Greetings, I’ve noticed economy picking to be really not natural for me, particularly ascending 3nps type playing, sweeping is not really a problem, but since I’m primary a DSX player (mostly RDT wrist motion, sometimes with a bit of elbow), I think when I try to do ascending 3nps phrases with economy picking it just doesn’t work, descending economy picking feels a lot more natural with my DSX motion. I’m thinking maybe some other motion needs to be developed in order to achieve this. I normally would have to use secondary motion to do this with alternate picking ascending, which also isn’t super natural for me, but I think I could achieve far greater speeds with economy when it comes to just straight scalar playing, not patterns.
Yeah I think when ascending, you may need a slight change in form so that the sweeps are as smooth as your descending sweeps.
Probably best to post a video though, as I have seen clips where people seem to be able to go both ways with very little change in form. Usually though, I can see a bit of a change in form.
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It’s a cost/benefit situation, I found I could do the movement for short phrases but every time I’d play scales the motion would switch back to what I already knew. So now it’s economy picking for descent, alternating for ascent and as an escape hatch for switching directions etc.
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I agree with @jptk re: seeing video. Without even seeing video though, to me this is the inverse of the Yngwie system. That I know of, we don’t see him doing descending economy. It wouldn’t work well with his downward pickslant. Sure he could do it, probably by changing the posture some, but we just don’t see it. So instead, he picks most things when ascending, adding little downward sweeps where needed. When he descends, we see lots of slides and pulloffs where he needs to buy time to get to the next string.
So you could try either constructing your ascending phrases so they all work out as pure DSX (or add occasional hammers/slides), then leverage the descending economy you say already feels nice.
Do you play a lot of straight scales in actual music, or are they just “practice exercises”? Just asking because it’s not something we see a ton of. Often other patterns are more musical too. I’ve been messing with a lot of mixes escape and DBX and playing some classical violin pieces, and I do occasionally encounter straight scales. In more modern stuff it can probably be avoided though.
I’m only asking because often we chase a thing that just seems cool, when we’ve already got something that works. Rather than running with what we’re good at just “dialing that up to 11”, we prioritize the distractions. This comment is aimed at myself as much as anyone lol! But I think I may be slowly waking up. At the end of the day, if you’re having fun, I guess that’s all that matters. “Learning a new technique” is fun for me, but I’m wondering if other more creative results would land in my lap if I just floored what I’m naturally good it. That’s definitely inline with what Troy preaches to us too.
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Thats pretty my the story of my guitar life lol, trying to play like people I admire. Rather than whats acually easy for me.
Agreed, this can be a serious problem. I wanted one technique that would do everything but so many of the best guys are willing to drop it and get on with making music, that’s the way to go IMO.
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I play a lot of neo classical music and there’s definitely a lot of straight up scalar playing, specially to build up to more melodic lines, plus there’s a lot of shredder guys that mix in patterns with straight up scalar playing like MAB or Jacky Vincent, funny enough Jacky Vincent uses a lot of economy picking, and I remember hearing MAB saying that now that he is older he also uses a lot more economy picking aswell. I find that also I don’t need economy picking as much when playing descending phrases since generally I find it easier to do some sort of mixed secondary motion with swiping thing. And when I do need it, it’s mostly to avoid that USX change, but for me generally ascending is where I have troubles either alternate picking or economy, so that’s why I’m looking for a solution.
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Yes! I’m gonna post a video as soon as I can thank you! I think my sweeping in itself is smooth, since all that requires is the Gambale approach of pickslanting the pick according to the direction of the sweep, the problem arises specifically when mixing in sweeping with alternate picking as in economy picked 3nps. Since I think at that point I go into my DSX motion.
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you could do the cesario filho thumb index slice picking style while still retaining the dsx slant setup. this way you are training conflicting strokes with another set of body parts.
Oh interesting! So using finger motion to get the sweep?
yes, this way you can override the two when necessary. since this will be trapping the downstroke which will conflict with the escaped downstroke of dsx. so you have to get to know the difference between how both feel so you don’t jack with your consistency of your natural dsx picking. this is why i think it can be beneficial to learn secondary helper motions or different body mechanics for specific phrasing. depending on how you plant your wrist or if you don’t at all you should be able to do that motion since the thumb can move in many different directions. in order to understand how it works you have to try to escape both the upstroke and downstroke with the thumb index slice technique. then you have to let your brain and body understand the motion, watch your hand as you do it. while keeping your same natural dsx hand setup.
it just takes time developing this economy thing, it took me about a month of doing it in the morning when i had my coffee before work. i would just play through all the scales bright to dark in one position. each day i would get faster and faster at it, memorizing the fingerings as well as becoming more comfortable with the fact i was just keeping all the strokes trapped using the thumb/index slice move.
Thank you very much! I think I naturally had some finger motions going on but suppressed them for two reasons, first because of certain advice of certain players on the internet recommending against it, of course then I saw Takayoshi Ohmura and LEDA, and then thanks to Troy noticed guys like Yngwie and Eric Johnson use finger motion aswell so there’s really nothing wrong with it, but in second place and more recently because I realized I was subconsciously trying to use finger motion to get some sort of escape motion which wasn’t being effective for me, so in that sense it was helpful to supress it, but for getting a trapped motion instead it might be a different story and might be just what I need. So this could be a good opportunity to start playing around with finger motion for economy picking and sort of let it happen naturally and kinda see what happens. Thanks! I will also use your advice of getting a DBX type motion to get a feel for isolating the finger motion technique.
Apparently Takayoshi has some truly scary big brain moves that I never knew about it. Have you browsed the forum, and found that video where that guy shows the technique in great detail?
Takayoshi sometimes will combine the two motions you can do with the thumb index during 4 and 6 note groupings to go so fast it looks unreal. i still haven’t really worked on this, but i would wager if you did for a few months you could lock it in as well.
This just shows don’t underestimate the thumb/index, it is very powerful because it can be used in so many different ways.
Oh actually I completely missed this, Takayoshi technique up until this point remains a mystery to me. Glad to see someone has found out how he does it. I think a lot o Japanese guitarist use some super weird mix of motions all the way from finger motions, to forear-wrist, to elbow, to RDT form and they just switch through them.
I’ve never been too much into finger motions since most of my favorite players are either wrist or elbow, or a mixture of the two with forearm, so do you have some resources I can check out specifically on this “thumb index slice” technique?
I think that technique in particular could be useful for me, I think a lot of guitar players that have developed economy picking use some sort of finger motion, Eric Johnson, Yngwie, Michael Romeo, Joe Stump. So if I’m looking at economy picking it might be worthwhile to learn at least the thumb index slice technique, since I have a feeling it might be kinda natural for me.
I know there’s other players that don’t use finger motion for economy picking but I have no idea how they get their economy picking like Jacky Vincent or MAB, I’ve seen some other guys on the internet that use elbow extension to get the sweep, but that feels super weird to me.
Even in the Gypsy Jazz realm I see it often. They probably don’t even realize it is happening either because it will happen during a phrase for a few notes.
Here is the slice technique that I use mainly although I could probably really develop any motion with the thumb/index. If I was to give you some advice though if you are going to develop these I would suggest that you try to perceive the movement coming from the thumb in your mind in case if you ever want to try your hand at classical or flamenco you will have that mental connection already built up.
Nice! I’ll check it out thank you!
Thanks! Here’s a video of me doing alternate picking then trying to do economy picking, I can’t get any speed going on and it just gets very uncoordinated when doing economy picking, feels super weird compared to the alternate picking approach. I feel it’s the string switch with economy picking where it really slows me down and where I lose coordination. This is me using my regular motions so to speak, not trying anything new, like adding finger motion
I am also a natural DSX player (inverted yngwie haha). My natural tendency is to economy pick ascending runs and to alternate descending ones. For 3nps economy, I think I use my elbow to push/pick on string changes kind of like “punching” the next string while simultaneously changing my tracking position.
Here’s a tiny clip
man if i was dsx i would be abusing the musically descended stuff and picking right through that upstroke to another upstroke.
Wait, I thought you were DSX? This is just what feels natural to me. I think the way I practiced 3nps scales and 3 string sweeps in my early days solidified starting with a down on everything when possible.