Am I holding my pick wrong? Having a hard time with slanting

Technique Critique
#1

Hi all,

Yesterday, I wen’t on rabbit hole watching a bunch of the picksltanting Primer videos and I quickly went downhill lol. I’ve been watching the series in order but I hit a major slope on the “Pick Grip” section.

As Troy mentions in one of the videos, there was suggestions years ago about only exposing a small area of the pick point. If I’m not mistaken, I recall adapting this idea from Paul Gilbert many years ago. I believe he’s changed the way he hold his pick since. With that being said, I tried for a couple of hours of changing how I hold my pick, where I expose more of the pick, changing angles etc. As I wined in a different thread about being lefty and having a hard time mirroring media to add to the fire lol.

Long story short, I ended up getting frustrated and going on the “I suck and will never get better” route. Took the rest of the night off.

I have been playing with Troy’s ascending B major lick, (I love this btw), the last couple of days. I hope you don’t mind if I borrow it Troy! :slight_smile:

I went MacGyver and ghetto rigged the Magnet view using my Note 10, I apologize, not the best angle. I tried different things including those flexible tripods wrapped around my leg, not fun. Since joining the CTC family, I’ve been working on slanting my pick. At least I thought that’s what I was doing. It’s hard to see it on the video but if I’m not mistaken, it seems that there’s hardly any slant. It appears that I have more of a pick angle almost with a small slant. When I try to slant my pic towards floor more, it feels like I’m going to play like Marty Friedman.

I must also add that I use hybrid picking. I noticed that I use more of a UWPS when I hybrid pick. I think it’s because I tend to use one 1 pick strike with a pull off. I’m still trying to learn the mechanics of all this.

I also included a few pics of how I hold my pic. I apologize about my deformed nail, I smashed the S#$%T years back and it never grew the same :frowning:

Troy’s B Major Ascending Lick

Troy’s B Major Ascending Lick (slow)

Hybrid Picking

Hybrid Picking Slow

Sorry for the long post, I look forward to your feedback!

Eddi

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2 Likes
#2

Hey man! Thanks for posting. Short story this looks great. The dominant lick is pretty advanced and most people don’t just roll into that. If you can get it happening and sounding good the way you are, that’s great. If it sounds good, it is good.

Re: the pickslanting, you don’t really “do” pickslanting. Instead, what you really do is your arm position and your grip, and the pickslant is just what results from that. Once you have this, then you choose what joint motion you want to use, whether that’s elbow, wrist, and so on. Then you choose the kind of picking motion you’re trying to make with that joint.

The three kinds of motions that are useful for fast playing are all motions where the pick goes up in the air or escapes. The dominant lick is a USX lick because unless there’s a sweep, it only switches strings during upstrokes. So the motion you use for this has to be able to do this “upstroke escape” thing where the upstrokes go up in the air.

I don’t want to bury you in theory. Instead, just watch the forearm section of the Primer. I don’t want you to change anything about what you’re doing, because it’s already working. I just want you to have a better understanding of what you’re doing. The forearm section will explain that. Just skip to that section and watch it all the way through. It covers everything from pick grip to arm position to pickslant all over again. And because you’re already doing most of this stuff it will all look familiar. But now it will explain things in a more hands-on way which is not super theoretical and you can just play along.

The hybrid form is fine too, that’s a little different, uses a different arm position which you have noticed. This is also very common. Nothing wrong with what you’re doing there either. But one thing at a time, check out the forearm section and see if that is any clearer. It shouldn’t be a rabbit hole, it should be more about hands-on experimentation and trying to do the motion as I’m doing it in the lessons.

Let us know how you make out.

3 Likes
#3

Thank you for taking the time to respond Troy. I really appreciate your feedback. I love the sound of your dominant lick. It’s really fun to play as well.

I might have gone ahead of myself with the pickslanting. I did not consider the arm position and the grip. I basically went backwards trying to understand pickslanting. I will watch the forearm section to better understand this.

I noticed that just even paying attention to the angle of my pick has made some improvements. I’m learning to take my time to improve my technique. Guitar is such a complex instrument with many aspects to it (technique, theory, etc).