Plenty of help in here already, I’ll just drop this in case you need a better visualization of the clock face:
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Etude? I think you give me way too much credit. More like a lick that repeats like a grind organ. Anyway I meant to expand in that topic more, but I have had to do too many stupid pain in the ass domestic things lately, like change the water pump in my car. I feel bad for leaving those guys hanging though.
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Lot to unpack here. Crosspicking is something I def want to get efficient in since I feel limited by it. The hardest part for me is if I do 3 nps and need to change strings after a down stroke, it just feels so hard for my hand/pick to get over the next string and upstroke it. Which is why I always did economy or went Up Down Up, because after the last upstroke, I could just basically roll my pick for the next downstroke. I’m gonna try to get some better videos of my progress when my semester ends next week. Would love to see that video of your playing you mentioned!
Yeah I saw this, it’s helpful but still haven’t fully grasped it
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Oh yeah I thought this would a relevant thread for you to peruse too.
Norm Blake crosspicking technique?
Particularly one of the later posts from Troy about “not trying to do crosspicking”. Instead focus on a motion that escapes in both directions. Yes, crosspicking requires that but other stuff does too and it will all become synergistic.
Sure, I’ll get over my red light syndrome and get something up. I’ve done tons of recording in my ‘career’ but that’s all studio. Something about a camera right up on me always makes my playing worse lol
Trying to grasp complicated technical descriptions of picking motions is not a good way to learn those motions. All the really good teaching advice we’ve come up with, like our table tapping tests, focuses on doing stuff and not thinking too much. We just used our technical knowledge to come up with those simple things, if that makes any sense.
First things first. When you want to learn additional things, it really helps to be good at something first. Are you square on whatever your current technique is? Do you have a fast tremolo, can you synchornize the hands on simple repeating single-string phrases? Can you play any type of multi-string phrase fast and smooth, with synchronized hands and clean string changes?
This sounds like a lot but it’s really just the foundation. Knowing what fast, smooth, and accurate feels like is an incredibly powerful advantage for learning other things that will need to feel equally fast, smooth, and accurate, so I wouldn’t skip that.
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No one (besides Yngwie lol) likes to toot their own horn so I’ll do it for him.
@carranoj25 is a great player. He submitted a critique a while back.
Tommo’s response:
Dude thank you ! I was looking for that and couldnt find it! Made my day thanks bro! I def need to get some better videos going
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See below thread with video joebgly linked. I can play pretty well already but i def struggle with double escape and it’s something i want to revisit and get better at just for something new
Thanks @joebegly!
Your technique looks like it’s primarily wrist-oriented already and your form is more or less what Andy uses so you’re not wrong in thinking about Andy-style wrist motions. But I still wouldn’t worry about that too much. Your form looks pretty settled, and your motions are fast, smooth and relaxed. So just play how you play.
You just need to assemble a variety of phrases you want to work on and then try to do them fast to make sure the motion is still smooth. Andy’s interviews are a great source of this kind of material, particularly the first one since there’s a bunch of electric in there. If you can more or less approximate the lines at the target speed then you can slow down a little and see what needs more accuracy.
In the other thread, the clips there are helpful for understanding your overall form, but not super helpful in seeing or hearing what’s going on with accuracy. Video is dark, far away, not slow motion, etc. Not a knock, I mean this in a positive way. When you get to the point that you’re at, where things are relaxed and fast, it’s hard to improve accuracy if you don’t know precisely what to fix. This is true for some of the examples in the other thread, where things sound a little off but it’s not obvious in what way, if it’s all the time or just some of the time, etc. And it will definitely be true as you try to play unfamiliar lines fast.
This is where the camera can be helpful. Get up close to the neck, pointing down the strings, film in 120, and get near a nice light source like an open window. Here are some other tips:
That’s the basic outline, i.e. go fast, then slow down a little, check for accuracy, see what the problem is, make many attempts to see if you can “stick the landing” at all. Any updates we’re happy to take a look!
I think I’m echoing what @Troy already said, but I’d suggest playing lines that you know “need” DBX (or come up with some simple ones yourself) and experiment with different motions / angles until you find something that works. You seem to already have an overall great grasp on picking, so even something as minor as implementing a secondary motion might solve it.
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This is a technical detail that I’m not sure is super practical for most people to think about. When you look at real-world examples like Andy, you sometimes see other joints doing stuff, sometimes not. And even when it’s just one joint, like the wrist, you can sometimes classify certain movements as the “main” ones and others as the helpers. It’s very complicated to even describe. Even if you can delve to that level of nerdery, I don’t know that you’re actually thinking about that while trying to play the lines.
That type of knowledge is helpful for us in evaluating what people are doing, or guessing what they’re going to have success with. It’s less useful for people trying to learn on their own. Some knowledge of the big picture, the overall form that players use, and which ones they themselves are using, can definitely help clarify the confusion of flip flopping between different things without being aware of it, for sure.
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I will be sure to get some better videos soon prob after next week. I think my goal is to be able to crosspick efficiently so I have the double escape tool on my tool belt 
I will be sure to demonstrate my current crosspicking attempt in the videos too
For sure. The only thing I’d add to this not really working on “double escape”, you’re just working on expanding your current alternate technique to a wider variety of patterns. You’ll get the best results if you treat all phrases equally and try to play a wide variety of them. This means 1nps phrases, 2nps phrases, 3nps phrases, 4nps phrases, and perhaps most importantly, real-world phrases that have mixtures of 1, 2, 3, and 4 notes per string. That last group in particular is why bluegrass players like Andy have a much wider alternate picking vocabulary than typical rock players. If you just do one or two of these categories, you won’t improve as quickly.
Based on the previous thread that Joe linked to, there are some issues with the scalar stuff that are worth looking at in slow motion as well, so I would film some of those examples so you can see what’s happening there. These are things you may have been playing for a long time, and once those motions get baked in, it’s hard to know what to improve without looking at it because it’s all automatic.
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Is the first andy wood interview the one with the mandolin in the thumbnail? Ill try to find some good clips/tabs from that video to work on
Yep it’s this one:
For finding all the unfamiliar corners of your alternate picking technique, I’d look at lines like this one where you have combinations that don’t stick to any particular number of notes per string:
I’d just ignore the legato in there and pick all the notes. That’s a longer phrase with many different picking patterns in there. So for shorter/simpler things that repeat, you can try phrases like this very common diminished shape:
This is the same pattern as bar four in the “Rootsy Fusion” example, just applied to diminished instead of dominant. It’s also the same shape as the diminished lick in the famous Crossroads movie solo, just ascending instead of descending.
You’ll notice this creates a “212” type fingering, where some strings have two notes on them and others have one. This is a super common occurrence when you try to play lines that stay in one position without shifting up and down the fretboard. Figuring out how to do this will open up all kinds of alternate picking ability that you can’t learn with only three-note scale patterns or even straight arpeggio patterns that only have one note on each string.
Just a few examples. Olli Soikkeli’s interview is another great one for jazz-flavored non-pattern-based alternate picking examples. The idea is to try and find musical examples you think are cool that uncover all the picking patterns that feel weird or unfamiliar.
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Ill check out some Olli stuff as well. Im curious though, if players who use the “9-0-2” have supinated forearms, how do they escape on downstrokes? Is the escape happening towards the general area of the bridge, neck, or in the middle somewhere?
That hurt my brain a little in the beginning. Part of it is understanding if your palm is flat on the bridge (i.e. not rotated toward the thumb or the side of hand, just parallel to the strings), that is actually lightly supinated in the anatomical sense. It’s not really ‘neutral’ even though it appears that way. And that’s the setup a lot of the 902 players use. That was actually a huge part of me finding a DBX movement. Without that ‘flat’ setup I couldn’t get it working. That’s anecdotal I think, but might be helpful to you as you try whatever tweaks you need to the great motion you’ve already got as you try to get it escaping in both directions.
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Makes sense. With someone like Molly Tuttle, it’s so obvious how she can achieve downstrokes that escape because of the clear pronation. It still almost seems like with a “palm flat (ish) on the bridge or strings” approach, the downstrokes would have to be escaping towards the bridge in order to clear
I dont think it’s entirely anecdotal at all. Its like in the other thread when we were talking about rotation in relation to escapes and I mentioned how the hand position on the guitar can dictate wether you are USX’ing, DSX’ing or more towards DBX’ing all with roughly the same mechanic.