Originally Posted by: wwjndjkHi I have been playing guitar off and on for about 15 years.[/quote]What style of music are you playing? Sounds like rock or metal with an overdriven guitar?
[quote=wwjndjk]No matter what I do or practice, I can't seem to play more than one string up and down strokes fast while palm muting on the bridge. The upstrokes basically just sounds percussive and has no tone. My pick also gets caught on the upstroke which I believe is the problem.
That sounds like basic mechanics. A few things are important in this situation.
1. Relax. You have to be as relaxed as possible to play fast & smoothly. The more tension you hold in your hand, arms, body the harder you are making in on yourself.
2. Light picking touch. Don't squeeze the pick too hard.
3. Lightly graze over the string. Do not dig in with the pick. that just makes it harder to get across the string.
4. Angle the pick so you can glide just the tip over the string. Just far enough that you can smoothly return with an upstoke. You will have to experiment with the right amount of angle to use. It's a little different for everyone. But some amount of angle is necessary to avoid keeping the string parallel to the strings which makes it difficult to graze over the string smoothly.
5. Use very minimal motion. This is the hardest thing to get used to for some people. Fast alternate picking requires extremely economically motion. You want to get across the string with as little motion as possible to get back & forth as smoothly as possible.
I'm not sure what you skill level is. So here's a beginner video aimed at picking technique.
https://www.guitartricks.com/lesson.php?input=13957
And here's a more advanced picking lesson.
https://www.guitartricks.com/lesson.php?input=10335&s_id=287
These tutorials cover palm muting if that is part of the problem you are having.
https://www.guitartricks.com/lesson.php?input=21152&s_id=1693
https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=2281
Hope that helps!
