I've never been a particularly fast player and used to always feel kind of lame due to it, until I read a Meshuggah interview a few years ago. One of the guys, can't remember which, said, 'It's not how difficult it is to play that matters, it's how it makes you feel.' That's stuck with me since, helped my approach a fair amount. I haven't really cared about speed at all after that, it is, as you said, very liberating. My practice mainly consist of scale runs and arpeggios over chord progressions that I write to suit the particular scale I'm learning. I try to focus on the musicality far more than speed, so I hoped that this would be a good way to learn utilization of scales. Any advice would be much appreciated though.
My astoundment regarding Guthrie is how clean his playing is. I can keep it pretty tight when regularly picking, but that articulately? As you said, I just need to practice. But still, when you hear playing that clean, every little mistake I make is just jarring. Patience is a virtue
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My big question here is about the ergonomics you mentioned. I had never heard the word before, had to look it up. It is defined as, 'the science concerned with designing and arranging things people use so that the people and things interact most efficiently and safely.'
So, how does one go about playing the guitar as efficiently and safely as possible?
It's incredibly frustrating because it seems like such a straightforward, common sense thing. I don't pick any differently from any other guitarist I've ever met. After about an hour of playing at comfortable speed, half my right hand will go completely numb and then my wrist starts to follow. This makes many things difficult, if not impossible. After the numbness kicks in, I can hold the pick and mute strings, and that's about it. My doctor gave me a wrist brace, that helps quite a lot, but I can't play in it. I just want to know what to do or what not to do, so maybe it won't get worse. And hopefully there might be something I can change that might make the numbness less pronounced. Seriously, any advice would mean the world to me. And thank you all for your replies!