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For those with picado skills, I'm wondering your thoughts:

Over the years, the progress in picado I've made seems to have to do with the efficiency of movement around finger placement. Yes of course speed and all the rest, but once upon a time I remember the whole thing being equally challenging: playing the notes evenly, and crossing the strings.
Now the notes aren't the problem - it's crossing the strings. Picado's that travel 5 and 6 strings I stumble on, whereas playing on one string - especially in position - isn't hard.

The feeling is that when playing on one string, everything is tightly centered around that string. But when crossing strings, it's like there's a huge jump. Almost like if a drummer was playing 16ths on a snare, and then suddenly jumps over to the tom.

Am I alone? Any suggestions for how to approach this?

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I switched to conventional technique almost 6 years ago

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Wow - time is flying...

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Its crazy is'nt it? It goes faster as you get older.

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ORIGINAL: ToddK

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For those with picado skills, I'm wondering your thoughts:

Over the years, the progress in picado I've made seems to have to do with the efficiency of movement around finger placement. Yes of course speed and all the rest, but once upon a time I remember the whole thing being equally challenging: playing the notes evenly, and crossing the strings.
Now the notes aren't the problem - it's crossing the strings. Picado's that travel 5 and 6 strings I stumble on, whereas playing on one string - especially in position - isn't hard.

The feeling is that when playing on one string, everything is tightly centered around that string. But when crossing strings, it's like there's a huge jump. Almost like if a drummer was playing 16ths on a snare, and then suddenly jumps over to the tom.

Am I alone? Any suggestions for how to approach this?

How long have you been regularly/daily practicing your technique?
Have you had one on one personal instruction at some point?

You said "over the years". Have you been working on it everyday for more than
5 years? Less than 3 years?
This has everything to do with how far along you should be.
You might have a special issue with string crossing OR you may just be
going through the normal learning curve.

People expect it all to happen way too fast.
These things take time. Not days. Not weeks. Not months. It takes many years.

I switched to conventional technique almost 6 years ago, and i am just recently feeling comfortable with 160bpm. And i had already played nylon string guitar for well over 30 years. More recently after my second child was born, i have less practice time, but i still get to it almost everyday, just not very long. But for most of those 6 years i was practicing picado fairly heavily everyday.

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Ive gotten to 16ths at 160bpm in one year. I will reach 200bpm in another 2 years max. Check back here in a couple of years,

Cool. Do you mean long lines? Like say G on the first string down to open E the 6th? I bet, sorry to sound pessimistic, in 2 years you will bottom out around 175 bpm. My guess is you can do some speedy bursts around 200 now though if you are warm. Well, we shall wait and see I guess!

Ricardo

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ORIGINAL: turnermoran

Thanks for the feedback Todd. I only came to nylon string and fingerstyle playing about 15 years ago after an initial 15 of pick playing.
I know I have a lot of inefficiencies in my playing and habits that I doubt I'll be able to change at this point, largely because I play for a living and don't have the time to commit to only playing in practice what will be better in the long run. (super slow-super efficient).
So currently I work on things like this:



This is an exercise I came up with as a way of minimizing "i" vs "m" favoritism. By playing 3 notes per string (more or less.. I vary that too), and playing i-m, but switching the rhythm between 8th and 16th notes, the point of "gear change" is constantly falling on different strings, at different places with different fingers. As you can see I get stumbled by it a couple times.

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Who needs picado when you have tirando? Its like climbing a mountain backwards just because you can...

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do you work on that Phryg/Whole Tone line starting with both i and also m?