Anyone else master two way pick swiping yet?

Technique Critique
#1

Hey guys! Back again with 0 real progress as far as pick escapes go! Trust me I’ve tried EVERYTHING! Pretty much ready to give up on cracking the code and accept my destiny as a two way pick swiper! These are some clips of me doing some generic alternate picking patterns with doubling up of the single string cross and some string skipping as well. Even when I play straight sixes I swipe both ways! I’ve been at this FOR years! Since Andy Wood was just becoming well known via JamTrackCentral! Even hit him up on Twitter back then trying to solve the DBX conundrum! Sometimes I think some people will just not get it! Sounds decent for swiping in both directions tho!

Here’s the view from the front:

Here’s the slowmo!:

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#2

Oh me!! Me! Pick me!! I can two way pickswipe!!! lol

I checked out your clip (keep in mind that I am nobody) and holy cow, pretty dang fast! Awesome!

So fast though, that it’s hard to really see what’s going on in the slo-mo clip. Others on this site can probably see what’s going on and offer a better, more valuable insight. I’d love to see the same footage at an even SLOWER slow mo hahaha

I wonder if you have a similar thing going on as me; pickstrokes are trapped after each stroke - that is they are diving back down under the strings which causes a swipe to be necessary, even on a stroke that is supposed to “escape”.

I think that it’s because of a background tension, combined with this weird habit of “harder = more fast = morebetterer” so I end up pressing into the guitar body with my picking hand, like always - and that results in an almost effortless “divedown” after a pickstroke. Not sure if that’s true, but it’s my theory.

I am well on my way to having that solved and in the rearview mirror - special thanks to Tom Gilroy, Troy Grady and Tommo (Who I think I drove mildly insane, sorry Tommo).

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#3

(Sorry, I didn’t understand the above when I replied. It seems that after you escape your pick sometimes sinks back down and gets trapped, and then you are forced to swipe in some cases. I am happy that you have figured out how to avoid that!)

If I understand the swipe: Let’s imagine a simple 3-string guitar, E A D. We consider DSX with no loss of generality (flip it around to get USX). The pick is trapped between E and A.

  • If the person wants to play an E, they can sweep up.
  • If the person wants to play an A, they can have a usual downstroke escape.
  • If the person wants to play a D, then they swipe, meaning they go through the muted A and hit the D (in one shot).

So it seems to me that the pick will ascend a little bit slower in the case of a swipe, as it will not clear the D string as it would have in the regular downstroke escape.

Finally, can swiping happen in DBX as the pick is not trapped? No?

Hopefully that is correct.

#4

What about economy + swybrid? That’s a very powerful system and has a higher speed limit than pure alternate.

#5

I play with it but it’s a lot more thinking to rearrange every necrophagist tune i wanna learn just to accommodate a totally different technique. Also, doesn’t serve the community to just abandon the problem and not solve it. I think I’d be more useful to people if I could some how figure it out. Also, I could either prove that you don’t even need to cross the strings to sound good, or eventually prove that it can be conquered, or just end up being the anomaly that just cannot get it. All signs point to the latter, but I think completely redesigning everything I know to accommodate economy+hybrid would make me feel even more like a quitter. I think Cracking the Code should start offering 1 on 1 mentoring for those who REALLY want to achieve their goals in the most concise and expedited way possible. I mean people pay 100’s of thousands of dollars to go to school, even if they charged a fair amount of money, it would be profitable to them and those who really want music to be their lives will get where they want to be with wasting less valuable, unrecoverable time “experimenting” with technique and can repurpose that time to creating with freedom.

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#6

FWIW, in both the Steve Morse and Andy Wood interviews, it’s pretty clear in their fastest 1nps that they each swipe in both directions. Their muting is excellent so it still sounds amazing. They have nearly as many swipes as clean string changes though. It’s not quite consistent enough to say it’s systematic like they have a swiping strategy for inside vs outside or anything like that. I think they are both trying to be accurate but at their fastest speeds, that naturally curved motion they get flattens out enough that accuracy “errors” happen fairly often. No dig on either of them, they sound amazing. I think it’s healthy to recognize that it’s really easy to fall into the trap of thinking the elite are doing things that they actually…aren’t really doing though lol! Realizing that was a big “aha” moment for me in my 1nps playing.

I’d say roll with the swipes like you’re doing. :metal: :metal: :metal: :metal:

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#7

Ah, you are saying DBX sometimes hits an extra one or even two strings at speed? So are these swipes “accidental” and not intentional?

#8

Yeah. I think other than “us” (Troy students/disciples) most players that swipe in a one way escape context have no clue they do it. It sounds/feels pretty transparent when it’s done correctly.

In Steve and Andy’s DBX, it’s sort of random but it’s there a lot. I couldn’t find a single clip in the interviews where either of them played Tumeni Notes segments with no swipes. I probably wouldn’t know it by listening alone, unless I dropped the speed way down. Definitely in a full band context it sounds 100% clean.

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