I’ve been micromanaging my picking now for over 2 years, and have come a long way since I ordered Troy’s EJ cascade videos. I basically did everything ass backwards from what Eric was doing, so as you can imagine I never could get it down. Because of Troy I start my passages on a downstroke, and change strings on a upstroke which feels natural now, But one thing I keep catching myself doing, and I can’t figure out how to correct it is my picking motion will start to go side to side around the strings instead of up and down. It’s like a swinging pendulum, or a slight circular motion that to me doesn’t really sound that good, because I’m slicing off the side of the strings to were it almost sounds legato. It doesn’t have that punchy sound that you hear E.J and Yngwie have when they alternate pick. So my question is, is that cross picking? I think it’s happening because my picking hand thumb extends back and fourth but not a 100% sure? I wouldn’t mind having this technique if it sounded good, but it’s not compared to just going up and down on the strings like what Troy, EJ, and Malmsteen does. Sorry for the long post, but it’s driving me crazy, and feel that Sigmund Freud of guitar players would be stumped with what I’m doing. Thanks
Video is really the only way to know what you might be doing. Post a clip in “Technique Critique” and we’ll take a look. Unlisted Youtube videos are fine.
Regarding why it doesn’t sound good, sure, if you’re just sliding down the strings sideways and not really plucking the strings, you’re not going to get much sound. There are lots of reasons this can happen, mainly to do with the orientation of the picking movment, and also edge picking. But I wouldn’t worry too much about what you call the movement or what it “is” - if it’s of no practice use to you, then may as well stop doing it!
Thanks Troy! I’ll try and post a video soon. I would LOVE to stop doing it, but that’s my problem, I can’t. 
I’ll have these moments where I go up and down on the strings like you do, then I’ll slowly but surely start doing the side to side thing. In my opinion it’s gong to be the tiniest little adjustment to stop it, but can’t figure out what that adjustment is. Wish me luck 
haha