I've been looking forward to train my fretting hand so that my fingers stay as close to the fretboard as possible without them going radically away from it every time I move a finger. I have some control over them but usually as I exercises or play I realize that the fingers I don't use as much slowly stray away from the board and I can't really prevent them from moving or going back closer to the board.

What have guys learned on economy of motion and how to tame those fingers and keeping them close and not wiggle around all the time ?

Is this to become a faster shred player? Because if not theres no point in learning it. Being close to the fingers is all about increasing your speed more than anything, can help to keep it clean too but i use my strum hand for that. Have you youtube'd any videos on it?

I haven't been playing for too long, I try to incorporate good habits right away and I realize at the moment that for a lot of things I do my fretting hand, it has eratic behaviours that I try to control without much success, it's more for accuracy and keeping the fingers at least at the position they should be for precision rather than shred flurries of 600 notes per minute. I would like to play really fast eventually but this is not the time.

It also has to do with the fact that I use too much strength when playing "faster", my fingers are stiff and hard to control and not precise. This in return also makes my arm hurt pretty fast. I want to be able to break the habit. Of course less movement and using less strength results in more speed. But speed comes with time. I'm not going to try shredding when I am still working on my precision and getting a clean sound everytime.

The best I do so far is play very slow and increase the speed on the metronome when i feel comfortable. However even at slow speeds, I have problems controlling the movement upward of the all my fingers except the index. My pinky and major have a tendency to curl violently if I use the ring finger when the others are not fretting anything. The Major also slowly becomes more and more perpendicular to the board eventually almost pointing upwards. Not so good for precision.

So this inquiry is not so much to become a faster player immediately but incorporating good habits to become a better player and not having to struggle undoing with bad habits when it's time to become a faster player.

The slightly easier solution is to use a metronome and start slow. Till it becomes so second nature you have to them imagine the beat in your mind and free your self. That is then where soul and uniqueness of your own playing will appear. At the start its all mechanics of scales etc.

This site i think nearly everyone uses:
http://www.metronomeonline.com/

Don't use that for songs though. Use either guitar pro or backing tracks and slow them down... can't beat the real thing. Also playing songs will actually do it too.

You will find the slow songs specially of Joe's are infact harder to play than the fast ones. Its easy to go fast and create a likeness of joe's music as no one can hear all the notes all in one go at speed. Thats why my first song i ever learnt was Surfing with the alien. I was told the 12 bar blues is perfect beginning situation. Surfing had just that and a nice key change so it also open the door to music theory. It just made sense so easily.

How ever i spend 12 hours a day on guitar over the last 2 years and been playing for 3 years now. Learn surfing in my first year. I still can't get it perfect even now. But i aint satriani so i won't ever.

The economy motion i think most people know it as economy picking is a strum pattern of :

"down up down (down)" the one in brackets.. is the down stroke of the next string in the scale if you get me ... so you don't come back up before hitting the next string which would create inefficientcy and hand injuries at higher speeds.

Get your self a simple scale with 3 notes per string. Major will do. Use a metronome and do a "down up down" then down again on the next string. Thats the "economy picking" which im assuming is economy motion ?

To tame the fingers.. as Vai says.. to go fast you have to go extremely slow. So the metronome will do that for you. Spend a week on each timing and go up once a week. Obviously do other things like play songs etc. So your not doing just one exercise all week otherwise it gets boring :P

Yeah, it's all about creating good habits. Eventually, you 'll become better and faster like Sirchick suggested.

I have the bad habit myself. Need to use my pinky more :)

12 hours a day.. dude, where do you get your time? :o

When talking about economy of motion, I'm pretty sure that he is referring to his frethand flying around, not economy/sweep picking... I know guys like Petrucci preach how important economy of motion is, but the amount of time you focus on it depends on what your goals are...If you want to play at extreme machine-gun speeds like Petrucci, or Rusty Cooley, which a lot of the time sounds very un-musical, then maybe you should focus on it, but if your goals are more oriented towards making music, then I would focus on other things. On the new Satriani DVD, slow down the solo section in Crushing Day where there is a close-up of his hands, and you can see how far his fingers fly off the fretboard. There are many other examples on DVD, Youtube etc..., of Satch and his flapping fingers. I wouldn't worry about practicing economy of motion unless you are aiming for extreme speed.

Ecnomy of motion, is having the down strokes and upstrokes in the correct position at the correct timing and yes you are right it also applies to the fret board hand also!


Petrucci etc use what is known as "alternative picking" (this is different to "alternate" picking). But they do use alternate picking ALOT! lol!

How ever, Joe uses legato mostly and is a different style all togther as you can tell just from listening to his music, although Joe has done alternate picking "Time" solo uses it quite a fair amount and many others but I would not say it was his "main" choice of style.

If you watch his playing when playing fast, his picking hand is not doing much of the work. That would mean economy of motion on joe's strumming hand is less important in those situations, but very important on his fretting hand (such as having the right fingers on the right frets, which will allow the "free" fingers to move efficiently to the next sequence of frets that much more easier. A prime example would be a power chord using your index and second finger. This just doesn't feel right, so using the 3rd finger and index finger for a power chord is much better in terms of "ease of playing".

To say Petrucci's music is un-musical just because of his style of play.... is just way too narrow minded to think, hopefully you'll eventually embrace all music styles eventually ;) ! Heck I don't think Joe could even come up wtih some of complex stuff Petrucci does in Dream Theater, some of their songs are pure epic!

Hope all this helped Avenyr!

But Joe is still my favourite. :D :D :D

You clearly are not qualified to be giving advice on guitar technique...It's like the blind leading the blind....No offense, but it's not hard to tell (from 16 years of experience), that you haven't been playing very long, as some of your hit-or-miss advice seems to be culled from information taken in from the internet, rather than from actual playing experience. Please take note of the following:

1. Alternative picking and alternate picking ARE the exact same technique...The words are interchangeable for the same technique, although alternate picking seems to be the modern term of choice. Where are you getting your information from?

2. The title of the thread is "Economy of motion: keeping them close to the fretboard", which directly implies that he is seeking advice about keeping his FRETHAND fingers close to the fretboard. You are relating apples to oranges here. Economy of motion as it applies to this thread, has to do with the distance your fingers travel perpendicular to the fretboard. If you want to improve your economy of motion to facilitate speed, then you need to focus on keeping your fingers hovering close to the frets at all times, and on limiting the distance your fingers travel when they lift up off the frets, regardless of the right hand technique used. "Ease of playing" is a different matter...

3. Please don't put words in my mouth. I never said I didn't like Petrucci's music, I said some of his extremely fast runs are un-musical because they just sound like a machine gun...very staccato, and the musical quality is lost because the brain doesn't have time to process the notes as anything else. How you interpreted that as not being able to embrace all musical styles, and that I'm narrow-minded because of my opinion (that I'm entitled to) of one aspect of his playing, is baffling...Having a mindset that dictates that everyone must share the same opinion on music, or anything for that matter, is unreasonable to expect, and is very immature in nature...

Ok, now that I've said my piece, on to advice about how to optimize economy of motion as it applies to the frethand (If you feel you really need it, and you want to play VERY fast and precise) This is an exercise which could help you:

Place your fingers on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th frets on the low E string, and press down on the frets with a relatively firm pressure. Next, fret the 1st fret on the A string with your index finger while keeping your middle, ring, and pinky fingers fretting the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th frets of the low E string. Next, move your middle finger onto the 2nd fret of the A string while keeping your index, ring, and pinky firmly in place. Then, move your ring finger onto the 3rd fret of the A string while keeping the others in place, and then finally move the pinky onto the 4th fret of the A string while focusing intently on keeping the other fingers in place without lifting off of the fretboard AT ALL. Continue this until you reach the high E string, move up one fret, and continue the exercise from the high E to the low E string, move up chromatically one fret, and repeat until you can't take it anymore, or until you've covered at least up to the 12th fret (and back!). Holding your fingers in place on the frets will force the one finger changing strings to remain close to the fretboard, and will definitely help to improve your economy of motion. Seriously though, watch Satriani carefully....If you want to play his speedy legato runs, you don't need to focus on economy of motion, you need to focus on your touch, timing, and precision....Good luck!

wow i just had MASSIVE deja-vu here...

For me:

Alternative picking is sweeps and 2 hand tapping thats the alternative to using a plectrum, should also add, any thing out of the box is alternative picking too! Example - jimmy page using a violinbo or some one using a drum stick to experiment etc... i see it as the catergory for all things complex/different/wierd and wonderful etc.

Alternate picking is using a plectrum up and down motion.
Down picking is ... picking downwards (metallica use this alot on rythm)
Legato - using only hammer ons - pull offs without the plectrum.
Finger picking - country etc etc

Thats my infomation, and widely used here in my country, to make life easier to know what kind of playing people are doing when talking to other musicians in university... but your culture could be different and so teach different, but its just smart to give them catergories to make life easier when finding the right jam musicians.

It makes no sense to have 2 words for the same thing so i seperated them for my own self use and it is well used here in the Uk to catergories them in such a logic manner.

Alternative picking came about from alternative music (stuff like avant garde and music that doesn't fit in a catergory which is alternative, and any form of not in a catergory style of playing is "alternative") Your most welcome to use both words to mean the same thing I know what i know and will choose to not listen to you cos it just ilogical to have the same thing with two different words! How silly is that ! LOL

You can't have economy of motion on a fretboard without the economy of motion on the picking hand unless your not using the picking hand, so my advice is still relevant. And anyway, I have told him a fair bit of info in better detail via msn.

Learn it your own way, doesn't mean either of us are right or wrong , just different so stop going on, god almighty! Get some maturity would ya!

Theres no right of wrong playing in guitar, some one with 16 years of playing should know this, I am shocked you seem to think your right just cos you have 16 years of experience blah blah.

But yeh if you want to turn an advice thread into a pointless squabble for the second time like you did in the other thread, well you know where to go... talk to the wall im not interested.. post YOUR advice to avenyr NOT your OPINIONS on me or my advice, if i am wrong then post your own advice, Avenyr can choose by himself which advice to take.
So stop going on ffs!

Ok then, talking to you is like talking to a brick wall....One question: How long have you been playing, Sirchick? I want to know where all your "expert" advice is coming from. Some of the things you say are just amazingly ridiculous...Alternative picking did not come from alternative music, genius... :rolleyes: I have seen and heard many lessons from British guitar players who describe alternate and alternative picking as the exact same thing. I've been reading the British guitar magazines as well for quite a few years, and they definitely are not speaking the same language as you, kiddo. I also have many relatives in the UK, and have been over there to visit and jam many times...There was never a noticeable difference in 'musician speak' between the UK and the West. There IS a right and wrong way to learn as well, and you would know that if you had some more playing experience...If you are teaching someone how to play a G chord on the 5th fret of the low E string, can you honestly tell me that it doesn't matter, that there is no right or wrong way to learn? Have you not heard Vai, Satch, and various other virtuosos say again and again that if you practice something the wrong way again and again, that it will be very hard to reverse the bad technique you've learned? Come on now, give your head a shake and get rid of those cobwebs...Maybe its all part of the "I know everything" syndrome you young teens have that prevents you from absorbing logical information....The only one who is a pointlessly squabbling is you Sirchick, professing to be qualified to give educated information about things which you know little to nothing about...Wisdom does come with time, so you can disbelieve that I know a hell of a lot about the guitar from playing a hell of a lot for over 16 years, but the facts are the facts...I DO!!! How long did you say you'd been playing again? :lol:

Good for you mate...of course its like talking to a brick wall when talking to me cos im not reading your posts. Other than the first few lines cos your immaturity to not accept any one who has different learning approach to you. Just cos i learn it different makes it wrong does? Big head is the only thing i think in that situation, many do follow your method of having the 2 words meaning the same. Least im putting some logic into my usage of words. I refuse to call the same style of picking two different words, why confuse matters so I will for ever more put them as two different things regardless of your opinion of which i care little of, because this thread has nothing to do me / my views / my learning style and certainly not your opinion either.

It makes simple sense to seperate alternative from alternate. I don't give a rat ass if the entire world doesn't follow that method of catergorising. And again length of playing is irrelvant here.

Alternative has no logic relation to the word "alternate"! How ever ALTERNATING does. So alternate and alternating are the same picking to me. But alternative picking is not in my mind the same in the slightest.

I am using the term alternative differently to you so grow up... respect it...you don't have to agree and I don't give a damn if you don't and keep your opinions to yourself about my guitar knowledge.

Dudes!....

I suggest both of you need to smoke some :smoke: and have a couple of beers and get pissed :party3:

This is supposed to be a 'satriani friends forever' forum, so lets keep it more 'civilized' and stop 'name tagging' each other.
I don't wanna lock, move or delete this topic. There's so much love and time put into this thread, that it got into the wrong direction for a second.

Let me hug the both of you, and please behave ;)

Thank you mates

Don't you like this square? I such a nice green colour. I know because I've been painting with fingerpaint for over 20 years.

Who cares who knows best, whatever a technique is called is just a technicality basicly. If I like to call alternate picking 'strumming my strings with a turd', more power to me.

Didn't Shakespeare once wrote:

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.



And without picking sides, saying 'I know because I've been playing guitar for 300 years/writing books/am president of the united states/have an iq of 180/am stephen hawking etc etc.' is a fallicious argument in a discussion. ;)

Come on guys, chill out

Precisely my point! :P

The turd comment! lmfao that was good one!