Has anybody tried notating where the traps occur in basic scale exercises? This example would be for DWPS, with alternate picking.
Hey @jllewi, it’s an interesting idea but what confuses me is… this would only show you that the lick is not playable with the chosen technique (e.g. DWPS with escaped upstrokes in this case).
An idea that circulated in the forum before was to instead indicate what type of escape is necessary for each string change (assuming for example that we want to alternate everything).
So in your tab you would have some USX (escaped upstroke) transitions and some DSX ones (escaped downstrokes).
But of course everything changes if we start on an upstroke or if we want to do something other than alternate (e.g. sweeping) - so it can get messy if one wants to notate all the possibilities 
I see what you’re saying. Unlike violin and classical guitar, which have regimented ways to play everything, we don’t have that.
So, if I sit down to play a new “arbitrary” melody, I have lots of choices. By “arbitrary”, I mean one that isn’t contrived to fit the guitar well, such as melodies originally written for fiddle players or wind players. Since my current focus is bluegrass, it seems that at a minimum, I need to develop a good double-escape technique that is more or less universally applicable to “arbitrary” melodies. Then, if speed is still a barrier, I can develop some optimizations like sweeping or swiping, and if there are particular licks that occur frequently, those could be optimized by changing the fretting hand to make the picking easier, etc.
I’m learning a lot from this membership. Thanks!
Jim
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For sure! And don’t forget hybrid picking…like this guy
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