Thought it would be cool to start a thread to get a few helpful tips from each other. If you’ve found something out that helped you, please share it.
Here lately I’ve been watching the left hand (fret hand) technique of some of the great flatpickers out there and noticed a few things. One is how little they move their fingers, very economical movements. Watching Tony Rice or Kenny Smith play something at the speed of light, they leave their fingers almost flat on the strings and you can barely see them move (which makes it tough to steal their licks ). I notice when I try to play something really fast, I raise my fingers too high off the strings and I know it robs me of speed. Since I’ve been working on this I’ve noticed a lot of improvement and my left hand (fret hand) is starting to leave my right hand (picking hand) behind.
Another thing I’ve noticed is the angle that they hold their fretting hand. When I play, the palm of my left hand is almost pointing towards me. When I make sure the palm of my left hand is pointing straight up, it really cleans up my playing and I fret things alot more cleanly and have a better range of movement especially on long stretches. Watching Bryan Sutton, he almost has his palm facing away from him (towards the headstock), and we all know how clean/fast he is.
Anyways, just thinking out loud here.