Anthropology DWPS Demo

Technique Critique
#1

Hi guys,

I mentioned in another thread that I went through some Charlie Parker heads when I started exploring downward pick slanting and meticulously analyzed how to use (mostly) DWPS in conjunction with hammer-ons and pull-offs for a bebop setting.

This is a quick take of the kind of thing I’m doing with the Parker tune Anthropology. I didn’t use a metronome because I’ve been practicing with one all morning and wanted to focus on feel more than tempo here. I’m using an ultex Jazz III so it might be difficult to see the pick but I think you get the drift.

EDIT: I should say that this is a very different approach from what I had been doing before. Prior to discovering CTC I most of my picking motion originated from my elbow and I had a pretty strict down on downbeats, up on upbeats kind of approach with very little pick slant and maybe tending toward UWPS. I honestly have no idea how I was getting around the strings back then but it was very limiting.

Any feedback is welcome. Would love to hear from @Troy, obvs. THANKS!

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#2

Cool, I like the idea of studying Charlie Parker’s heads, so many cool melodies and phrases in there! Would you be interested in posting more of these? I have a hard time learning stuff from sheets/tabs, my favourite learning method is watching other players’ fingers and using the ear to try and confirm that I saw the right things (I’m a bit lazy I know :slight_smile: )

On the playing side all seems fine to me, although I wouldn’t think that this is necessarily dwps (it is sometimes hard to tell though!). Some bits like the up-sweeps are obviously not dwps, but the rest may be. Do you feel that all the upstrokes break free of the strings?

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#3

Great playing!

This is what I was going to point out. Somewhere along the line we might be losing people as to what downward pickslanting really is. If you’re not making a picking movement where the downstrokes move on an angle toward the body, and the upstrokes move on an angle away from the body, then you’re not really using downward pickslanting. And if the lines you’re playing are not arranged such that the last picked note on every string is always an upstroke, then downward pickslanting isn’t even going to help you much.

Don’t get me wrong, this is great playing here. But if people are banging their heads against the wall trying to use a technique they’re not actually using, and might not actuall help anyway given the way they’ve mapped out the notes on the fretboard, then I feel bad because we’re failing in the explanation of what these techniques are and how they work.

Again, to be clear, if you are comfortable and getting the results you want, then it does not matter what technique you are using, and I would not fix what ain’t broke!

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#4

@tommo and @Troy Thanks so much for your responses.

Right. I knew that my picking here had some other elements besides strict DWPS going on and didn’t stick to the technique exclusively but that was what I used as a starting point when I originally worked out the picking for this piece so I went with that terminology.

Honestly, this is the first time I set up a camera like this in an attempt to capture my picking and I was surprised to see how often I was using wrist extension (if that’s the correct term - why I need that glossary) to escape the strings on down strokes. Very interesting…

I feel my dive into pick-slanting (whether or not it’s strictly DWPS or 2WPS or something else) has been enormously beneficial. I have more thoughts and questions coming but will likely start another more specific thread for them…

Thanks!

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#5

@tommo I can’t promise anything but I’ll consider it. I need to do an overhaul of my YouTube channel over the holidays so maybe that’s something to consider for future content.

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#6

Bingo. As long as you’re making an informed choice here, and getting the results you want, more power to you! My main concern is players who aren’t aware they’re doing something different than what they’re attempting, and on top of that, perhaps not sure why they’re supposed to be doing a particular thing in the first place. We’ll try to clear up some of this confusion in lessons and help sessions moving forward.

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