I learned the tune Tico Tico long ago and now i’m revisitng it since its a great workout for crosspicking. I can play pretty much all of it using crosspicking and keeping downstrokes synced to downbeats, But there is a section of a song that has ascending 4 string arpeggio. It would be much easier to start it on downstroke, but it starts on the upbeat. I think it has a better flow if i do not disrupt the downstroke downbeat sync, but the tricky part is: you have to loop ascending 4 string arpeggio starting on the upstroke. This means you will be playing downstroke on the 1st string when you finish the arpeggio and you have to come back to the 4th string and start from the upstroke again.
Is this a normal practice to play these kind of leaps and i just need to practice it more, or i have to find a workaround?
If you like downstrokes on downbeats, and upstrokes on upbeats, that’s cool and extremely common in styles like bluegrass. Molly Tuttle plays the four string arpeggio back and forth with a downstroke on the top string at least once in her interview, and also the other way around. The picking technique doesn’t care what type of phrase you play with it, it’s just a hand movement.
Hey Troy, I agree that the movement for escaping the strings plane does not care about inside / outside picking, but I am starting to think that there is a difference for string tracking, particularly on a big skip like the 1- 4 needed here.
In the outside version for example, the momentum of the pickstrokes in a sense helps the string tracking (after sounding the note, the pick is already heading in the right direction). The converse is true for the inside 1- 4 string skip.
Edit: I’m mainly talking about the big string skip between 1st and 4th string. When strings are closer the inside/outside difference may be less noticeable.
There very well may be subtle differences that we have yet to articulate, potentially due to string tracking, as you point out. It’s worth noting that no matter we theorize, we can see for a fact that great players very often make different movements for certain occurrences of inside picking than outside. For example, Andy Wood uses a 2wps-type forearm movement for ascending inside string changes, and wrist or wrist+fingers for every other kind of string change. That is the most succinct description of his style I can think of. Is it possible to just do wrist for everything? Sure. But that’s not what he does.
Molly is more wrist and less arm overall, including back and forth inside string changes that many players, including Andy, would do with more forearm. So maybe there’s something about her form that makes this possible, or at least, more likely to stumble across than in Andy’s case. She is more pronated than he is so I would look there for the difference.
Maybe? If the tracking is elbow or arm, and the picking motion is wrist, one shouldn’t really affect the other. The arm can start tracking while the picking motion finishes. i.e. There is no ‘momentum’ because the arm is stationary in both cases. Maybe it’s anchored wrist where this matters, i.e. wrist is both picking and tracking?
Anyway, yes, probably some subtleties here. But I think in practice there is probably a simple hands-on explanation that we can ultimately give to those who are learning, that says, ok, if you are set up in a particular way, then you may want to use this movement, otherwise, use that movement.
Totally looking forward to that 