Crosspicking 101

Playing Technique
#1

I like how in the DWPS threads there’s been a kind of emerging sequential plan for developing that skill. For example, it was helpful for me to learn that the pick’s path should be straight, to decide on a motion mechanic (for me it’s been forearm rotation, but obviously others could be used here too), and then to practice the Yngwie 6-note lick on each string using rest strokes with an exaggerated motion mechanic (at first), then to move that to groups of two adjacent strings, and then all six strings ascending/descending, etc.

For those who’ve embarked on learning the dark art of cross picking, any advice on how to approach it? Is there any sort of general multi-step process you’ve used in learning it that might be similar to the DWPS one? I’ve seen the interviews where cross picking is discussed, but any thoughts people might have about their own experience with it would be awesome.

Thank you!
Greg

1 Like
#2

Very interested in this. I’m starting to feel some vague crosspicking ideas in certain licks I play but they need some serious refining.

1 Like
#3

I’ll have to do a video of this, but one thing I noticed during a practice session last night was that I get better results when I “neutralize” my pick slant a bit. Normally I do the pronated UWPS with the fleshy part of my thumb against the guitar but for this 1-nps (+legato notes) lick I found that the picking cleared the string easier when the little bone on my wrist opposite my thumb (forget the term) made contact with the bridge, giving me a flatter plane to work with. Made it easier to get a curved picking motion too.

2 Likes
#4

The main issue here is the methods for doing this operate pretty differently and have sometimes very different basic setups on the guitar.

The most popular approaches appear to be wrist-oriented. Inside of wrist you’ve got sub categories of supinated and pronated, i.e. dwps and uwps approaches. Steve Morse, Albert Lee, and Sierra Hull would all be supinated approaches. David Grier, Pat Martino, Gary Moore, Chris Thile and others would be pronated. Also pretty common in both of these categories is finger assist, like we’ve seen recently with Molly Tuttle - pronated wrist with fingers.

Maybe less common (anecdotally) are the forearm turning type approaches, like what Jimmy Herring and to some extent Carl Miner use. I’m guessing out there in the world you’ve got players doing this with a finger assist as well, just because this seems to be a common addition to all these basic approaches.

So the teaching side of this is likely going to boil down to choosing one of these categories of movements first. I would imagine we would focus on getting the non-fingers versions understood and taught first.

For dealing with fingers, either we get someone to actively and specifically work on this to see how best to develop it, or we just say, do the basic movement and let the fingers fall where they may.

Thoughts please.

3 Likes
#5

I would add to this that from the interviews we’ve done, only one player (Steve Morse) was at all conscious of making any type of crosspicking movement. When we specifically asked David Grier, Carl Miner, and Andy Wood to focus on the movement itself, they were barely able to discern the difference between crosspicking and pickslanting, even though visually they might look pretty different.

So I suspect the ideal teaching methods for these movements, whatever they are, may end up being not so focused on intentionally “doing” the movement. Instead, the ideal approach may be something along the lines of placing the arm and hand in a particular setup, doing what feels like an alternate picking movement, and trying to get the difference in feel between that movement and other types of alternate picking to be as imperceptible as possible. In other words, we are replicating the feel — or the “non” feel, in this case — that the best players associate with doing this correctly.

#6

Whenever I try to crosspick something like a 1 note per string arpeggio, I neutralize the pick slant and rock back and forth between UWPS and DWPS for each note. Very small rocking. Just enough to clear the string you have to get over.

I’m not that good at crosspicking so don’t take what I say for advise. lol.

#7

This would be the Jimmy Herring-style approach, using forearm rotation. The wrist-based approaches like what Morse and others do involves no or minimal forearm movement, just the wrist.

1 Like
#8

Thread Necromancy

For those who might want to tackle crosspicking but aren’t sure what to work on in terms of repertoire, or for those who aren’t into Bluegrass check this out. WARNING, the book doesn’t contain tab, just standard notation. You could possibly find tabbed versions of these songs if you do some searching.

Came recommended by Al Di Meola as a supplement to his instructional book. I’ve been casually working on the first piece “Caprice” and it’s just a 1nps assault.

6 Likes
Where do i start with Crosspicking?
#9

Wow, this takes me back…used to practice from that book a long, long time ago. Carcassi’s Caprice was part of my daily practice routine for quite a while. Still, the fastest I ever got it was at 120, and not without getting tense. I don’t think I can do even that now-nowdays I tackle stuff like this either with hybrid or all the way fingerstyle.

2 Likes
#10

It seems like a lot of us on the forum might be pretty adept pickslanters, but in crosspicking we sort of hit a speed barrier around 16th notes at 120-130 bpm.

I was thinking that maybe the curved crosspicking motion simply cannot achieve the same speed as a linear pickslanting motion, similar to how a sprinter runs slower around a turn than he/she does when running down the straightaway.

I recall Troy asking Carl Miner to play “Beaumont Rag” fast, and Carl then plays it at 130 bpm. It sounds great, but makes me think maybe crosspicking really does have a kind of speed limit.

But then I see that Teemu plays his ”Crosspick 4str Minor” lick at 160 bpm, and Andy Wood plays “Tumeni Notes” in sextuplets at 140 bpm…and my theory goes up in flames!

#11

I remember that 16th notes at around 120 bpm was my limit with stringhopping before finding CtC. So maybe the crosspicking technique some of us have isn’t that effective and still has some stringhopping in it. I still haven’t been able to get any better at it. Crosspicking definitely seems to be a lot more complex than pickslanting.

#12

Great points. I have the same history regarding pre-CtC stringhopping speed and post-CtC pickslanting speed.

In addition to stringhopping, I wonder what other factors could contribute to a comparatively slower crosspicking technique. I know “blended” picking hand motion mechanics are very common - maybe even normative - in picking, but it seems like there is considerably more blended biomechanical variability in crosspicking compared to pickslanting. Maybe the many ways to crosspick can give rise to many ways to hit a crosspicking speed limit.