Andy James upward pick slanting clear example?

Playing Technique
#1

in this lesson Andy himself explains that sometimes he prefers to start a picking pattern or exercise using an upstroke, he proceeds to play some 2 notes per string pentatonic patterns.

I believe he has a pronated position for his right hand and his foearm is palced on top of the guitar body like a typical upward pickslanter player, resting the ulnar and radial side on the instrument.

I remember some years ago in the Lick library days when he was one of the very few who had some intructional material being able to play John Petrucci’s stuff at the same tempos. So ever since then he has been under my radar, altough his techinque I believe is petty different from Petrucci’s.

Anyway that does not demerit his incredible palying and the fact he has developed petty cool ideas and music of his own. I am just a fan of his chops and music and believe having him on Cracking the Code would be so exciting.

Also I am righ now trying to copy that uwps position and see how it works, I always though that was not the best way to pick across the stings fast but after getting into CtC it proved I was wrong.

5 Likes
Question for UWPS/DSX players
#2

I just got Andy’s Instalicks pack and was playing some of the licks today. All of them are notated with pick strokes and, sure enough, the majority start on upstrokes. He uses a lot of legato escapes too. His technique is like the reverse of Yngwie’s!

4 Likes
#3

It’s wesome you have that product he has very cool licks on that particular package. So it’s notated that way ha? exactly the way Andy plays them. I always wanted to buy his Need Frontier Metal Penratonics since it’s supposed to have many cool alternate picking examples that I would like to study and see how he executes them. When I get those lesson I will share more about it :slightly_smiling_face:
Yes Andy has it all, he picks insanely fast, crazy legato, he’s sweep picking + tapping, and his rhythm playing is so tight too. He is also very melodic.

1 Like
#4

In my opinion the Instalicks is way better than the Metal Pentatonics package and it has more variety in terms of techniques used in licks. I would not recommend Metal Pentatonics I’m afraid.

3 Likes
#5

Great clip, and a small correction. Andy’s arm position is “strings supinated”. In other words, when you rest both the radial and ulnar sides, that’s a supinated position. The downstroke will be a 2:00 movement, and you can see this pretty clearly at the 1:48 mark of the video. Looks a lot like Andy Wood here.

To get the “strings pronated” position, you rest only the radial side. This is the Molly Tuttle and David Grier orientation. And we’ll also see this with Oz Noy coming up.

This is not a knock on your post - I also got this wrong in our “Intro to Picking Motion” talk, where we talk about John McLaughlin. This concept of strings supination and strings pronation is really a Cracking the Code concept and it took years to get straight on it. You can be anatomically supinated and pronated, and that’s one thing. But for wrist movements we really only care about our relationship to the string plane, and that’s what was initially confusing about this.

4 Likes
Erotomania 3rd solo help
#6

Firstly thanks for answering Troy, I was looking forward for you to give us insights on what you see on Andy’s technique. I appreciate your reply.

I need to check those picking with the wrist and elbow broadcast I know you have found new things and develop new terms.

It’s just that I got caught on the upward pickslanting world and also I think that is the one I find the hardest to achieve since I always tried to copy the right hand position that Steve Morse/ Petrucci use (more supinated and anchoring the pinky close to the pickup) Of course I did not know anything about pickslanting or swiping before CtC!!! or escaped pickstrokes!!!
Plus Michael Angelo Batio uses uwps so I just want to give it a try.

So many great things here on the site! I promise I’ll catch up and apply for some technique critique.

#7

Thanks for the suggestions Instalicks has indeed more variety of techniques and is freaking awesome plus it is cheaper.
I was more interested in Pentatonics because I wanted to see as much alternate picking as I could get from Andy.

But you are right if someone wants to grab some tapping, legato, sweeep picking insanely fast cool and modern ideas Instalicks is the way to go.

He also has Melodic Phrasing , Hybrid Hell and a book called Insane Workouts which is on my wish list it costs only 9.99 but first I wanna learn how to pick like the elite players do :wink::wink::wink::wink:

2 Likes
#8

Thanks I got it yesterday. hopefully will get access to them today.

1 Like
#9

This is pretty interesting stuff. Where can I read more about that “string pronated/supinated” concept as opposed to the picking-hand’s forearm position itself ? I must confess that I’m a bit confused right now.

1 Like
#10

You and me both. :joy::joy:

1 Like
#11

Has anybody tried this? Any good? I like the idea of having a precooked workout for days when I don’t want to think!

1 Like
#12

yes it’s good - it is broken down into sections - alternate picking, sweep picking, pentatonics, and tapping.

The sweep picking is nearly all from high to low - upward sweeps I would call them - due to Andy’s upward pick slanting orientation. He skips strings and does hammer ons when he is ascending his arpeggios.

I would recommend this and his Insta Licks packages. If you want a precooked work out then the Insane Workouts is the one as the sections are quite long.

1 Like
#13

Thank you, I may give it a shot!

The more AJ videos I watch, the more I notice that the “escape pulloff” (or hammer-on) technique is very frequent in his playing! I think he’d be capable to do two-way pickslanting as well, but it seems he prefers to avoid it especially when he writes his own music.

#14

We covered this arm position in our crosspicking tutorial, here:

https://troygrady.com/channels/talking-the-code/crosspicking-with-the-wrist/

More generally, the concept of forearm rotation, aka supination and pronation, is probably familiar to a lot of people. But terms like “more supinated” or “more pronated” are always relative. More supinated than what? More pronated than what?

The forearm arm can rotate 180 degrees, so if you’re telling someone to be “more supinated” than you have to provide some reference point across that 180 spectrum. And most of the time, the only reference point we care about for picking technique is the guitar itself. Specifically, the plane of the strings. Lots of the techniques we talk about require some kind of tilt to work. The string plane is the reference, not an arbitrary midpoint in the arm, because that can change.

A great example of how the anatomical midpoint of forearm movement can be different than what you think is in the blog post from yesterday:

https://troygrady.com/2018/09/24/working-on-your-crosspicking-technique-turn-it-sideways/

When you hold the guitar in standard playing position, you can be supinated if you rest your hand on the body a certain way. If you then put the guitar on your lap, you will be anatomically pronated. But you’ll still be supinated on the guitar. The post explains further.

3 Likes
#15

Thank you Troy, it makes sense.

#16

There is also this “ruler test” that you can do, which Troy called “ski-slope test” in the tutorial (below I’m copying an image from one of my threads). After placing the ruler on the two bones of the forearm, if the angle between the ruler and the strings looks like this, you’d call your forearm “supinated with respect to the strings”:

image
image.jpg291×559 60.3 KB

1 Like
#17

Thanks, this helped.

1 Like