Chunking question

Hi guys,
decided to go back to basics, so now i’m working on 3 and 4 note single string phrases, and I am curious: the consensus is that you should practice these starting both with a downstroke and an upstroke. it may seem like a stupid question, but should I work on it like this or should I just focus on getting them up to speed only starting with a downstroke?
thanks
shyboy

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I don’t think this is a stupid question at all. I’m doing a similar thing (back to basics). Personally, I think it is very useful to be able to execute these starting with both up and downstroke. The reason for this is especially true when you want to engineer licks to conform to a one-way escaped mechanic and pick every note without escape hatch pull-offs or slides - you may need to start it on your least ‘favourite’ stroke. That being said, I also wonder whether doing both practice could get in the way of the chunking process. I would like to think that it wouldn’t be a problem and that you would just be working on 2 different chunks. Hopefully others will chime in!

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I think the question you really need to ask here is, which picking motion are you using for this? Because that is what will determine whether you should do a downstroke or upstroke version of these little “building block”-type phrases.

For example, if you’re using a USX motion, then you’re only going to be able to switch strings when you play an upstroke. That means you’re going to need to start a phrase like the Yngwie six-note pattern on a downstroke in order for the last note to be an upstroke. There’s not as much point in learning that phrase on an upstroke since string switching isn’t possible that way, and that’s a big part of the appeal of these little phrases.

If you’re using a DSX motion, then the reverse is true. The Yngwie phrase starting on an upstroke is what allows smooth string changes, so that’s the one you should work on.

The Pickslanting Primer has better instructions for these basic motion types now than it has in the past, thanks to some recent new stuff and streamlining. We’ve got a lot a more of that coming up, which hopefully should make it really clear which types of motions go with which types of phrases. If you haven’t checked that out, give that a shot when you get a moment and let us know if this helps clarify.

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Hi Troy, thanks for chiming in!
the revised primer is excellent!, it really helped me streamline my wrist picking motion, and I’m looking forward to see what more you have in store for us!
the thing is, I can do both usx and dsx pretty easily, usx just a tiny bit more naturally. and you need to be able to do both if you’re going to switch string after an odd number of notes…
I guess a better question would be: chunking wise - does our brain look at the same phrase as two different chunks if it is played starting with an upstroke or a downstroke, and if it does store it as two distinct chunks, wouldn’t it be counter productive to work on both of them in the same practice session?

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Yes my guess is they are different motor programs. And no, I don’t think that’s counterproductive. Variety works best for learning new physical skills. A little bit of each, in an unstructured way, forces you to recall more often and enhances the learning speed.

Regarding motion, when you use a wrist-forearm type motion, there isn’t really a “DSX” version of that. That’s what I was getting at. There’s nothing wrong with this. I played this way for 10 years and composed directly in that mode and came up with a wide variety of stuff. It’s its own animal. You don’t need all the string changes with alternate picking. You just need a full vocabulary across different chord types all over the neck. That’s more important than the string changes. Edit: If you want to do improv type playing, I would suggest that a reliable mechanical system with rules you are good at, and can use to build a wide variety of fretboard maps, is the fastest way to get good at that.

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wait,what?!
isn’t there a whole chapter in the picking primer about wrist motion with DSX?

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I think @Troy is saying that forearm rotation needs less concern over DSX and USX than pure wrist motion? I can’t really separate the two and find I’m doing some rotation no matter what.

@Shyboy999 I’m dealing with similar concerns right now and was lurking on your thread! - JH

Sorry for the confusion! When I say wrist-forearm, I mean wrist and forearm working at the same time, not just the wrist by itself. This is the motion we cover in the forearm motion section, where we look at Doug Aldrich as an example. The two motions are similar but the form for the blended wrist-forearm motion means that is essentially only capable of USX motion.

Here’s what they look like up close:

This type of wrist-forearm blended motion creates a slightly curved path where the trapped portion of the motion flattens out and stays trapped. It’s very common and players like Doug, Teemu Mäntysaari, Ben Eller, and lots of other great players use it. It’s also what I used for most of the Volcano, Cascade, and Antigravity examples. Although there’s probably some idiosyncratic variation in those clips because we hadn’t done the homework on the motions that we’ve done since then, and I didn’t think much about what motions I was using then.

When you do the Aldrich motion, you can get a downstroke escape by straightening out the wrist and doing the DSX form from the wrist motion chapters. This results in a motorcycle-style pump action of the wrist and forearm on individual notes right around the string change and is what we have somewhat erroneously called “two-way pickslanting”, because the arm and the pick appear to be flip-flopping around when you do this. If you were to do this on every single note you play, you’d see the arm wiggling around non-stop, and you’d end up with a Jimmy Herring-style motion capable of both upstrokes and downstroke string changes. That’s the motion we teach right here:

So… I’ve probably confused you. I know I’ve confused myself. To cut through the confusion I’d encourage you to look at the motions the joints are making and what type of pickstroke results from that. You have a bunch of options:

  1. If only your wrist is moving and nothing else, and you have the right form, you can get upstroke and downstroke string changes from that. Our new wrist chapters are about showing you what that form is and how to do it.

  2. If you want to make only upstroke string changes, you can use the slightly different “Gypsy lite” form that gives you the Aldrich motion. When you do that, you can play lines that work in that style and never really need downstroke string changes, by mixing in downstroke sweeping and pulloffs. You can get some truly terrifying stuff that way. Here are two examples - no downstroke string changes at all in these examples:


  1. You can do more or less the Aldrich form but use occasional flattening out of the forearm to do occasional downstroke string changes. That will get your Gilbert-style scale phrases if that’s your thing.

  2. Finally, you can do the continual arm flattening / un-flattening of the motorcycle motion on every note, and that will get your Jimmy Herring-style motion, which can do both downstroke and upstroke escapes. You can use that to play cool stuff where you have occasional bits of 1nps and other things all thrown in. But note that you can also do this with pure wrist motion, and no arm wiggling at all, using the form we teach in the new wrist chapters. That’s the point where you come full circle. Achieving the same effect with two different types of picking motion. So either one works for this, and will get you lines like this with pure alternate picking:

Let me know if this helps clarify — or just further confuses!

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Not exactly — I’m saying the forearm version can’t do DSX at all. Not unless you change the motion. Of course, out there in the real world, it’s complicated. Some people are textbook examples of a certain kind of motion and only do that motion. Steve Morse, for example, pretty much uses only wrist motion and does a very specific double escape type pickstroke with it. But other players do a mish mash, like Andy Wood, where some of his lines look like Paul Gilbert and use only wrist motion, and others appear to use a forearm component, which he mixes in, let’s call it, idiosyncratically because that’s what he stumbled across when he was 8 or 10 or whenever he learned this stuff.

We have to organize these motions for teaching purposes somehow, so in the Primer we give you the textbook “wrist only” motion. Then we give you the “forearm plus wrist” motion, the one where we look at Doug Aldrich. Because when you look out there at what players are doing, these are two common categories. And the form for these is slightly different, so we’ve tried to isolate what it is about this form that works and provide the simplest instructions we can for that. Like, in the wrist section, keep your fingers off the guitar body. Use the ulnar offset. And so on. That limits the forearm interaction and helps a player who is still learning realize why there are Gilberts and why there are Aldrichs and why these things look slightly different.

Whatever works. We just want to make sure the instructions are clear, and sometimes simplifying them into boxes with names or famous players or whatever can help to boil down the enormous variety that exists out there. Any feedback on the presentation, we’re always interested.

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Thanks for the clarification - and I hope I’m not hijacking your thread too much @Shyboy999

I’ve been away from the site for a while and still catching up with some of the new discoveries, content, terminology here.

@johnhorneguitar Hijack away man!, the more perspective well have the more we will understand :smile:
@Troy thanks man, I still have no idea how we got to talk about motion mechanics when I was asking about chunking, but you did answer my initial question and your clarification did clarify what you meant :smile:

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See, what happens, is I don’t read properly. Or I just imagine what I think I want you to be asking! Sorry for the diversion.