2WPS redundant in light of cross-picking?

Playing Technique
#21

Strange, I make a double-trapped pickstroke at the switchover point (like a sweep)… is there a reason that it has to be double-escaped?

What’s the official written abbreviation, DEP (?)? And are you going to rename DWPS or UWPS? (Strangly “DWPS” would be “upward escape pickstroke,” I suspect.)

I am guessing that the problem with DEP is that it is delicate compared to SEP (is “singly escaped pickstrokes” either DWPS or UWPS)?

Anyway I like your new terminology.

DEP = double-escaped pickstroke?
SEP = singly escaped pickstroke (either DWPS or UWPS)?
DTP = doubly-trapped pickstroke (either DWPS or UWPS sweep)?
DWEP = downward escaped pickstroke (aka UWPS)?
UWEP = upward escaped pickstroke (aka DWPS)?
etc.?

Please define the official abbreviations ASAP! :thinking: But notation is fun, in a perverse way.

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#22

What do you mean by delicate?

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#23

“Delicate” in the sense that doubly-escaped the pick has to go “miss, hit, miss,” where the margins are small (for the first, second, and third strings involved in the stroke).

Coming in, the singly-escaped pick will easily miss the first string, hit the second (target) string where nearly any pick depth is OK, and finally optionally even hit the third string (rest stroke), all fine.

#24

For these reasons, we’re going to stop using the term “crosspicking” to describe the double-escape pickstroke. For now, let’s just say “double escape pickstroke” when we mean the curved motion. And if you want to know whether it’s possible to make whole sequences of those pickstrokes at a fast tempo, I think simply asking that will be a lot clearer to everyone - especially those who may not be knee-deep in our material yet and not get what “crosspicking” means in our version of the world. Once again, this is all my fault and I apologize. The new Primer material will make this all nice and clear.

Thank you, thank you! I’m sure you didn’t know it at the time, but “crosspicking” was already one of the most overloaded words in instrument technique. It’s sort of a blurry term even within bluegrass: does it include any kind of arpeggiated sound with melodies mixed in, or only the fixed rolls? What if you’re arranging melodies with a series of varied rolls like a melodic-style banjo player; does that count? Some mandolin players repeat the same note on the high string as part of their roll (almost a slow tremolo), probably because they only have 4 strings to work with; does that still count?

Back in rock and roll world, Robert Fripp has a purely mechanical thing that he calls “crosspicking” that has something to do with alternate picking and primarily finger motions but I don’t think has much to do with anything taught by CtC.

Another confusion I personally had (briefly) on your meaning of “crosspicking” is whether it included two-way pickslanters who use it as a switching motion but don’t have any special approach to 1NPS lines, so that their one-string stroke doesn’t look like something fine-tuned as a double escape stroke so much as a special case of their string switching move–i.e., it couldn’t really be used for playing long licks at speed even if they wanted to. As far as my understanding, the answer is “kinda, maybe? But it’s pretty much just semantics once you understand the overall paradigm.”

At any rate, renaming it to “double escape stroke” solves all of these problems at once, so thank you again!

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#25

I completely understand the confusion here, and when you start to look at things more as physical motions, I think a lot of the confusion will be cleared up. For example:

The type of motion you’re referring to can totally be used to play continuous “one note per string” phrases. You just have to do it… continuously! This is what it looks like when you do that:

Of course, when you do this, it is no longer just a type of occasional adjustment, the way we used to describe “two-way pickslanting”, but in fact becomes a picking motion unto itself. A double-escape picking motion. As you can see, it looks pretty different. If we want to ask why “two way pickslanting” players do more scalar stuff and not these kinds of phrases, my guess is that’s the explanation: it’s pretty different, and doing it would look and feel like learning a whole new picking technique.

So yes, “two way pickslanting” is a style of playing where you make single-escape motions, with occasional double-escape motions as connectors between them. The fact that those connectors utilize what appears to be a slightly different physical source containing some forearm, is mostly irrelevant. It’s just a different kind of motion that you’re inserting between the other ones.

The motions themselves are relatively straightforward. They move a certain way and use certain joints. Describing why players choose to combine them into sequences or styles the way they do is really where the confusion started here. “Two way pickslanting” is a style, not a motion. “Crosspicking”, as we used the term, was a style, not a motion. We’re going to drop that way of looking at things and stick with motions just so the actual thing that you have to learn to do is as clear as possible.

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#26

Huh. Thanks for this. You clarified a lot, as always :slight_smile:

My original point was more that the motions as performed by some two-way pick slanters who have not mastered 1NPS lines sometimes have a slightly different general structure, so it looks like a different technique to the eye, and feels different as well when you’re playing–even though if asked to practice 1NPS lines these players could presumably maintain the same motions but tighten it up into something that looks more like a traditional double-escape stroke. What you’re demonstrating in the video is one example of what a 2WPS technique looks like when it has been well tightened-up for this purpose.

But as you say, simply focusing on motions and giving them all names clears up almost all of this.