So I recently discovered that one of the issues that causes inconsistency in my playing is that telling my wrist to move up and down causes my arm to whip in the opposite direction, which obviously is extremely inefficient. I can sometimes prevent this from happening at will (indeed, I do in the video) but sometimes I just can’t. Does/Has anyone have/had this problem and how do you go about tackling it? Sometimes I think of lifting from the fingers and letting my wrist come with it, but this doesn’t always work.
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Hi! Using some forearm in conjunction with wrist motion isn’t inefficient. Plenty of players do it, and in fact we did a whole lesson on it!
That’s what’s happening in the first motion you’re demonstrating. More or less. The second motion you’re demonstrating is moving only the wrist, and again, that’s not better or worse. It’s just a different motion. As long as you’re playing the notes you want and it feels smooth, you’re good.
Rather than trying to eliminate motion you don’t want, I would instead try thinking about taking advantage of motions you do have, making them smooth, and learning to switch between them. I know we’ve discussed this before but in general I think your technique looks pretty good and none of these things are “wrong”, per se. But learning to know when you’re doing one motion versus another, so you can turn them on and off as needed, is definitely part of the journey. It sounds like you’re already moving down that road so that’s good.
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Interesting! I thought that was more arm rotation - this doesn’t feel like rotation as much as it feels like the arm is moving the opposite direction - in fact, I had identified it as the leading cause of my pick getting caught in the strings. Perhaps that movement really just doesn’t work for me. For me, my playing sounds best when my arm moves in a way similar to Andy Woods - lots of wrist movement, but arm virtually stationary (even if he does use a bit of rolling when cross picking).
FWIW, I’ve figured out that part of what causes the movement I don’t want is that subconscious desire to pick perpendicular to the neck (or pickups), causing my arm to sort of withdraw. It’s even worse on a strat as I’m trying to avoid that damned volume knob and pickup selector.
That’s totally fine! As part of my job, I have to learn and be able to do all these motions. The ones where the arm is stationary and there is only wrist, the ones where the is some kind of arm and wrist, etc. So I can tell you they basically all work. And they probably all work for everyone if you fool around with them enough until you find a particular hand position, or arm position that feels smooth and fast.
But even if you choose only one or two of these motions, learning to feel the differences between them is a core part of the journey. Sounds like you’re getting there so good work!
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