Critique my cross picking?

Playing Technique
#16

I’ve gotten the one note per string alternate picking up to those speeds, but it took some time. I’ll try to get a video of my technique up shortly.

The way I built it up, was tremolo picking where I would play a single string… but the strokes would swing/curve beyond the stings on either side with each stroke. Its a warmup for me now… and its pretty much my speed limit (its about 170 bpm). Its a really good exercise… because if you hear more than one tone… you know your doing it wrong. Maybe try it out… and see how it feels.

And another cool thing… you still CAN play faster than 170 bpm with the technique, by doing a ‘pseudo’ two-way pick slanting technique where you basically only pick the full stroke when you are in the process of string switching. I started doing this about a year ago… and my 3 note per string shredding sounds so much better.

1 Like
#17

That’s very cool, thanks for the tip! I will try that. Can you tell me a little bit more about your evolution of tempo with that type of figure? Like, before you were into this particular exercise you mentioned, were you topping out similar to where I am, or was it always faster?

1 Like
#18

For single string stuff… I used to be a ‘pecker’… or ‘hopper’ like Troy says… and I was slower than you… I probably topped out at 90 BPM 16th notes… and I wasn’t as reliable or as clean as you are. If I needed to play faster than that… I would just do DWPS and economy picking… and that didn’t sound that clean either. That was about 2 years ago.

I’ve since completely abandon both DWPS and economy picking. Well, I still do sweeps… but I always try to practice arpeggios using both sweeps and alt-picking.

#19

This is all super interesting to me. Would love to hear more about this transition. I’d imagine you’ve written about it before - did you keep a log here or elsewhere?

First questions that pop into mind: So now that you’ve developed the crosspicking stuff to such a high level, you do more or less everything with that, or sweeping? Another way to phrase, why did you abandon dwps and economy? Also, what kind of music do you play - so, what type of lines are you working with?

1 Like
#20

I really haven’t written about it… especially since I’d really need video to explain it… which I will do shortly. I kept a log of BPM speeds for everything towards the first few months. I still have issues with outside picking alternating between 2 strings… its much better than it was before… but it still would be my weakest link… at about 135 bpm… but everything else is up to speed.

I play 99% with that same crosspicking technique… and 1% with sweeping. Oh yeah, I still use hybrid picking for softer, slower stuff… and I still love legato for smoothe stuff. The reason I abandon DWPS/economy picking… was because the new technique just sounded better… and made playing so much simpler and more reliable. Having multiple methods is great… I can still do old methods for demonstration purposes… but that’s really it.

I didnt originally intend to do this… It was originally going to be a technique that I would only use for the one note per string playing. But when I used it for two and three note-per string riffs… it sounded so much better… so I stuck with it. Again… I gotta make a video to show all this.

I try to play a little bit of everything. I like Eric Johnson’s stuff of course.

2 Likes
#21

Woof I gotta say guys I’m still pretty lost here. Basically I think I might get what’s ‘wrong’ but unfortunately am not too clear on what’s right. I did check out Troy’s recent thread here but not quite sure I am understanding.

Regardless of how sloppy this is, am I getting in the ballpark of the correct movement (exaggerated a bit here) or am I actually further off than the other recent close up I posted in this thread?

Edit: more specifically, is THIS now ‘crosspicking’ (even if it’s not great) and no longer ‘string hopping’?

Clip is 18 seconds.

1 Like
#22

One thing I’m not sure has been discussed here yet, but when you look at people like Troy, David Grier, Carl Miner, Molly Tuttle, Albert Lee doing fast crosspicking, all of them have some kind of “tactile reference” for their picking hand, rather than letting it float free in space. The most similar to you is probably Carl Miner, but he has his pinky touching the face of the guitar, which I think makes a big difference for hitting the strings accurately with his technique. Grier has his wrist wresting on the bridge. Molly Tuttle mixes different techniques, but it seems when she goes into “extreme crosspicking mode”, she has part of the “thumb side” of the heel of her hand resting on the bridge. Albert Lee rests part of the “pinky side” of the heel of his hand on the guitar face or the bridge. Troy appears to have “gliding” fingers on the guitar face, along with maybe contact from the “pinky” edge of the hand on the bridge or the strings, or maybe just part of the “heel” of the hand on the bridge in sort of an Andy Wood style (apologies, @Troy , if I’m off the mark).

Do we have any examples of people who do feats of extraordinary crosspicking without some sort of tactile reference method similar to what I described above? The closest I’m thinking of is Carl Miner, but he has that pinky contact with the guitar face when he crosspicks.

Edit: I forgot to mention Steve Morse, but his crosspicking also has appears to have a tactile reference, with the pinky edge of the hand resting on the bridge or the strings.

3 Likes
#23

Thanks @Frylock - I’ll definitely play around with that. But specifically I’m curious, is THIS now ‘crosspicking’ and no longer ‘string hopping’ ? Or close to the former?

1 Like
#24

To me, the latest video looks more like crosspicking, but I’ll defer to @Troy.

As I think Troy has mentioned, what makes elite crosspickers effective is that the motion that lifts the pick out of the plane in the second “phase” of the pickstroke isn’t merely the reverse direction version of the same motion that buries the pick down into the plane of the strings in the first phase of the pickstroke (important to note here that we are talking about phases that break down a single stroke, i.e. just a downstroke, or just an upstroke). That is, rather than, say, flexing the wrist in phase one and extending the wrist in phase two, you have different motion mechanics that are making each phase work: e.g. (in the downstroke case): forearm rotation with the wrist in “flexed” position buries the pick in the plane in phase one, then the wrist extends to lift the pick out of the plane for phase two. Then the upstroke would be that combination of motions in reverse: wrist flexes for phase one of the upstroke, then forearm rotates up out of the plane for phase two.

Note that the movements don’t have to be completely isolated, only that each contributing mechanic has just one direction for downstrokes, and one direction for upstrokes. E.g. wrist extends on downstrokes, wrist flexes on upstrokes.

Note also that the movements don’t have to be “forearm rotation and wrist flex/ext”, it could be a combination of wrist deviation and wrist flex/ext, etc. In theory, maybe someone could do both phase one and phase two with rotation of the forearm, but I don’t think I’ve seen that be used effectively. To my eye, what you are doing looks pretty similar to Carl Miner: mostly forearm rotation, but with a subtle wrist flex/ext component. From this angle, I’m not sure whether you’re trying to rely too much on just the rotation of the forearm or not, but you seem to have moved away from stringhopping at least.

3 Likes
#25

Yes. A somewhat exaggerated “pure forearm” version of crosspicking, but yes. Everything @Frylock says I agree with here.

If instead of floating the arm, you simply place it on the strings, you will still be able to do a certain amount of what you are currently doing. You will need to introduce wrist movement to complete the downstroke. That is what I am doing in the other thread you reference.

Actually do you recall the live broadcast where we talk about forearm rotation blends, and I talk about how wrist and forearm work together? There’s a moment where I demonstrate how it can work with a strongly flexed Gypsy-style wrist, and also how it can work if you straighten that out. That straight version is very close to what I’m doing in the other thread. A combination of forearm and wrist. If you can do that movement, the forearm plus the wrist deviation movement, then you are very close to the Jimmy Herring-style movement I am using in the other thread.

There are also other crosspicking methods which produce a similar result but have no, or almost no, forearm turning. When most people attempt this, they stringhop. This is probably why people find this topic confusing. Any time you show someone who is visibly turning their arm, people go “aha!” that’s different. When you look at someone like Molly or Pat Martino who don’t appear to turn the arm very much, then people go “stringhopping”, and don’t understand why Molly and Pat can do that movement quickly. This is the movement we are describing in the Albert Lee videos, the pure wrist version of this “fully escaped” pickstroke movement.

6 Likes
#26

I mentioned this as well to the mandolin guy, and I completely agree about the need for ‘contact’ with crosspicking. I like Troy’s ‘gliding’ technique… it gives you the most range of movement… but I can’t deny that Carl Miner’s technique is super precise and reliable.

#27

Quick question - which Albert Lee video has the animations? Maybe I’m being dense, but I went through them and couldn’t find the exact one/spot - although I do think I’m understanding these distinctions better!

Thanks in advance

#28

Hey SO here’s a new video, a little longer at 3:42, where I’m requesting some advice/assessment,

contents are, in order:

  • I demo to check if I’m more in the ballpark with the movement

  • an exercise I made up to ‘test’ if the pick is traveling the correct path (might be useful…)

  • demonstrating my personal ‘motion mechanics’ for faster playing - my thought is that if any of you folks can see what my wrist/arm looks like when I’m doing my max-tempo stuff, then so how I’m interpreting the cross picking movement, if there are more pieces that I’m missing

I have to admit I’m not always clear on what of my own motions are coming from wrist vs elbow/forearm, and maybe someone else can help me make the distinctions in my different movements.

thank you so much in advance!

(edit: helpful to actually link the video in)

edit: thank you troy for linking to https://troygrady.com/interviews/albert-lee/analysis-chapter-4-the-compound-curve/ in the other thread to answer my Q about which Albert Lee vid to watch - I will check it out and won’t be surprised if it answers some of the questions in my vid here.

1 Like
#29

Great playing as usual! Got some audio sync weirdness happening here.

Your usual ‘fast’ technique is mostly wrist deviation actually, with a slight flex. There is a little arm but not that much. Check your hand in the wide shot, it’s mostly moving side to side. This is how most people who do “forearm rotation” actually do it - with a blend of things.

The forearm-involved version of crosspicking is just another way of doing it. Not better or worse, just different. It’s not aggressively “turny” as you’re doing it here. But that’s ok, we haven’t done any kind of tutorial on that movement yet so you might try the “lightly supinated arm, wrist-only” version from the new tutorial. We now have some good closeup shots of what that looks like when done correctly, and some semblance of stepwise instructions for getting started. This is essentially a simplified version of the “Andy Wood” style of crosspicking, for reference.

See that thread for more details on how this works!

#30

Ok - update after spending a few days sporadically re-reading threads, re-watching the Albert Lee vid as well as other videos, and here’s where I feel I’m at:

  1. I think I am able to mimic Troy’s movements and set up in the two minute cross picking tutorial and as he has tried to describe it in text.
  2. With the way that feels I really can’t imagine performing that movement on a single string quickly or at any tempo I’d consider ‘fast,’ nor can I really think of a process that could allow me to gradually increase my speed and comfort on that tempo to get from the somewhat glacial tempo I’m at now into that post-hopping zone.
  3. I also think I understand the principle of the muscle chains required in the down and upstroke. Interestingly I did a slow mo vid of my ‘normal’ or ‘old’ picking technique for crosspicking figures (like the first post in this thread, recorded a year ago) and I believe I’m actually extending out from my index finger base joint on each stroke, so therein lies the hop/peck - I was changing strings by extending my fingers out on every string change (after 20 years I have a way to verbalize what’s going wrong :joy: ) For reference, I can comfortably play a lot of 1WPS figures as 16ths at 150-180 or so, pretty sure there’s no finger movement going on there, and the one-note-per-string hopping stuff might top out around 100.
  4. Re-watching the Martin Miller stuff and the Albert Lee stuff my intuition is telling me that there is some combination of movements I can make that can satisfy the ‘cross don’t hop’ muscle chain principles but I’m not sure that Troy’s set up and set of movements is going to be it. There may be some combination of forearm and finger stuff or something that winds up working better for me, but I’m really just guessing at this point. I just say this because I know how it feels to ‘floor it’ as Andy Wood said, and I can’t imagine it feeling right to floor it with the Troy movement sequence. But I recognize I could be coming to this conclusion just as a result of my own incorrect comprehension of anything or everything that’s going on.
  5. So there seem to be two possible challenges. One is figuring out how to speed up Troy’s movements, and the other is to tool around and see what adjustments I can make in my own ‘fast’ motion mechanics to get a curve going on each stroke. In both cases, I’m not sure of what step by step processes I would need to through to make progress towards those aims.
    6. Last point I promise, and I think this will be relevant to everybody struggling with this - I’m really not sure how progress is supposed to FEEL. As in, ok even if I get it ‘right’ I’m not sure what struggles I might encounter (say, tension, accuracy, not correctly clearing the string, etc) are normal and can be worked out, and what struggles are indications that I have something incorrect in the movement, if that makes sense.

Thanks in advance everyone. I think I’ll tag @hamsterman again as he seemed to have worked out a lot of solutions with this stuff as well.

2 Likes
#31

Considering that you are still stringhopping a bit (as suggested by Troy), that sounds great! You will be an absolute beast when you perfect the crosspicking mechanic! Good job! I look forward to seeing your progress with this, so please keep posting! I’m in awe of anyone who crosspicks, my skill level is shockingly poor! Haha!

1 Like
#32

These aren’t really movements you have to “speed up” if you already have good hand speed as you do. So it’s possible there’s still something not quite right in the movement. If you’ve got footage of this let’s take a look.

Again, for someone in your situation, as a highly coordinated player, if we’re talking about a single specific pattern like the forward roll, there’s not really progress per se. Did you ever learn the moonwalk as a kid? The forward roll pattern is a lot like that. Like a physical coordination trick that some kids could do, others couldn’t, and some couldn’t and then - light bulb - could after some trial and error or instruction. It’s similar to that.

Put up a clip and we’ll take a look!

1 Like
#33

Here’s another thought. Can you do a wrist-anchored strum (as per the instructions in the two-minute video) across three strings, with no arm turning or finger involvement? What does that look like? Does it feel faster and easier than what you’ve been practicing with the anchored crosspicking technique?

Because honestly, deviation crosspicking feels a lot like that, just on individual strings. In fact, an attempt at crosspicking which ends up too flat, and just becomes a somewhat sloppy strum across three strings, would be technically closer to correct than a super accurate stringhopping movement. If you’re looking for a guide as to what this feels like and why I don’t think you should necessarily have to “speed up” this movement, that’s my best guideline.

If you can film that, let’s take a look at that because that could be another gateway into this type of movement.

1 Like
#34

You’re the man Troy, love that we’re getting under the hood of all this and you’re willing to take the time. I will definitely tool around with what you say and get up another clip of the movement for you and others to evaluate.

#35

While we’re brainstorming here I have another idea. Try this on a tabletop like the tutorial. I was expecting that to be weird to film and I was surprised how much it wasn’t. It’s strangely comfortable. Edit: I’m sitting on one of these:

…and I have the guitar on one of these:

Sorry, edit again! In front of a mirror. This will give you a one-to-one visual reference with the tutorial video for what the pickstroke itself should look like when performed on a single string.

1 Like