Ahoy hoy (balancing your range of focus)

Introduce Yourself
#1

Hey there,

I’ve been a Master in Mechanics member for a few months now and am finally starting to see progress in my picking technique.

To be honest, it hadn’t occurred to me to use the forum. I visited for the first time recently though and was immediately struck by not only the sense of community, but what a great resource it could be.

With that in mind, I’d really appreciate some feedback!

Prior to joining MIM, I struggled with a lack of focus. Now though, I’ve been obsessively focusing on dwps a la Yngwie. It’s working…but there’s this voice in the back of my mind that’s worried about being being too granular. Should I check out other seminars and expand my focus, or continue as before?

Thanks, and I’m looking forward to being more active on here!

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#2

If you’re on a wave of enthusiasm for the Yngwie style, ride it til you fall off, the other seminars are always there waiting for you when you’re ready for a change.

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#3

Hey, welcome to the forum! Sorry for the late reply on this. Glad you’re enjoying the discussions and community here :slight_smile:

As @Prlgmnr said I think it’s always great when you’re excited enough about learning a thing that you can relentlessly focus on it and get results.

We always encourage experimenting with a variety of techniques and styles and there’s probably a good case to make that greater musical and mechanical diversity can lead to greater creative possibilities. But on the flip side, creative constraints can be useful too…particularly, as you mentioned, for staying focused.

Also really depends what your goals are and whether you feel limited in any way by the Yngwie DWPS / upstroke escape system. If you feel like you’re making progress, great! But also no harm poking around the other material to get a sense of other things you might try, whether now or later.

#4

IIRC I got the Yngwie seminar first because I was by nature a DWPS guy. But of course I also wanted to do all the 2 way slanting too so next I got Antigravity and a while later I got Cascade.

love them all, well worth the $.

I didnt really learn them in any “linear” pattern. I think i had actually been doing some 2 way slanting on certain licks anyway so the 2 way stuff started coming along nicely and the strict Yngwie stuff felt weird. It felt weird to go from, say, g string down to D string with a DWPS downstroke lol. (outside picking to lower string in other words)

But then I also started getting my groove on a bit with the Yngwie vibe and now I just sort of have it all mish moshed together. Like, I have some decent descending runs worked out with either all UWPS or all DWPS and also can use 2 way alt picking.

The Yngwie “Black Star” style is still a bit weird for me. Id rather just pick every note one way or another. I can probably DO the escape hatch pull off but not if I think about it lol

Im also working pretty hard now on the cascade style Pent stuff and thats challenging to me because I never focused on it before. The first week I touched a guitar I started on modes and 3nps stuff so i kind of skipped pent stuff.

You may be like me. In my heart of hearts I would have felt limited if I stuck to ONLY DWPS…so it was a matter of time before I went ahead and got the Antigravity seminar and dove right in. At first it felt freaky to get the hand etc in the position to do UWPS lol. But now its cool because I can do ascending stuff with either 2 way alt picking or Yngwie style sweeping/economy

Id say go ahead and get the Antigravity. there is a ton of crossover IMO

Peace, JJ

#5

Thanks @Brendan and @JonJon. For the time being, I think I’ll maintain my focus on DWPS as having my picking progress in this way is really satisfying. Plus, I really wanna be able to play Evil Eye! Definitely feel intimidated by 2wps. I feel as is if I’ll be back to square. Not a bad thing, but hey. Later!

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