I’ll try and make sure to include as much info as I can in the video. In the meantime, check out the CTC video on string hopping
https://troygrady.com/channels/tutorials/what-is-stringhopping/
KING Fisch… Here is an updated version of me playing the Sold My Soul lick:
Again apologies for the lighting. Turned on as much as I could in the room plus flash. My days off from work aren’t even days off anymore and I end up having a small window to do the stuff I love (this lol). Few things I wanted to share this time around:
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A good lean picking angle will allow you to more forcefully downstroke and upstroke to really accent the notes. One thing that floors me about Zakk is how “wylde” his pick attack is. It’s not all neat and pretty like MAB for instance. But he is able to smoothly attack the strings. I wonder if lean has a a big part in his picking mechanics? I’m sure he swipes like mad but I still don’t hear it…
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I discussed this with Troy and another guitar buddy of mine the other week. And again I felt it tonight when playing. I have a tendency to fix my right hand when palm muting and not move with the strings. Could be all the years of down picking Metallica and all the usual thrash suspects? Regardless my right hand tends to move off the bridge area to maintain DWPS and then the lick sounds bad OR I end up crosspicking by the A to D strings since my wrist is forced to curve as I lose the DWPS angle. Recommendations to combat this?
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When I slowed down and made it a point to accent that last upstroke on the Low E it helped me with the timing overall. I must consciously chunk this lick or else it goes to hell…
Best to you and our fellow members- BB
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This looks better to me, I can tell you are still fighting the old habits, that’s normal in my experience and should go away with time and practice.
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I think Zakk uses bridge lean quite liberally you can see it in the video linked above and some of his instagram videos
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My hand definitely moves towards the floor slightly as I change strings. I do this by moving my forearm towards the floor, that way my palm can remain on the bridge in DWPS. Try running some full pentatonic scales up and down whilst maintaining your DWPS posture. This should reveal what variables you can change in order to string track effectively. There are some post on the forum about string tracking which will have some info in I suspect
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I chunk this lick every four notes, this helps with timing and note accentuation
the video I made about my picking is live in this thread
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Morning! Since joining CTC and getting awesome advice from members including yourself, my technique has gotten much better. Funny though is its harder to unlearn your old crap than learn new stuff. And that is my case. But I guess I am being super cautious in that I don’t want to rebuild new habits that are not beneficial towards my playing. Re: your reply for #2, not to split hairs, but when you are going up the strings from low e to g for instance, would you say the driver is the forearm in your example? Do you feel you are pushing through with the forearm. In my case I feel the forearm activate over the shoulder/upper arm. Will definitely work on my pentatonic scales again…
Also will have a proper view of the new thread and circle back soon over there!
BB
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KIng- One thing I realized that you do when DWPS is similar to what Troy does. You almost pop your right hand out on the upstroke. You accentuate the into and out of the plane movement. Almost like a conscious way to avoid crosspicking. For me it works at lower speeds because I can mentally correct myself in real time. At higher speeds I find that I lose form or it slows down some for me. Any ideas on the right hand movements to speak on?
That sounds pretty close to what I experienced, the mental correction is pretty normal when learning a new movement in place of an old one, and when you play faster you end up firing the old movement because it’s stored in a chunk.
It helped me to think of the start and end point of where I want to the pick to move between as I was playing at a moderate speed. Remove variables, so do it on a single string, without your fretting hand if necessary . Once you have the movement ingrained you just apply it to the fretting hand and to crossing strings.
I imagine this is why you are swiping as per your comment on the other thread.
When the pick moves in a straight line as opposed to a curve, the A string in this case becomes a backstop if you are using rest strokes, therefore you won’t swipe through. If you are hitting the E string on the string change, the path of the pick stroke isn’t really DWPS, it needs to be coming in and out the plane of the strings for DWPS to work.
If you could post a video on your picking critique thread then it will be easier to diagnose the issue, rather than just guessing as to what your movements are 
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I’ll definitely post soon for review! When you said “firing the old movement” does this mean I will recall and do the old movement because of old habits? Sorry I misunderstand the context of firing in this case? Want to clarify. Look for a video soon King.
Here is an updated video for review! Few things.
- When you DWPS, aside from supination and and wrist deviation (up and down wrist movement), what else are you concentrating on?
- I found some more success moving my right hand towards the pickups in terms of consistent palm muting. I had a real issue lifting my right hand when palm muting and I flubbed notes as a result.
Thanks as always!
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This looks better bullseye. I think there is still some curve in the pick stroke, it looks like you are going into the string in a straight line but then gliding off the string slightly once you strike it. Keep working on making the tip of the pick move in as straight of a line as possible, in and out of the plane of the strings. It should travel along the same path for both up and downstrokes.
The only thing I think about now once my hand is in position is moving the pick backwards and forwards,
that being said when I started out I made a conscious effort to make pick move as straight as possible.
By “firing the old movement” I meant that the old movement is stored in muscle memory, above a certain speed your brain can’t intervene with the movement and instead uses a stored sequence of movements a.k.a. a chunk. Trial and error will tell you what the highest speed you can play at is, without the old movement being used. The fastest speed you can play at without making errors in your form/physical mechanics is the one you should practice at. Troy talks about this idea in the newest cross picking live stream and I think it holds up here too. It’s better to be mechanically correct than musically correct when learning these things. You can correct the musical errors once you have figured out the movement. I would probably drop the position shifts in the exercise you are using, simply to remove variables so that you can concentrate more on your picking hand.
I’d read up on closed vs. open loop motor learning, this helped inform my practice Speech-Language Pathology/Stuttering/Fluency-Shaping Therapy/Motor Learning and Control - Wikibooks, open books for an open world
I’d like to see a shot with some of your forearm in if you get the chance, I found that when I consciously tried to use my forearm to pick, like gypsy jazz players, i couldn’t go that fast. My forearm/wrist movement blend happened by focusing on moving the wrist. Currently it looks like there’s a lot of forearm involved but that is conjecture until I can see it.
Hopefully this is helpful, I’m pretty swamped at the moment so it may take some time for me to respond to your updates but I will try my best
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This is extremely helpful advice. I have a similar problem at the moment, although the reason seems different.
As a UWPS I consciously started to work on pure DWPS-stuff, as the DWPS-part of my TWPS is giving me trouble. What I’ve achieved so far is, placing my hand i a suplicated setup, I can do DWPS-stuff up to about 140 bpm/16ths. I can go a lot faster, but then the travel-path of the pick becomes parallel to the guitar-body with the pick being tilted downwards. This way, at about 160bpm I’m starting to get the same old trouble again by having to incorporate forearm rotation on every string-change. Also the combination of pick-travel and suplicated position leads to? Yes, getting stuck on the upstroke or, as I seem to have solved that problem by including edge-picking into the equation, not clearing the strings on the upstroke. Even worse on no stroke 
So it seems I have to put in a lot of practice at around 130 bpm. I’m quite curious to see if all of a sudden I can replicate that movement up to 190 bpm or if I still have to work that up step-by-step.
Thomas
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Swamped here too King Fisch so no worries on a reply! Thank you for the review. I read thru that Wiki page, lot of good and new information to think on…
Just to clarify before I can post a forearm focused video, when you say that I glide off the string once I strike it, what do you mean? I come into the string on a straight path and then continue that downstroke with a slight curve to it? Is the issue in your opinion once I make contact on the downstroke or the upstroke is an issue still? Sorry to nitpick, want to consciously know what to focus on. Chat shortly and have a great weekend coming up- Bullseye
I really want you make some progress on this! So I’m going to call it like I see it.
This to me looks substantially not much different from where you started. In particular, look what you’re doing at [edit, sorry - wrong timestamp] 42 seconds. In no way should you be making this type of movement, at any speed, this many months into this. These type of bouncy movements should be banished entirely from your vocabulary, or you will never learn better ones. If you continue to make these movements, even when you are just demonstrating something slowly where you think it doesn’t matter, you are simply reinforcing these movements, and you will have them forever.
Second, your playing speeds are way too slow to learn what “smooth and fast” feels like. You’re still at the point in this process where you have not internalized the feeling of pickslanting. In order to experience that click, you need to “floor it”, as Andy Wood likes to say.
If you say, well, this is the fastest I can go, I am going to say it is not. It is because you have internalized the bouncy movement that you can’t go faster. I guarantee you, you can tap on a table way faster than this. Which means you don’t have a speed problem, you’re using the wrong movement. If that’s the case, you have to radically bust out of this jail cell.
How do you do that? You do it by aggressively trying something completely different. How about elbow? How about forearm? How about uwps motions. There is too much emphasis on “dwps” here, or “playing like Zakk”. It is holding you back. Aggressively demo all the movements until you get one that is closer to you table tap speed. It doesn’t matter if it’s “dwps” or “uwps” right now. What matters is that you break out of jail.
When you see the same problems repeating over a span of months like this, that’s a strong indicator that you are not really changing what you are doing. You might think you are, but you are not. The mind plays tricks on you, but the camera does not lie.
Finally, when you film these technique update videos - which are great - please eliminate the verbal commentary. It makes it much harder to zero in on the movements we need to look at. Instead, keep them short, and include just the playing we need to look at. Include a couple different speeds, thirty seconds tops, is fine. Include any important commentary in the thread as text. This makes it much easier for I and others to quote and reply to specific questions, one at a time.
Sorry for the negativity. I don’t want you spinning your wheels and I feel like a good guitar teacher would have laid all this out months ago. For that I apologize!
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ZERO negativity here! Just a willingness to help from you and every great member here on CTC. Quite the opposite… I’ll do my best to get an updated video out playing on one string at different tempos and will add any comments in writing if that’s OK? Thx
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BTW one issue which I mentioned to @mr_fisch93 a while back was, being able to maintain DWPS and palm mute when changing strings. I know I have a long way to go but I find that I end up doing my crosspicking, bouncy type motion when trying to maintain a solid palm mute. Just food for thought as we progress.
Hey @Troy- The first video is of me playing 16th notes starting at 100bpm and I worked my way up to 170bpm using a simple 1 2 3 4 chromatic on the low E string only. Please let me know what you think. I wanted to work different tempos for you to see if and how I was changing mechanics #1 and #2 not be robotic either. Looking forward to improvements I can make on that one 
The second video I wanted to highlight my crosspicking before any concept or knowledge of CTC and what I believe has helped me some in my DWPS journey. Granted I have a heck of a way to go… On a side note when using this bouncy motion I specifically feel it on the top of my wrist near wrist joint itself. It is like that knocking on the door motion from the Mechanics video.
When I play slower and focus on that into and out of the plane movement I find it best to use forearm rotation. Finally I “get” what forearm rotation means and feels like at least at low speeds. When speeding up I find myself creeping back into that crosspicking territory and have to slow it down again. One thing which you do when DWPS and I hope to develop myself, is your right hand looks like it’s making a hammer motion almost? You have a way to pop up that upstroke with force (16:50 in the Primer video is a good example of your DWPS upstroke What is Pickslanting? (Pickslanting Primer, All Intro Chapters) - YouTube) If you had to pinpoint how your upstrokes specifically are as good as they are mechanically what are you focusing on?
I know I’m jumping the gun as I need to get one string down before switching to others, is palm muting. As I palm mute going from the E to D string, my right hand feels planted and I end up curving my wrist. Something I wanted to throw out there for the future.
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Hi @Troy! Just wanted to do an updated video from 100bpm to 130bpm using the Sold My Soul lick we’ve discussed before at length 
HOPING my DWPS is a little better? It felt better than before. Few things to highlight:
- I feel solid on the low E maintaining a DWPS hand position. As I move to the A and D strings my picking hand starts to go a little parallel. Not sure why? I did find that if I pick towards the bridge (slanted angle from left to right as I work my way up) it helps a little bit.
- Lean picking definitely helped more since using it thanks to @mr_fisch93 but still having trouble on upstrokes at faster speeds.
- Forearm rotation has also been a big positive in my DWPS. But I seem to lose that rotation as speeds increase. Recommendations?
Thank you again, looking forward to your insights- BB
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Hi! Thanks for posting. I general I think looks good. However I still think you would get better results doing what I suggested, which is developing smooth motion by flooring it regardless of whether it is ‘DWPS’ or not. In other words, surveying the all the available motions to find what works now and not worrying about these two string licks and playing specific things that Zakk plays - yet.
Have you tried looking for a professional teacher here on the forum who can do the motions? I feel like you would benefit from someone giving you immediate feedback and who will lay down a little tough love if necessary. The forum is great for periodic feedback but it doesn’t take the place of the kind of immediacy that teachers provide.
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Glad it looked a little better to you! I did/do have a teacher. I say did because I haven’t been able to keep up with my schedule etc. So I don’t want to waste his time or mine until I can get back and give the guitar the commitment it deserves… His initial goal with me was to crank that metronome and get used to moving my hands fast. Don’t over think the mechanics of it as everyone picks differently. I was making some pretty good progress.
The issue that arose was my upstrokes weren’t sounding clear and that’s how I discovered @mr_fisch93 etc. When I reposted for critique you mentioned I still had my old mechanics which would be keeping me in that prison as you called it speed wise.
So what do I do? On one hand I’m getting advice to floor it and not be concerned about the motion. On the other hand we can all agree that qualitatively DWPS is done a certain way and can be my breakthrough, etc.
Sorry just frustrated and confused on all of this and I don’t want to rebuild my mechanics on faulty movements and hit another speed plateau. I’m hoping to gain full confidence on CTC to know that if I speed up xyz movements I’ll succeed at speed. It won’t come easy and it will require practice (no magic bullet nonsense) but I’ll have the foundation.
Best- BB
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Hi Bullseye! I’ve just looked over your past few videos, things look generally better in the latest one (July 13) I think Troy mentioned this already but you should drop your old problematic movements even at slow speeds, for example the movement at the start of you video - June 24 (2) Is the movement you are trying to unlearn and therefore it should be banished from your vocabulary altogether, even at slow speeds.
To answer your question I need to know, does this feel smooth to you? Do you know what smooth feels like? I suspect the answer is that it doesn’t feel smooth. If that is the case then I’m going to repeat what I said earlier. Remove variables, stick to a single string for the time being, if it’s smooth on one string then you know the issue is crossing strings and you can work on that. If it’s not smooth on one string then maybe you should try what @Troy has suggested. Shake things up by trying something completely new like UWPS. You might crack this movement really quick and figure out what smooth feels like, you can then go back to trying DWPS knowing what to look for in terms of feel.
This may be the error in you approach. At the end of the day you can only really learn what the correct movement feels like at moderate - fast speeds. It’s like learning to ride a bike, only by trying it (in this case flooring it) will you learn what the right technique feels like, there is no other way of learning it. If you need to switch things up to learn what “right” feels like that’s fine, you can tackle DWPS later and there is nothing wrong with that. In my experience once I figured out DWPS, UWPS and TWPS got a lot easier because I knew what to look for in a movement. I see no reason why you can’t start with UWPS and go the other way around.
You’ve said you are busy and this might actually work in your favour. In one of the cross picking livestreams Troy says he only spends 20 - 30 mins working on learning a new movement before tacking a break, after that there is diminishing returns. This stands true in my experience and from a motor learning perspective your brain needs time to evaluate the movements you’ve tried in the practice session. I’ve always found my breakthroughs happen at the start of a session or after a break. I’ve never made solid progress in a 3 hour session, all that did was lead to frustration and tired hands. I’d strongly reccomend you watch the crosspicking live streams if you haven’t already. Not for the mechanics but for the approach and insights into learning new mechanics. You are going to have “ah ha” moments and then not be able to find the motion again, that is normal and part of the process, as time goes by thoses “ah ha” moments get more frequent until the moment where you just know what the correct movement feels like and how to achieve it. Just like riding a bike.
I hope there is information of benefit to you in here.I feel like i’m just parroting things Troy has said on the CTC forum and in livestreams etc, but it’s all solid advice. 
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Thanks @mr_fisch93! The movement feels more new than forced when playing it, but it’s not hopeless by any stretch for me… When we say floor it, my concern is I dont want to “floor it” incorrect mechanically. DWPS has a specific mechanic that makes it DWPS and I want to get that so I don’t go into my old habits.
As @Troy pointed out before, my bouncy movement was a hindrance to speed. So if I floor it I am sure I’d revert to my crap movements. Hope I can get some insight into this… Rock on man- BB