings.

In my opinion, after time some of exercises become that - exercises.

Adding fretting to some of the 2 string down/up practice patterns forces your brain to have both hands synched and both doing something , I know it forces me to pay a lot more attention when I'm doing at very least.

It's not a shortcut, but after time I think we should add further complexity to our exercises to keep our brain involved and challenged. It's too easy after time to see a faster BPM on the metronome as a goal, when the real goal is using this muscle memory to play tunes. I tend to think that adding fretting to these muscle memory exercises can only be a good thing [once you've got the open-string versions down cold, perfectly clean and with good tone].

Then again, I'm no expert. If I was, I'd be selling you DVD's on how to correct this

[mandolirius]

If I understand your problem correctly, your right hand probably feels like it's getting out of sync with that upstroke, going back and "grabbing" that upper string in a kind of jerky way... I am understanding you right? Whole right hand seems too lift up when you go back up?

Yep, that's it exactly.

[mandolirius]

You know, Mandolirius, I have a similar problem (amongst others) with the pick technique, particularly since I've adopted the "floating hand" technique, so I'm writing out of solidarity really. One thing I do, and have been doing for quite a while, is to take those parts where I mess things up and make my own exercises out of them to be practised daily (it is getting better). I also tend to think (all guess work of course) that tension is a key factor in tripping me up (I am working intensively on that, putting some of Fred's advice, in another posting, to good use. I think it is a good idea to watch your plectrum closely (only during exercises of course) to try and seize that moment when you trip up and try to make a mental note of what kind of feeling there is in your wrist when you stumble and how low or high you are poised. Another tip from Fred is to make sure your plectrum waggles a bit rather than just being a rigid piece of plastic as you slide through strings. I think Don Stienberg also spoke about making sure your pick hits in the same way every time rather than being hit and miss, so to speak (I'm paraphrasing him very badly). In fact if you use the search engine here and type in various key words you will no doubt discover a mine of information. A few suggestions to cheer you up a bit, I hope. I'm never going to be Stienberg, Bush, Grisman, Jethro, Delgrosso, Richter....(in no particular order) but I keep braving the problems and even if I never completely lick them I'm learning lessons from them all the time (don't take that as an airy-fairy suggestion, I think there are genuine benefits). And I do, as you obviously will in the future, notice various small and large improvements. How I stopped worrying and learned to love the... problems.

Love the problems. That's great and that's what I've decided to do. I'm going to try and stop thinking about it as much as possible and just explore the movements of my right hand. I have lightened up my schedule by dropping one band and taking this year off from teaching. I've got a couple of DVD's that deal with this to work with and will probably pick up a couple more. I'm definitely giving it the winter and I'll see where I'm at next spring. Thanks for the responses, folks.

[Pikalot]

Yep, that's it exactly.

Ok... Play a scale slowly from top string to bottom and watch the tiny arc that occurs natually as you go down.. you may start 3 inches from the bridge, but by the time you get to the bottom string, you're 2 and 3/4 inches or so...

If you isolate the problem you have you may notice that instead of following the arc backward, you're trying to grab that note straight upward or even the opposite direction, toward your right shoulder instead of left...

See if that is what you are doing. if so, you can see what problem you'd have by "veering off the road" like that...

The fix is practicing "staying on the road"... isolate the stroke with a couple notes in front and behind it, and make it an exercise, over and over, slowly the first hundred times or so then speed up when you're feeling smoother...

One note though, make sure you're hand is moving up and down behind the bridge, not planted in one area so that you're reaching for notes... Sometimes you may be better off keeping your hand a little on the high side so an upstroke is easier than to get too low and have to reach up (granted, the heel of my hand only travels a tiny bit up and down, but it makes a big difference where it is when I pick a string). Go slow and diagnose yourself with all this in mind.

This happened to me in my version of "Old Joe Clark". I may have played OJK 3 or 4k times in my life (sometimes on guitar, some on mando, same upstroke), I don't know... But if I have, I bet I've played that note and the few around it in a constant repeating exercise 50k times! Certainly more. A quick calculation shows I do it about 500 times a month. That very move you're talking about is a part of my regular practice routine, all because it gave me so much trouble that I made it something I practice like a scale or crosspicking pattern. 25 times each time I practice, practice at least 20 days a month=500. I have several tricky moves I've made into exercises. Isolate any tough spot in a song and play it a hundred times (or a thousand times) by itself... It works. Boring, yes.... so move it around the neck a little, change the notes around it, etc. now and then.

[mandolirius]

Ok... Play a scale slowly from top string to bottom and watch the tiny arc that occurs natually as you go down.. you may start 3 inches from the bridge, but by the time you get to the bottom string, you're 2 and 3/4 inches or so...

If you isolate the problem you have you may notice that instead of following the arc backward, you're trying to grab that note straight upward or even the opposite direction, toward your right shoulder instead of left...

See if that is what you are doing. if so, you can see what problem you'd have by "veering off the road" like that...

The fix is practicing "staying on the road"... isolate the stroke with a couple notes in front and behind it, and make it an exercise, over and over, slowly the first hundred times or so then speed up when you're feeling smoother...

One note though, make sure you're hand is moving up and down behind the bridge, not planted in one area so that you're reaching for notes... Sometimes you may be better off keeping your hand a little on the high side so an upstroke is easier than to get too low and have to reach up (granted, the heel of my hand only travels a tiny bit up and down, but it makes a big difference where it is when I pick a string). Go slow and diagnose yourself with all this in mind.

This happened to me in my version of "Old Joe Clark". I may have played OJK 3 or 4k times in my life (sometimes on guitar, some on mando, same upstroke), I don't know... But if I have, I bet I've played that note and the few around it in a constant repeating exercise 50k times! Certainly more. A quick calculation shows I do it about 500 times a month. That very move you're talking about is a part of my regular practice routine, all because it gave me so much trouble that I made it something I practice like a scale or crosspicking pattern. 25 times each time I practice, practice at least 20 days a month=500. I have several tricky moves I've made into exercises. Isolate any tough spot in a song and play it a hundred times (or a thousand times) by itself... It works. Boring, yes.... so move it around the neck a little, change the notes around it, etc. now and then.

Ok, I'll take a look at that. The arc theory, I mean. I've never thought about that aspect of the stroke before. If nothing else it will give me something to focus on and that will help with the boredom factor.

Actually, the more I think about this, the more interesting it gets. I'm feeling like just focusing on this for a while. It's been a pretty busy summer but I'll have the time this winter and I think I'll take it. Thanks for the post, Sir Pickalot.

[doc holiday]

Mandolirius. I thought i'd stop by this thread. You're right, it is (to me as well) a more interesting thread than the "Best F style mando under $300" or the "My W is better than your G" or "X.....is as good as a Gilchrist." I've always enjoyed your playing (Sorrento), and this thread has caused me to spend more time with exercises that aim to improve playing technique...Don't get discouraged...

[mandolirius]

Mandolirius. I thought i'd stop by this thread. You're right, it is (to me as well) a more interesting thread than the "Best F style mando under $300" or the "My W is better than your G" or "X.....is as good as a Gilchrist." I've always enjoyed your playing (Sorrento), and this thread has caused me to spend more time with exercises that aim to improve playing technique...Don't get discouraged...

Thanks for the compliment and not to worry, I'm more determined than discouraged. I think the real secret is to do the exercises and let time do it's work. It helps to think about how the hand moves and really take a close look at that. I'm also trying to use a lot of real-life examples for exercise work. It's not hard to find examples of this move in lots of tunes.

[Pikalot]

Thanks for the compliment and not to worry, I'm more determined than discouraged. I think the real secret is to do the exercises and let time do it's work. It helps to think about how the hand moves and really take a close look at that. I'm also trying to use a lot of real-life examples for exercise work. It's not hard to find examples of this move in lots of tunes.

Mando, that last sentance... This is what Mike Marshall's approach to exercises is all about. He's tried to capture every possible move you'll likely ever make on a mandolin and incorporate it into his excersize regime.



You're in a perfect state of mind for Mike's dvd. Why don't you let me send you my copy for a month or 2? If you have a book or dvd I don't have, we can swap for awhile if you like, but I'd like to send it to you regardless... Why should it just sit on the shelf? I really think it would help. Just let me know, I'll wrap it up and send it your way. I'm not sure what it would cost to ship from here to Canada but if it's cheaper than you buying it I'd be glad to do so.

BTW, I'm all for supporting the musicians who make the instruction books and videos, but honestly, I doubt many of them would throw much of a fit if a few poor folks swapped material now and then in the name of becoming better mandolin players. (not suggersting you're poor, but I certainly am).

[John McGann]

Allow your entire hand to move with the pick- these kinds of problems are often due to anchoring the hand. Mobility is key.

Technique Tips
Sound Fundamentals DVD

[pickloser]

Comraderie, support, empathy

--This I can do. I just didn't have anything to offer regarding how to address your actual problem, except to repeat what has been suggested. I've been doing the John Moore exercises (altho I wouldn't call them his exactly; I've seen them in other folks' instructional material) since he was an instructor at Kaufman mandolin camp in 2009. They are kinda boring, but they have helped me get better sound with a down stroke on the E and an upstroke on the D string. I think a little work on these goes a long way too, with brief work at most practice sessions being more efficacious than using a lot of time at any one practice. They are more interesting to me if I play three string chords while practicing them. Those open, ringing strings almost hurt my ears, when played repetitively. Good luck with it. Your determined, methodical approach will surely yield good results over time.

[ald]

On a related topic, I am beset with the problem of going from a higher string to do a celtic-like triplet (I play all kinds of music, jack of all trades...).
For instance down and up on the E string and down to do a triplet on the A string (second part of Mason's apron). Or even on the same string with intervening notes. I keep missing every couple of times. I can do the triplet OK but my pick misses the string every now and then. Really frustrating. Suggestions please!