#172 - The 6 BAD Habits That KILL Your Guitar Progress!

Hello Bernth! First of all, thanks for your teachings and all the content, you do it really really well! I have a doubt about pull offs. I tend to perform them by moving my finger to the bottom, and then the string will release and hence, the pull off sound is there. But the issue here is that I make noise with the string below because of moving my finger to the bottom. Am I doing something wrong? Maybe the overall move-my-finger-down-to-release-string technique is wrong or maybe I just have to practice it more so I just move it just enough to release the string and not touch the string below. Also when I do this, I tend not to curve the fingers enough so I can mute the below string noise when releasing, but you also mentioned that it's good to curve the fingers to avoid noise, so I'm a bit stuck here. Also, a second doubt is that when I perform hammer-ons, I tend to increase the strength I do with my thumb, and maybe I should not, but this reminded me of the advice you give of not pressing the fretboard too hard.

Alejandro Seguí

Thanks! The link seemed to have expired though..

Down for maintenance, will be online later today again! :) Thanks for your patience!

Bernd Brodträger

Hi, Bernth! Dropbox link is not working :(

Максим Перфильев

That makes totally sense! Thanks a lot Bernth

Tanja Jerkovic

What a great question/topic! Working with a backing track can be more musical for sure (learning to play laid back, learning to introduce dynamics into your phrasing, learning to 'groove') but it can also be a bit deceiving. Certain music styles are quite forgiving and if the backing track is louder than your playing, it will sometimes sound good - even if it isn't :) So I really prefer the unforgiving click to work on my timing, I immediately hear if there's a problem and I can work on adjusting. This goes for timing/technique exercises! But when it comes to improvisation/recording, it's great and more musical to work with backing tracks for sure!

Bernd Brodträger

I really like to work with these: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bernth-kemper-33353734 Hope that helps :)

Bernd Brodträger

Parterre!! Ohhh...Erdgeschoss ;-)

Daniel Lager

Hi Bernth, thanks for this awesome video! You recommend to play to a click on a regular basis in conjunction with recordings. I am just wondering if playing to a backing track instead of playing to a click brings the same progress when it comes to timing. Would love to hear your opinion

Tanja Jerkovic

Hi Bernth! Any chance of sharing your clean kemper profile?

The way I was always taught was to play to a tempo that you can control and play cleanly. Then periodically play at a tempo that is way out of range, and then back to the controlled clean playing. You essentially teach your brain "this is what I want to play", and then "I want to play at this speed", and then reinforce what you want to play again. This builds muscle memory and sort of tricks the brain into helping you speed things up.

David B Wilkins

Wow thank you Bernth for your quick response :) Like you said, I had never practiced muting the strings consciously (with the difference that I haven't noticed an improvement xD). I hope that more people show interest in this topic, since I consider it fundamental, and you could give us more insights and exercises to improve. Best regards!

José Iván Aguilar

Hi Bernth, awesome video like always! 1 question: i‘ve heard that you should never make mistakes while practicing - so always choose a tempo where you can play perfectly and have full controll over every motion. Great results with that approach for me for many years. Now you tell us that we should always challenge ourselfes... can you give me more detail about that please? How much challenge is good? Or did I do it wrong for many years?

Michael Schurtz

Erdgeschoss Oida 😂

That's a great question! I'd love to do a more in-depth video on muting sometime to answer that clearly. Muting is an interesting topic for me because I never practiced it consciously when I was younger, it just improved a bit over time until I figured out that everything plays a role in this (picking technique, finger technique, sound, style,...) - if the community votes for a muting lessons, I'd be open to take a deep dive for sure :)

Bernd Brodträger

I agree, it can be helpful to have a bit of distortion to hear if the notes are overlapping or if there is some unwanted noise - I have that under control by now, so I switched to really isolating the notes and picking strokes :) My biggest challenge right now is making each note audible and in time at very high tempos - I want to sound as clean as possible! So the clean or slightly distorted sound has helped with that so far :)

Bernd Brodträger

I had a Digitech Death Metal pedal and worked exactly the same way haha! Those were the days :)

Bernd Brodträger

Thanks for asking, Chad! Send over a message, I'd love to help :)

Bernd Brodträger

My biggest issue is that my mind drifts while im practicing. They call it having a wondering mind. Always catch myself thinking about other insignificant things. Also I have the habit of watching YouTube videos while practicing boring things. Its a real distraction.

Hello Bernth, just wondering how you would help with creating a practice plan.

Thanks Bernth! All these tabs, videos and play alongs make it so much more efficient to progress!

Dan Hughes

I have a doubt about muting the noise from strings. It is clear to me that, when playing the higher strings, my picking hand keeps the lower strings muted as I move through the strings. But when playing the lower strings, the higher ones produce noise due to the vibration, should you recommend to use my index fretting finger (as in barre chords) to mute these strings, or how you could prevent this noise? I understand that curving the fingers prevents touching other strings, but they are left open which causes the noise. Thank you very much for your answers. Best Regards!

José Iván Aguilar

As I am just re-discovering our beautiful instrument after a approx. 15-year pause again (and the encouragement and enthusiasm Bernth is giving has a lot to do with that, and I‘ve never been a good Guitar-player), nearly every topic seems to be a challenge for me 😱🤪… But here are my most severe struggles for me at the moment: 1. Timing: I try to include the rhythm pyramid in different bpm to my practice routine. Smooth switching between different note values is challenging, quarter note triplets are hell! 2. Thumb positioning: no, it‘s not the pinky at the moment. I constantly feel my thumb hopping around at the back of the neck with no general comfort position at all and sometimes this limits my playing. Have to adress this topic further… 3. Technique: definately hand synchronisation and speed development. Two exercises that really help: 1. spider workout and 2. 4-finger-picking (one finger per fret) in the same position over all strings E to e, one fret up and the same backwards e to E over the whole neck to a click (semi chromatic). There is so much more to do, but when I adress too many „Baustellen“ (German word for construction sites 😜) at once, frustration would be bigger than joy while playing and that definately shouldn‘t happen, right? 😉

Michael Sax

Have you tried the spider-walk with 1-3, 2-4 pairing yet? It's humbling to see how weak one's finger coordination really is... :'D (Really improved even after a few days though - so it works wonders!)

Robert Bjärmyr

When I was a kid I had max distortion on the amp AND a Metalzone pedal cranked up as well... :') Luckily these days, even my hi-gain songs are pretty gainless but pack way bigger tone! \m/

Robert Bjärmyr

I think this is a good point. I feel like whenever I am playing something and my technique is good, I love the tone too. Whenever I can’t play something I feel like I want to tweak the amp because I convince myself that if it sounded better, I could play it better.

Yes! Lower the gain! This is my go to move when I’m drilling down on my technique. So glad this is in the video.

I can't seem to get my fretting hand to move as quickly as my picking hand

Ronald Gillespie

Not being into Metal but jazz, distortion is not a not a problem. But your videos are great!

Robert Eckert

haha I laughed so hard at the sub reminder ;). Good lesson Bernth!

Czor Salad

Erdgeschoss!

Jimmy Grieve

The ground floor or first floor is very important when creating a building foundation. In your guitar progress. 😉

Hector Jimenez

Good points here. Actually working on my technique generally has made everything sound better, and I thought I'd need to change my pickups on my guitar (basic manufacturer stock ones) but working on playing better and then being constrained not to buy a new pedal to improve the sound made me think that I might not need those new pickups at all. Instead, I still need to work on a very general issue: how I hold the pick. I've found a pick that I like the most (Ibanez Sand Grip) but I still experiment with how I hold it. All these exercises have been most helpful.

Lauri Laurila

One question regarding the sound item. For Sweep picking, I tought that it was better to work with slight distortion (especially with the rolling finger shape) to be sure we have a good clean technique. Without distorsion, sweep picking technique seems less noisy without parasite sound. What do you suggest?

kevin Dumont

Biggest struggle for me is 3rd & 4th finger independence - definitely leading to some unwanted string noise in my legato technique, and some hand synch issues in fast passages with alternate picking.

Dennis Bradley

Thanks so much for sharing that, Kevin! I'm sure you can do it, those are some really fast speeds already :)

Bernd Brodträger

Hello, My biggest frustration is the 16th note triplet at high speed (stuck at 100BPM). I work hard the lesson #167 but it's become noisy and not clean at 110BPM. same for the lesson #145 with the solo part in 16th note triplet!! Stuck at 90/100BPM. But thanks to your advice and with hard work I will do it :)

kevin Dumont