Correcting years of bad habits and DWPS

Playing Technique
#1

After a lot of frustration and analysis, I’ve concluded that the main reason why My DWPS feels bumpy/sticky is because of years of bad habits. Even on a single string, I cannot even do tremolo picking and make it feel smooth.

The way I perform the forearm rotation seems to be incorrect. I tried picking with my left hand (Im right handed) and noticed that the strokes feel and sound powerful and there is no bumpy feeling when picking fast.

Also, the whole arm feels “connected”: the forearm and even the biceps feel as though they were all involved.

This is definitively not the case with my right hand. It feels very bumpy, even the strumming! The arm muscles also don’t feel as “connected” as they do in my left hand.

This has made me wonder - maybe years of bad habits with my right hand are making it very difficult for me to use the correct motion for DWPS. My left hand has never been used for picking and it seems to “feel right” when I try DWPS. No bad habits ingrained there.

The solution sounds easy: why not replicate with the right hand exactly the motion that the left hand is doing? I’ve tried this and it’s not that easy. It has been very difficult for me to figure out what the left hand is doing correctly that the right hand isn’t.

Now, my UWPS feels much better. It feels powerful, smooth and consistent. I would really like to be a primary DWPS because most of my favourite guitarists are also primary DWPSers. If I don’t find a solution though, I’ll probably just go with what is working and adapt to it.

I’ve uploaded a video where it’s easy to see the difference between my right and left hand picking. Hopefully someone can detect what’s going on. If so, a coaching cue would probably be very helpful. Something that can help me figure out how to do the right movement so that my DWPS becomes useable.

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#2

Have you ever taken private guitar lessons? I think having a teacher, at least long enough for you to learn a comfortable, efficient picking style would be of great benefit. Posting videos for Technique Critique has certainly helped some people, but in my opinion, nothing beats having a teacher sitting right there in the same room with you, watching what you do and then helping you with problems.

In your post you made it seem that you can pick better with your left hand than with your right hand, but in my opinion that is not the case. Your right hand picking has a ways to go, which is why I suggest lessons, but contrary to what you wrote, your right hand picking is better than your left hand picking.

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#3

I think you are thinking about it way too much. Put all those thoughts of what you “should” do out of your head and just work on tremolo picking until you find something that works. it should feel natural and fun and easy

it doesnt HAVE to be dwps

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#4

That’s good advice. I especially like the last sentence. For right now, try forgetting about pick angles, and whether your technique “looks right.” Just be concerned with if it sounds right. Try a lot of different approaches, if necessary, until you find a tremolo picking technique that sounds good and feels natural.

#5

Is the “bumpy” feeling he has possibly a latent hopping motion?

It may be that early on to avoid string collisions, he integrated a hop with each pick motion. To him it feels bumpy. I don’t see that in the video but that doesn’t mean its not there.

OP,
You don’t need a guitar to practice your picking motion. You can hold a pick with the tip against a tabletop and practice quickly rotating forearm in a tremolo motion. Because the tip is on the tabletop, the motion will be in one plane.

I was taugh early on that picking motion was like twisting a key in a lock. Its not exactly like this, but its a good starting place.

#6

Mine is more like I’ve put my hand in some unfortunate substance and I’m trying to flick it off.

Tremolo is like even though I’ve washed my hand six thousand times I still feel like it won’t come off and it’s made me go a bit funny.

I can’t get the key turning version to feel right when I do it in the air but I might tool around with it on the guitar later and report back.

#7

Its kinda like turning a key, except the key is not at the fulcrum. IOW the keyhole is moving. But thats just what I was taught 25 years ago, CTC I’m sure has a better explanation.

#8

OP here. I don’t get how you can make the “key locking” motion with a pick on the guitar strings. Is here a video where I can see how this is exactly done?

#9

Thanks for posting! Couple things:

Forearm rotation isn’t necessary for “dwps”. You can do it with all sorts of motions. You can do a wrist-only approach, like what Mike Stern and Albert Lee use, for example. Lots of clips of those guys on our YouTube channel. Another popular approach is a combination of wrist and forearm. This is loosely how I’d describe the “Doug Aldrich” style, which looks like this:

Finally, you can do a pure forearm approach - Eddie Van Halen’s tremolo technique is a great example of this, which uses only a forearm anchor but no wrist anchor. We have a recent blog post on this subject which has some general thoughts on learning motions that could be helpful:

And @qwertygitarr here on the forum has posted some great clips of his technique. His approach is similar to Eddie’s technique in that is just about entirely forearm, with no wrist, so far as we can tell, except he uses a bridge/strings anchor and can get muting with it. But again, this approach turns out not to be super common among famous players, for whatever reasons.

Finally, we cover lots of these motions in the Pickslanting Primer. The current version of those tutorials is here, and we spend about 15-20 minutes on forearm and blends:

We’re updating this material now with much clearer, step-by-step instructions for doing the different physical motions, including the wrist-only approaches and the forearm approaches. That will be done in a month or two.

For now though, I’d echo what others have said - there is no need to use forearm specifically, and there is not even a need to use an upstroke-escape (i.e. “DWPS”) motion. Lots of great players, like McLaughlin and DiMeola, are downstroke-escape players. If you just want to get good at something I’d recommend trying them all and choosing whichever works first / best right now. Going for it, flooring it, and trying to play fast is how you do that. When you get a motion right, it will click immediately and you will go fast and smooth, even if only for a few seconds. Then you’ll probably lose it and have to start over.

More thoughts on this process of learning motions in the EVH blog post above.

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#10

Chris, is there any way you could demonstrate how to do a tremolo motion using a table?

#11

Thanks, Troy. I’ve managed to understand UWPS well thanks to the vids, and it was something that felt more natural to me without much effort, but I still struggle with DWPS. Having step by step instructional videos is something that I’m really looking forward too because it’s much easier for me to learn that way.

#12

Are you specifically working on DWPS to be Gypsy like with the floating arm and bent wrist?

It might help if you
1. Place the Pinky knife edge on the bridge of the guitar
2. Raise your fingers up: the fingers of the picking hand that aren’t holding the pick. This moves them out of the way of the pick path and makes for easier rotation.
3. Alternatively try a Wrist only DWPS approach