Anyone else need to pull their arm back when descending?

Playing Technique
#1

I find that if I am ascending a scale I can manage by anchoring the edge of my palm against the bridge and span all the strings decently. When I am descending, however, in an attempt to get the same speed as I ascend, I have to pull my hand up with my shoulder in order to smooth things out and accelerate more. My hand is basically in float mode at this point.

Does anyone else need to do this? Is this problematic if I try to develop this? I’ve run into so many dead ends technique-wise over the years I am trying to avoid that now.

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#2

Yes!! My hand does exactly that. It is spontanious and I think it’s because the hand has to deviate in an awkward way to keep anchoring. I’m now working consiously on keeping the palm anchored at all times as I want the ability to palm mute at any time.

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#3

So you think this is problematic? I’ve noticed a lot of shredders will use a wrap on their strings. Maybe this is why?

#4

The shoulder is a large muscle. I bet it could adapt and be effective in this manner.

Bassists who use the floating thumb technique do this, and I was able to master this in a few months time.

Muting, however, may be the fly in the ointment for floating while alternate picking on guitar.

#5

Yes if you want to get that aggressive palm muted sound it’s simply not possible. Sure you can still find solutions for muting unwanted strings from ringing but that’s an other problem. The hair band is a common one. Me, I used to wrap a sock around the neck and eventually even had a special damper made when I was really into tapping.

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#6

Funny, I feel like I do the opposite. When ascending I need to make a conscious effort to move my hand downward to maintain my pick angle by extending at the elbow and to a lesser degree the shoulder.

Edit: now that I’m more aware of it, I guess I do also pull my arm back while descending. Although, for me it seems more natural than when ascending.
Descending runs always seemed to be easier for me than ascending.

#7

I think it’s weird how a lot of people are more natural at ascending or descending, but not necessarily both. I wonder why that is.

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#8

The other strange thing for me is I find it much more natural to make oustide string changes. For example in a 3nps pattern, starting down/up/down switch strings up/down/up is fairly natural to me as opposed to structuring the changes to be on a down stroke each time as in a 6nps pattern…go figure.
I used to try to not do this until one day I thought why am I fighting the natural tendency? Now I try not to think about it too much and just do what comes naturally.