Can I be a pronated downslanter?

[Bluedude2000]

I have been experimenting for almost a year now with a supinated approach and trying to convert to being a downslanter when needed. Before this, besides strumming type stuff, I mostly was a pronated upslanter for everything.

The supinated downslant never really worked for me, I just couldn’t get comfortable. I’ve been practicing a lot and got frustrated.

From reading recently there pronated downslantkng could actually be a thing. From what I can tell, it makes it a million times more comfortable and I have waaay more control. I rest the little palm area under my thumb against the strings.

To ask a few simple questions, and well known players that do this too?

How do I handle the damn low E string?

What should the general moves be on the clock? Still 9 to 0. Can’t really tell. Thanks in advance!

[blueberrypie]

I’m somewhat in the same boat. I don’t feel comfortable with supinated arm. It’s OK when it’s just slightly AND on the higher strings, but otherwise I feel more comfortable with a pronated-almost-parallel set-up. That said I do some dwps as well. It’s a question of grip, to me. You just have to very angle the pick so that you get a dwps with a pronated set-up. I use it e.g. for ascending sweep.

Can’t say of a known player who does that, but there are probably many of them. I know that Guthrie Govan has the thumb-heel-against-strings anchor when he plays - and I do something similar. That can be (?) a clue to a pronated set-up and Govan probably does some ascending sweep too.

[Troy]

The supinated downslant never really worked for me

Keep in mind that we haven’t been super clear on what we meant by these terms, because we were still figuring things out. As a good example, what you’re seeing in this clip is actually supinated, even though I would have probably called it pronated as recently as last year:

Yes, anatomically speaking, this approach is “more pronated” than what someone like, say, Steve Morse does. But it is still actually supinated with respect to the strings, which is the only thing that matters for the picking motions themselves. In fact, if you put the guitar on your lap and assume this exact same setup, you will in fact be very pronated anatomically, but still supinated with respect to the strings.

So… can you be “pronated with respect to the strings” and still be a downward pickslanter, i.e. make pickstrokes where the downstrokes are trapped and the upstrokes escape? Yes. But as @blueberrypie points out I can’t think of anyone who plays this way.

…unless of course we’re wrong and there’s someone who is a downward pickslanter, plays mostly upstroke escape type lines, and is actually doing it with a 10-0 motion path and we just never noticed it before, and even if that players is or has been me on occasion!

What should the general moves be on the clock? Still 9 to 0.

10 to 0, more or less. It sounds like you have watched that lesson. Recall that Molly and David are 1003. Again, approximately, but just to get the concept, that’s what they’d be doing. Just the downward pickslanting half of their motion would be 10-0.

Edit: If you think you are doing this, by all means post a clip and we’ll check it out. If it’s a thing that exists, and people do it, we should know that, and we should also be more familiar with what it looks like so we’ll recognize it when we see it again.

[Mike6676]

Where exactly is 0 on the clock. I am in the same boat of trying to do the supinated approach because it seems easier to go from strum to posted against the guitar in an wrist extension position. I seem to pick better
from a pronated position like Molly but she moves between the picking and the strumming positions effortlessly
and I don’t. So I’m kind of moving between both depending on the song and I feel like it’s hindering progress.

[Troy]

Where exactly is 0 on the clock.

The middle - it’s not really a time, I just invented it! Have you watched that lesson yet or have you just picked this stuff up from the forum? If not, I recommend doing that because we step through video of all this, with advice on how and where to get the forearm set up on the guitar.

I seem to pick better from a pronated position like Molly but she moves between the picking and the strumming positions effortlessly and I don’t. So I’m kind of moving between both depending on the song and I feel like it’s hindering progress.

This is all super normal. When you are still learning a motion or motions, you’ll find yourself ping ponging back and forth between various ways of doing things, getting a little bit better at each, in no particular order, and gradually converging on one or more ways that work well.

This flip flopping isn’t the obstacle - it’s actually the progress. This is what it feels like when trial and error is working. There is no need to try and weed out all the options, and doing so may actually be a negative. Your motor system needs variety of input in order to know what is working and what is not working.

Keep trying, and evaluating, changing something, and trying again. So long as you are actually getting better over the course of a period of months, just keep doing what you are doing!