Confused about pickslanting when using Alternate vs Economy Picking

Playing Technique
#1

Im new here and need some clarification. Ive seen some videos on here mention that with alternate picking it involves the usage of a downward pick slant when the last motion on a string is an upstroke and usage of upward pick slant when it you end on a downstroke.

However it seems the opposite is mentioned for economy picking or sweep picking… I noticed it mentions that downward pick slant is used when you rest on a downstroke and thus sweep to the next string and use a upward pick slant when you rest on upstroke and then sweep.

Im confused why are alternate and economy picking different with pick slanting? Or are they? Whats your preferences and how do you combine the two picking types?

Any help is appreciated

@Troy @Brendan

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#2

@mvwestbroek welcome to the forum!

The short answer is that there is an important distinction between pickslanting (the inclination of the pick with respect to the strings plane) and trapped / escaped motion (the trajectory of the pick). I should be able to write more later, but in the meantime I can recommend two recent videos that @Troy made about Frank Gambale:

Let us know if these help :slight_smile:

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#3

Thanks Tommo! Ill check these out and if I have any further questions ill let ya know!

#4

@tommo So basically what I got from this were these points:

  1. If one note on the string then you can sweep and utilize downward pick slant or upward based on direction you are sweeping
  2. If more than 1 note is being played on a string then you need to alternate pick
  3. If the alternate picking is an odd number then you can continue to sweep in the one direction
  4. If the alternate picking is an even number then you have to change directions with the sweep

Questions: For Point # 2 above (alternate picking) would you still use a downward/upward pick slant based on whether it ends on a down or up pick stroke? Because I thought escape is based on the slant of the pick

Question: So on the second part of the lick at 15:05 on the second video… the reason it goes from the downstroke on the D string 5th fret to the C on the G string 5th fret as an upstroke is because of the rule that if there are an even number of notes on one string then you have to change the sweep direction of the next note… that being the C note on the 5th fret/G string as an upstroke?

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#5

Ah sorry about the confusion, pickslanting and escape motion are often correlated - but they are separate concepts: in principle, you can make any escape trajectory with any pickslant - it depends on the trajectory you give to the pick!

EDIT: just as an example, here I am drawing how you can do both upstroke and/or downstroke escape trajectories with a neutral pickslant:

image image

At the same time, DWPS makes it easier to do downstroke sweeps, while UWPS makes it easier to do upstroke sweeps.

You indeed spotted a situation where the “Gambale rules” 1-4 you outlined have not been satisfied! This is a true alternate picked string change, and it works because the downstroke on the D escapes the plane of the strings (see second picture above)

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#6

Great answers from @tommo here! I would simply add that the remaining videos in the series will clarify further what he’s talking about, and what you’re asking about, i.e. as to how all these motions fit together and why Frank makes the choices he does. Video three on alternate picking is up now!

If you’d like to unwrap your presents now, before Santa delivers to the YouTubes, you can also just watch all the chapters right now on the platform, since you have a subscription:

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#7

@Troy @tommo
Thanks guys so much and i appreciate the quick response. I will check out the whole series and if I have any questions will let ya know. Thanks!

#8

@Troy @tommo

I have been watching a lot of the videos and notice there are multiple disciplines when it comes to increasing speed picking and accuracy. You have the DWPS that Yngwie does vs the UPWS that Strunz and Farah favor vs the all inclusive Gambale economy picking. (As was mentioned)

Which one do you guys favor? Is it subjective in terms of which ones a player decides to implement or is their a superior approach in combining all of these modalities?

Since the videos are separate from one another contingent on which style to use I feel a little confused on how they all fit together. Do you mind outlining the big picture of how they all consolidate so its clear as I navigate the videos? Thanks for all your help!

#9

Everything starts with a picking motion. Here’s the general process:

Try all the joint motions, see which one works best right now, then use that to start with. You can do sweeping with all the joint motions, whether it’s wrist, forearm-wrist, elbow, and so on. Try not to overthink the concepts. Just get your hands on the guitar and try to make the motions work.

As you experiment, these motion tutorials are all just general reference points. Most people use a complicated mix of motions, and in tutorials like the Primer, we’re just trying to boil them down to a few basic categories for simplicity, so you can sort of learn to recognize the difference. If you try to do wrist motion, but you see some forearm working, and it feels good and works, that’s fine! Just keep doing what’s working.

#11

@tommo
Been binge watching all of the videos for crack the code and pick primer. I was watching a video online where someone mentioned the choice for pick slant is based on whether you end on an upstroke or downstroke. They said that the Crack the Code system teaches this but I dont really hear this definitive in the videos. But is this relatively true?

Also I went to pick primer and saw Yngwie and Eric Johnson about upward escape and the other guys for downward escape. I clicked on both videos and they use the term upward escape in relation to downward pick slant and opposite being true as well. I thought pick escape and pick slant are not closely related (Since escape can be done at a neutral point) but it seems that they are. If you can help clarify this some more. Thanks!

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#12

Hey, welcome to the forum and thanks for posting! Quick general note, please don’t tag us in every post — just clutters up the notifications, and not necessary as we’re all in here reading stuff regularly.

If by chance you post something for feedback and a week goes by with no reply, it’s okay to “bump” a post occasionally for visibility :slight_smile:

Yes as Tommo noted above the pickslant and escape trajectory are often correlated, it’s just that in some of our older stuff we didn’t make a clear distinction at all, using ‘pickslanting’ to describe the entire system, which got a bit confusing. In our more recent stuff like the Frank Gambale videos above, and the wrist / forearm motions sections in the Primer, we’ve tried to make it a lot more clear that the escape is the key thing, and the slant is a separate variable (though indeed closely related!)

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#13

Sorry for the delay on this! Yes some players like Yngwie always use a combination of DWPS + USX, which in the early days made us think that the two things always came together. However, we now know that there are players like Andy Wood who can comfortably do all kinds of escapes with all kinds of pickslant* - so we are being more rigorous with the terminology now :slight_smile:

  • =I may be slightly oversimplifying here, he may still have slight preferences, but you get the idea!
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