Originally Posted by Freepower

Hehe, that sounds great! I would suggest you practice most of your licks in different groupings. Some things sound REALLY cool in a "wrong" grouping. My favourite is playing 5 note groupings in 16ths, I use and abuse that all the time.

Originally Posted by llBlackenedll

I don't really get why everyone would play it as triplets (as you say they do) if it was 16ths, it's either one or the other. The note value is about the duration of the note relative to the beat, not which note of the pattern is accented. Is this just a general lick you found that's Paul Gilbert-ey or do you have a link to it? It looks like a lick that would be played as sextuplets and chances are, it is. If there's a longer gap between the 3rd note and the 4th note, it's not straight triplets, it's more like some kind of gallop - again, chances are, there shouldn't be a gap.

Having said that, it's good for you to practise stuff that is normally triplets/sextuplets and trying to accent it as 16ths (same goes the other way around), it'll really help with your timing in general. The main tip for doing it really is to play to a metronome, play really slowly, and really, really accent the 1st note for each grouping (so 16ths, ONE e and a TWO e and a, for triplets, ONE and a TWO and a). Or however you choose to count... (TA-ka-di-mi or whatever).

Oh, another thing - you say you're doing it outside picking (as Gilbert suggests for similar patterns I've seen) so I assume you're starting with an upstroke. Which is fine, it's good to practise, but it's worth also trying it inside picking (starting with a downstroke in this case) as I (and many others) find this harder and it does need to be practised.