Andy Wood Odd Note Groupings. Impossible to get faster!

This is the beast in question. I don’t know how to get it faster. I ‘think’ it’s alternate pick escapes but for the life of me, I can’t get my speed up. To date i’ve spent 3.5 hours on just this one lick. Any ideas as to what i’m doing wrong or what I can do better? All help very very much appreciated. Thanking you all in advance, Andrew.

This is me doing it as ‘fast’ as I can…

And this is the slow motion version…

After attending three of Andy’s Woodshed Guitar Experience weekends, I’m convinced that Andy is actually a space alien with a bionic arm.

Seriously, it looks like you are doing a bit of stringhopping on the D string skips. This lick obviously requires a true double-excape (DBX) technique which is just plain difficult. If you haven’t, review the latest Primer videos on Reverse Dart Thrower.

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I thought this was common knowledge about Andy? :slight_smile:

You could play it with a mixed escape too. (And I think this might be how Andy is doing it more on that at the bottom). You could have a DSX motion primarily and on the 2nd and 10th notes do something to force a USX pick stroke:

You could try encouraging this with a pretty neutral pickslant, but attempting to rest stroke in a USX or DSX trajectory, something like this, where the notes are highlighted:

That might actually be a better way to at least “think about it” because as @Riffdiculous mentioned in your other technique critique (@doclearnstorock), you’re definitely aware of just when you need the different pick escape direction but you’re a little late getting to it. The rest strokes I indicated get you ready for it on the note before it’s needed.

I could be wrong but I think that’s what Troy will sometimes do in these patterns that require a mixed escape:

I could be misrepresenting him somewhat in terms of if he’s planning just when these rest strokes happen…but they definitely are happening, in both directions.

And that gentle/subtle change in slant is I think what Andy is doing too, if you watch around 5:55 in the video of the OP, when he really gets going.

His hand has that sort of gentle rocking motion (slightly pronotes/supinates).

To me that looks different from his more intentional DBX where his hand/wrist remain more neutral and don’t “turn” as much. Aside from the rotation he gets to help with the inside string changes on bigger skips, his hand almost looks like it’s just moving back and forth.

And that’s been my experience with this type of wrist based DBX. When it’s done correctly, it doesn’t even feel like we’re making a curved motion because it’s so subtle of an arc. It just “happens”.

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I agree that Andy uses some subtle two-way pickslanting for the fast stuff.

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Thank you @jllewi. I think I feel the stringhop myself so it’s obviously there. But I think that’s my big current weakness. With upward escapes and 2nps patterns, the bounce is even more pronounced (no video as yet), and that movement is super super slow and inefficient for me. So, I think I need to address that issue first and foremost, and then as everyone has said here and on my other video, the rest should get better…

Amazingly thorough analysis again @joebegly Thank you. :pray: :pray: :pray: I think as you said in your other critique, if I can potentially prepare the hand earlier, that will at least improve the mechanics, smoothness and efficiency of at least one of the major current sticking points. I’ve got a lot to work on!!! Will try and update and post some videos to follow up!!!

@jllewi @joebegly As an aside, last night, I tried this a different way. I started the lick on an upstroke, and chunked it. So with a downward escape the whole way, the first 5 notes is ‘easy’. And then I tried to add one note in, and then the next, and then the next. The rest of the lick played at half speed without too much thinking. This has seemingly gotten me a slightly better result. I have yet to be able to do one whole round of it, but this is the other way i’ve approached it. I’m not sure if this is what other people do or is recommended but I was trying to trick myself into finding a way…

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Some food for thought…

  • This particular pattern can be played using only DSX with a dash of economy picking: up down up down up repeated, with the last up a sweep into the initial up. This is for sure the fastest way to play it while picking every note.

  • It’s probably a good idea to minimize the USX challenges for now, and alternate picking this pattern contains pretty much all of them. haha Getting solid with something like a looping six, 3 notes on one string, 3 notes on an adjacent string, rinse and repeat, might be better to work on first.

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Speaking solely for myself, switching the picking patterns on these licks did help me isolate the skips that were barriers, but it didn’t help me fix them. I had to try out some more drastic mechanic changes to get better.

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If you really just want to play it for the sake of playing the lick, me personally, I would try adding economy picking at some point for this particular lick. For me, it’s easier to do economy picking when going up the strings rather than the other way around, but for you it might be the opposite. In any case, this lick, the way I see, it would require a mixture of economy and alternate picking, it would require to start the lick with an upstroke and it would require some sort of DSX motion for the alternate picking string switching, regardless if you choose to do that one single economy picking string change ascending or descending the strings.