Crosspicking Wildwood Flower (kind of)

Technique Critique
#13

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been practising and filming myself a lot since my last post and it’s an interesting experience. It’s a totally different kind of practise than I have ever engaged in, and I notice all kinds of things when I watch the clips. It also takes a while to look at all the clips and analyse them, that’s why it took me so long to post a follow-up.

So, I was able to capture something that felt and sounded pretty good at the time I played it, even though it is certainly not perfectly accurate. This is a clip where I practise the roll and some other 1nps arpeggio stuff. In general, I sometimes see stringhopping when I play 1nps stuff. I also turn the motion pattern around and deviate only on the downstroke, while I deviate and extend on the upstroke. But that’s not the case in this clip. I apologize that this clip is filmed with 30fps, but I didn’t have a better camera available. The second clip is filmed with 120fps, though.

I also tried bringing my right hand back quite a bit over the last couple of days. This has also been touched upon in the everything you need to know about crosspicking thread. It does seem to make a difference to me, it makes it a bit easier. Also, trying not to hit the strings too hard sometimes helps.

I did this in this short clip with scalar playing. I think that the “unbalanced motion issue” I had, where the part below the string of my downstroke wasn’t really fully executed, is not present in this clip. When I start playing faster, the movements become very small, but they are getting smaller on both sides of the string, so it’s not unbalanced. And small movements at higher speed are not problematic (to some extend even neccessary), or are they? I still have the unbalanced thing, but at least not all the time. To get rid of it, I’m trying to alternate between slower and faster playing, where in the slower playing I focus on executing the full movement. It’s hard to tell, if that’s the right recipe, but I don’t know what else I could do.

I can’t wait for your feedback!

#14

That would be the pronated approach, a la Molly Tuttle / David Grier. It requires a slightly more pronated arm position than the other one you’ve been experiementing with. By all means film that one as well, and we’ll take a look.

Clips aren’t loading btw, could be an upload issue…

#15

Ups, accidentally marked them private. Should load now.

#16

Sounds great. Yes, the pickstroke is more balanced and I think it sounds smoother as a result - the downstrokes don’t hit so hard compared to the upstrokes any more. Nice work!

I’m not so sure about that. This looks a lot like David Grier’s form, and he’s a pronated approach player, with “dart thrower” (deviation + extension) above the string and deviation below.

And when I say I’m not so sure I really do mean “not so sure”! In order to do David’s approach, you’d need a slightly pronated forearm - enough so the phrase of the movement below the string can be done only with deviation and still escape. It’s not clear that you have enough pronation here to account for that. An alternative explanation is that this a very flat form of stringhopping with extension both above and below the string. Which would be… interesting! But I rule out nothing until I know what I know.

If you have examples of the attempts you think are more explicitly Grier-style, we can take a look for comparison. Ultimately, a way to measure this categorically to eliminate this sort of guesswork is really in order for this type of practice.

This take is more obviously of the supinated variety, and the above the string phase of the movement still appears a little more exaggerated than the [edit:] below the string phase. But I can’t really tell because…

…because the frame rate is severely lacking. This doesn’t look like 120fps video and the motion is not smooth. If you’re on a Mac, Quicktime Player 7 will tell you what the frame rate of any video file is if you hit “Command-I” when a file is open in the player. So will Final Cut Pro X if you look in the inspector. If you’re on Windows it depends what application you are using for video editing. But I guarantee they will all have some way of displaying this value if you hunt around in the menus. Just do a quick test, point your phone at the wall and record some video. Then import it to your computer and verify what the frame rate is before you do any editing on the file. That will tell you what you’re working with.

This take could very well be a little more balanced pickstroke-wise than it appears, but again too hard to tell.

Great work here overall.

#17

Alternative explanation: You did film in 120fps but exported at 25fps PAL / European frame rate, and then made the “slow motion” portion of the clip by slowing down the 25fps export, not the original 120fps file. Any slow motion needs to be done on the original 120fps frames so that you actually see more detail. Otherwise it’s like zooming in on a low-res JPG, all you’ll see are pixels.

Alternative alternative explanation: You’re using a video editor that doesn’t recognize 120fps and just ignores all the in-between frames.

Or something!

#18

Haha we’ve been discussing the vagaries of high framerate video editing / uploading here! Surprisingly tricky and inconsistent across devices / platforms, is what we’re realizing. Hard to say without knowing exactly what camera settings, editing application etc. but @tomatitito you mentioned the 120fps clip was shot with GoPro, is it possible it wasn’t explicitly set to 120fps mode? (It’s an option but not necessarily set that way by default). Otherwise as Troy said it’s probably getting lost in the editing process somewhere.

#19

Ok, I’m really sorry… I have to do some more research to find out what’s going on.

I did film the second clip with 120fps, I know that for sure. I just checked the media information on the original clip, and it does say 120fps there.

I am on a mac (pretty old machine), and I used iMovie to edit and export the clip. So maybe iMovie did something, I don’t know. I’ll look into it, I promise.

Again, I’m sorry. I did spend a lot of time to prepare the video, for one so that you guys can see what’s going on, but also out of respect. You spend all this time looking at the clips and writing detailed answers, so that’s in order. I hope I can sort it out…

#20

Ok, I see what you mean. I did not actually want to say that I switch from a supinated to a pronated way of playing from time to time. Rather, looking at some of my clips, a couple of times there was a downstroke that was missing the extension part, often in the 5th note of the roll pattern. And then some time later I thought I spot a little bit of extension on the upstroke. When that happened things were not going well, so it’s not a feature, but a bug. But maybe I overinterpreted. I will look for it in my clips, and when I see it, I’ll post it.

#21

But you are. Or at the very least you are occasionally using a less supinated approach. The first clip in this new batch, the acoustic one, is that. The arm position is absolutely different than the other clips you have posted so far. Whether that means you are in fact pronated with respect to the strings I cannot say for sure, but there is no question that it is not as supinated as the others. And the movement looks and sounds good. Since this is working well I’d recommend playing this way more deliberately and seeing where it takes you.

#22

You are right, I did use less supination and that is something that I did on purpose. Especially on acoustic guitar this position felt good. I recorded the clip a couple of days ago, whereas the other one I recorded today. Either, I “forgot” about being less supinated, or things are different on electric? I will experiment with that.

However, I thought that even in the first clip, I still have a slightly supinated forearm. Do you disagree? Is this already pronated?

#23

If it works, it is good! I always take the hint my hands give me - always.

Electric and acoustic are not different, per se, but different body shapes can be different. Strat type bodies with contours can feel different from slab-style Telecaster bodies and flat acoustic type bodies. However in this case you probably just forgot. Or the body being flat made it feel like a less pronated approach was more comfortable, for whatever reason. It’s sort of academic, because you did it deliberately on that day, we can see it on video, and it appears to have had a positive impact.

Are you asking what position your arm is in, or are you asking what movement you are making? Because they are not exactly the same question.

For example, we might notice that players like David Grier who use an arm position where it is pronated with respect to the strings also tend to make certain movements. But the arm position does not “cause” those movements to be made. If you use a slightly supinated arm position, you can still use David Grier’s wrist movement. It just won’t work too well for crosspicking because not all the pickstrokes will escape.

In your case I’m not totally clear on what your arm position is relative to the strings in that clip. It could be more or less parallel. It could be slightly tilted in one way or another. Or it could actually vary by small amounts, especially if you’re close to parallel. It’s pretty clear it’s not dramatically one way or another. For simplicity let’s say you’re in the ballpark of parallel.

However what is clearer to me is the movement. It is obviously deviational, and nearly flat. It appears like the above the string phase has an extension component, like David does. It is unclear if the below the string phase is strictly deviational or also a blend. If it is a blend, this movement is stringhopping and it should be speed limited and a little tense.

In the future, we’ll know more how to distinguish these things — probably after categorically verifying a few test cases through some kind of measurement. Then we can probably learn to recognize these movements by general setup when we see them again without having to bust out the measuring equipment.

For now, this approach is better objectively that what you were doing previously. That is a clear case for: keep doing it!

#24

Your technique looks good, and I think your pinky sliding method looked a bit more fluid. But then again… I have a personal bias as I am a slider. Whichever feels more comfortable really.

#25

Technical Note

First off: I was finally able to upload a decent video. I double checked, and the new videos I made have 30fps. It turns out that it was a problem with my iMovie, probably because it’s an old version. Anyway, I guess no one is interested in my computer problems, so let’s move on to the important stuff :wink:

Reflecting on my…

…Analysis

After digesting the recent feedback, I am shocked by my lack of ability to analyse my playing. I was convinced that what I was doing was deviation + extension on upstrokes and (flexion +) deviation on downstrokes, and I didn’t see that on some of the clips I was doing the opposite. So one thing I learned is that my “picking analyis skills” need more work. Fortunately there is this forum where things get straightened out. With this in mind I started to have second thoughts about what I said earlier about me changing the motion around. Maybe something totally different was going on there, I’ll need to look into it.

…Technique

Over the last couple days I focussed on practising with what I thought was still a supinated forearm position, even if the amount of supination is not very high.

I was refering to my arm position. To determine wether I am supinated or pronated (or parallel) I used to compare my forearm to my upper arm. But I guess that strings and upper arm are “in the same plane”, so that should be the same as looking at the forearm relative to the strings.

Thinking about my position, I get puzzled more and more. If my movement is actually deviation only on the downstroke, then my forearm would have to be pronated. Otherwise I would bump into the string, which I don’t see happening in my clips (You have laid out all this in one of your posts, bit it took a while for this to sink in).

But comparing my forearm and my upper arm, I thought that I am not pronated, but still a bit supinated. Maybe I am just not able to correctly identify my arm position, certainly a possibility. But then again, when I start getting into faster tempos, the pick movement becomes quite a bit smaller. If it’s small enough, I could even be deviating only and not hit the string. I’m not sure if that would be a good thing, I am just “thinking out loud”.

Anyway, this less supinated/parallel/slightly pronated position generally feels good. That’s not to say that the other, more supinated position did not feel good.

I’m glad to hear that, and what I like about the supinated form is that you really can get muting with it. However, there is this unbalanced motion issue that I have, and that does not seem to occur in the less supinated/parallel/slightly pronated form. So I decided not to worry about muting for now and work on this form.

Clips

Here is a clip with a scalar run. I must admit that I was more pleased when I played this then when I watch it now. It still sounds a bit sloppy, but it’s not terrible. My hand position changes from the high to the low strings, but that might just be caused by the thumb heel, which has to move away from the strings onto the body as I am approaching the low strings. I also notice quite a bit of movement in my arm. Could be because of string tracking, but maybe there is an elbow component to my movement?

This is a clip where I am playing arpeggions like those in Tumeni Notes. Here I am trying to floor it, not paying attention to accuracy but to the movement. It felt good, definitely a rather encouraging experience. I also experiment with muting by bringing my whole hand more onto the strings at some point. My hand position with this “new setup” is quite far back compared to how I used to play. The thumb heel is on the strings, but the pinky heel is further back, sometimes even behind the bridge.

And this is a clip where I play the roll. My hand lifts up a bit higher here than in the other clips. the lifted position feels very good at moderate tempos, when I try to speed up I loose control, though. When I played this, it felt very bad and that’s why I filmed it. I wanted to see what’s going on, and I think what’s happening here is stringhopping. If so, that is a good explanation of why it felt so bad.

I’m thinking that stringhopping may be part of my technique, which has evolved over the years. Even though I am trying not to do it anymore, it just takes more time and practise to get rid of it. Right now it’s still there and creeps in from time to time. That would only reasonable. Anyway, that’s it for now. I curious what you guys say.

P.S.

I am definitely interested in how you go about measuring these things!

1 Like
#26

Aha. This is a really good question and I’m sure you’re not the only one who is confused. Anatomically supinated / pronated is not the same thing as “supinated with respect to the strings” or “pronated with respect to the strings”. Here’s an easy way to demonstrate to yourself how different they can be. Place the guitar on your lap. Now assume a supinated playing position as I do in the “tabletop” segment of the tutorial video. Now remove the guitar and look at your arms. You are highly pronated, not supinated. Now put the guitar back. Now stand up with it while maintaining your arm position on the body. Now remove the guitar. Actually supinated.

The confusion is that anatomical pronation or supination is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is which way the forearm is tilted with respect to the strings, because that is what determines the escape paths. I still think the terms “supinated” and “pronated” are relevant because they can express relative positions. You can call any arm position “pronated” by comparison to some other arm position which is more supinated than that. If you like, we can start saying “strings supinated” or “strings pronated” to clarify the frame of reference. Whatever works!

The bigger question isn’t so much identifying what your arm position is. It’s identifying what movement you are making. Most of these arm positions are so close to parallel that you could be ever so slightly tilted and they might not look visually that distinct. However what would be different would be the actual movements you’re making, because those should be unambiguous. If your wrist is moving a certain way on a certain pickstroke, then that is what is determinant. We just need to be able to measure that better. And then give clear instructions for doing it.

1 Like
#27

That’s a great instinct, and I think more people should do this. Understanding the negative case is just as powerful a learning tool as understanding the positive case.

I think what you’re doing here is occasional stringhopping. Again, measurement tools - we don’t have them, so we can’t say unambiguously. However what it looks like is some of these pickstrokes are repeated extension a few time in a row and others are not. I think that’s why it can be hard to separate out when you’re doing things right and when you are not. i.e. because the whole clip doesn’t sound or feel bad, only parts of it. It’s tricky!

#28

Awesome. I think that’s smart. And I do think that at a later time, you will be able to add in the muting.

#29

Couple notes on the videos. The footage still does not look smooth to me. I’m not seeing massive rolling shutter or motion blur so I believe you filmed in 120fps. But I’m not sure you’re actually seeing all those frames in the exported video because it looks a little jerky. What level of slowdown is this, 50% or 25%? If you’re doing 25% it should be slower and smoother. If you want to film a short take and Dropbox us the original file with your camera, I’ll export it via Final Cut just as a test so you can A/B. You’ll know right away if you’re doing it right.

Also, it’s tough to see what’s going on in normal room lighting with the shadows. If you can get near a window and position until the light is hitting your hand down the strings, you will eliminate shadows. Or you can get a cheap lamp and point it roughly down the strings until you see the shadows go away and you can identify pick/string contact.

Finally: any other pick color than black or dark will help too. I think red is the best because white can sometimes blend with white guitar bodies and metal reflections.

Anyway, again, great work here, not a criticism of your efforts at all. Thanks for putting up all these clips!

#30

I’m starting to wonder what the real challenge is here, but whatever it is, I’m ready for it :wink: You know, looking at the numbers I convinced myself that the framerates were right, but when I looked at the clip I also thought that it doesn’t look like HD or anything. I’ll send you a Dropbox Link for a short clip.

I used a program called OpenShot to do the editing. I can set the framerate for the output video, but I have no idea how OpenShot treats the clips I import into it. Maybe something goes wrong there? I’m pretty sure that’s what happened when I used iMovie. iMovie imported the clips with a lower framerate than I had used when filming them.

Am I the only one who has these problems?

#31

I can pretty much guarantee that’s the issue. You’re on a Mac, right? Honestly Final Cut Pro is the best application for this kind of thing. It will import pretty much anything and not care what resolution or frame rate it was recorded in. And it has dead-simple to use retiming features to very quickly and easily speed up, slow down, or even speed ramp between different speeds. It’s a few hundred bucks but most competing software costs $1000+.

Otherwise I’d look into a more recent version of iMove which could be fine provided you upgrade your machine to the latest OSX.

#32

Computer Stuff

Actually I’m on two Macs and a Linux machine. One of the Macs is so old, that I can’t upgrade to an OS higher that 10.7.5. That’s the one I used for the iMovie stuff. I don’t know if it’s possible to install a newer version of iMovie on that, I kind of doubt.

The other one isn’t as powerful a machine and it’s also pretty old, but I have 10.10 running on it and can probably do another update. I could try to install a newer iMovie version on there.

I don’t doubt it! Until now, I never did anything with video so I never bothered. I’m still reluctant to spend the couple hundred bucks, but if my experience with this whole video thing will continue like this, I might just do it.

Pronation vs. Supination

Alriight, thanks for clarifying! I’ll go back to analysis with that in mind.