A thought on limb length and its relation to pickslant pref and guitar neck angle

Not sure if this has been discussed before but I have a theory on pickslant pref.

I think the ratio between upper arm to torso length will determine which pickslant somebody will likely favor.

On 1 extreme If you have very short upper arms and a very long torso when you sit with the guitar you will want to place it in the classical style so its between the legs and the neck is angled pretty high. The reason being that if you dont angle it this way your fretting wrist would have bend too far to reach the top strings or anything high on the neck. ie Terry Syrek:

angle%20terry%20syrek

If thatā€™s the case I think that you will favor UWPS because in order to use DWPS your hand motion would almost need to move back and forth in an almost 90 degree angle which would be using a lot of flexion and extension instead of deviation. But UWPS, with your hand flat against the strings still allows for deviation.

On the other end if you have a short torso and long upper arms ie Hetfield you will want to place it in the rock style so its on the picking hand leg and the neck is angled lower. The reason being if the angle of the elbow allows the wrist to not have to bend through its entire ROM then you will be keeping the strings more horizontal and that will make DWPS more comfortable and more likely that you will naturally acclimate to it.

angle%20hetfield

In fact you might favor DWPS because edge picking would still allow you to strike across the strings due to lower neck angle.

What do you think?

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Ergonomics is definitely way more than just the size of your hand. The problem with figuring it out, however, is that everyone is different. It would require a tremendous amount of research and study.

Troy has done a great job focusing on the hand, wrist, and arm. Iā€™m sure there are countless other factors, but is it worth looking into? Probably not, just to know the different movements where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, should be enough.

Actually, it would probably take less effort than youā€™d think. A good teacher/coach can instruct a student/trainee how to move properly if they have a clear understanding of the basic model they are trying to work toward. I think the problem right now is that weā€™ve got a number of constituent parts that have not been put together completely. But once thatā€™s done, itā€™s just a question of solving movement pattern problems based on mostly anthropometry and availabel range of motion.

Iā€™ve been thinking about this a lot and am going to start a thread on this.

Well, I guess that is me, Iā€™ve got the scarecrow type body. But on the other hand, while I used to play like Hetfield ( because it looks so damn cool), I now play more like the geeky classical guitarist, since fretting is so much easier. I donā€™t know if that affected my picking though.

But one thing that does affect it, is where my elbow is. Iā€™ve found itā€™s a bit easier to ā€˜un-slantā€™ my natural DWPS tendencies when my elbow is coming from the side of the guitar body, rather than from the top.

Iā€™m curious if you actually know the upper arm to torso length ratios of Terry Styrek and James Hetfield, and if they are actually appreciably different. Iā€™d expect these two lengths to correlate pretty closely across individuals, but I have no data to support that assumption and am open to contradiction. It seems likely that the effect in question would be more easily affected by posture than by small physiological variations.

For what itā€™s worth, I prefer the Styrek posture and I find DWPS much more intuitive tha UWPS. Like you said, it requires a wrist flexion/extension component, but thereā€™s nothing wrong with that. In fact, burning a controlled flextension into my DWPS was how I trained myself away from stringhopping.

Edit: The reason I prefer the classical position over the horizontal position is that I want my left hand neutral rather than supinated (makes an enormous difference for dexterity and comfort), not because of the length ratio of my torso and upper arm.

My girlfriend is approximately my height but has notably more wingspan, at least an inch or two longer in sleeve length. These differences can be surprisingly pronounced.

At this point I would say we have no hard data on whether certain techniques are a better fit for certain people based on physical structure. But I can tell you for sure that I have yet to find the technique that I cannot do, and do very comfortably, after figuring it out how it works. Maybe weā€™ll find one that I just donā€™t have the anatomy for. Maybe some kind of finger motion. Or maybe hyperpicking. Who knows? But right now, I havenā€™t seen it.

What I do know is that we get a lot of people coming to us with preconceived notions of what is ā€œnaturalā€ for them, and these are big limiting beliefs that it takes us a while to unravel. Eventually they realize the reason they canā€™t play certain things is because of lack of knowledge / experience, and not because they are built a certain way. I would not like to give the average student any more fuel for their misconceptions, because itā€™s just going to make it harder for them to break them!

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So, sheā€™s DWPS then? :thinking:

Ha. She plays mandolin and violin, and only occasionally picks up a guitar. But in both cases her form looks like Andy Wood - lightly supinated on guitar and slightly more so on mandolin. And even though Andy is a supinated player, Andy is also a uwps player for the most part.

So in other words, I think what @bungholio is getting at is not really pickslanting, but forearm orientation. Hetfield is a supinated player, but he can be uwps or dwps from that arm position. His downstrokes look like supinated uwps motions in the sense that they are extension-driven and downstroke escaped.

This is why ā€œpickslantingā€ as a way of describing someoneā€™s general orientation on the guitar is misleading. The supinated arrangement can generally do both pickslants. Pronated players are mostly uwps players. And players that may look pronated, like Andy Wood or John McLaughlin, arenā€™t actually pronated - they are supinated. At least as far as the strings are concerned.

In either case I donā€™t think thereā€™s a hard correlation here between limb length and the forearm setup someone chooses. I am a short-limbed person and supinated dwps was the first way that I played. But I understand the desire to try and fit people into boxes and notice correlations. I just think in this case it can be somewhat limiting for new players to think this way.

Yea after a few more practice sessions I was also able to get dwps just fine even w the classical position. So my initial guess is just wrong.

The reason I even thought about this is I unintentionally started practicing in the classical position and my dwps descending string changes would just turn into car wrecks. Every time i would attempt them it would end in a dif mistake.

So I spent several hours looking it and I it turned out that for some reason I would just stop string tracking from the shoulder. After about an hour I was able to do it but the position change def confused some of my habitual movements.

Glad you were able to make some headway. There are definitely a lot of moving parts here! I can sort of forgive people in years past for thinking that everyone ā€œmustā€ play differently because bodies are different. But I think a lot of that can be clarified with better teaching.

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