Crosspicking Workshop

Great workshop today CTC Team! The clockface discussion really resonated with me, as did the point that the picking hand must be planted in a supinated or pronated position, otherwise stringhopping is probably going to happen. I also got a lot of clarity when Troy outlined the path of the pick again: flat on one end, lifted on the other. I think when attempting 1nps passages I’ve been lifting at both ends…for 25 years! I look forward to testing out these tips!

3 Likes

Right on! We’d like to see people start to get this, especially for these kinds of sustained chord things which don’t really involve tons of left hand coordination, massive speed, and so on. I’d like to think the physical requirements for this are within everyone’s reach. Keep us posted.

3 Likes

For those of us that missed it live, will this (even in unedited form) be posted?

1 Like

Thanks @Montreal543 great to hear you found it helpful! Look forward to seeing what people learn from trying all this stuff out.

@lars yes we will edit and upload to the platform, probably in the next couple weeks…keep an eye out and we’ll get that up as soon as we can!

3 Likes

It was a great broadcast! Totally informative and easy to understand :+1:
The eye-opening bit was the one @Montreal543 mentioned as well - the picking hand has to be at least somewhat pronated or supinated to avoid stringhopping.

I think I’ll try to get this technique down with this exact setup. I’ll probably do a 30 day attempt where I’ll make a short video and some comments on my progress daily. I’ll do this for my personal reasons but I could share it somewhere in this forum as well if anybody thinks that it could be at least entertaining or otherwise useful :thinking:

Is anyone else is going to try out this setup?

Once again, it was a really valuable lesson! :+1:

3 Likes

Minor technical note that the broadcast terminated abruptly at my end in the midst of Troy’s final remarks, probably due to the inevitable lag somewhere in the pipeline between your cameras and my browser. I vaguely recall noticing this in an earlier live broadcast as well: killing the broadcast at your end seemed to end things before all the content made it through the pipes.

1 Like

Thanks, we noticed too but a bit too late! You’re exactly right, there’s some lag while the video is processed and zapped around the world before hitting your screen, but when we click to end the broadcast it’s instantaneous, so we just have to remember to wait a bit longer at the end. Rest assured we only axed off the last 20 seconds or so :slight_smile:

1 Like

I hope it’s uploaded soon, I missed it :sleepy: and I’d really love to watch it.
I know you are working hard Cracking the Code staff.

1 Like

Great stuff as usual! I may try the “pronated/uwps” version and see what happens.

I missed the end, I was wondering whether Steve Morse was mentioned as well? How does he fit within the two main setups outlined by Troy? From the Morse lesson it seemed to me he goes pronated when descending and supinated when ascending, but I am not sure.

3 Likes

@Troy @Brendan @Adam

A Crosspicking workshop from the cracking the code team??? You mean liquid crack !!!

I am jonesing so much to see this!!!
Missed it being in the U.K. and work commitments :cry:
Is there any chance of seeing the unedited version on YouTube like you guys did with the Andy wood interview?
I’d rather see it soon unedited than have to wait for the edited version.

pretty please with sugar on top!

4 Likes

My recommendation is to try them all, without prejudice. You can’t predict which is going to work, and these “deviation” approaches are both so similar that getting one just leads to getting the other eventually.

We did address the Steve/Albert question at one point. They’re both in the supinated spectrum, Andy being the least supinated you can be and Steve being the most.

2 Likes

We’ll try and get this up today! We didn’t have a magnet running so there’s not a whole lot to edit aside from trimming the start and end.

3 Likes

Haha I’m dying to see the last 45 minutes, I had to disconnect and run to work! What I saw so far was fantastic, the clockface is so helpful. I’ve been thinking a lot about hybrid movement lately, since having some time to sit w/ the Albert material – I think of reverse dart throwing as Zorro slashes lol. Thanks again, Troy and team!

2 Likes

Steve is a Supinated player 100% of the time when Crosspicking. He uses the 3 Finger Grip which allows him to really roll his hand- only his Ulna is resting on the guitar. He anchors with his pinky as well. This means that his primary movement is Extension and Flexion. On the downstroke is Extension, and the Upstroke is Flexion + Ulnar Deviation.

I know In the interview they mentioned how his Pickslant will change when crosspicking sometimes with the “open” and “closed” shapes but that does not affect the core crosspicking movement which is the main way that he creates a curved picking technique.

Now he does have a pronated picking Style-that is his UWPS Elbow Technique that he uses, which can be seen when he plays the Highway Star Chromatic section.

3 Likes

Troy,
You have mastered all the forms of pickslanting, but I’m curious if as a pickslant-first player, you have issues playing some of the mixed nps patterns/licks that arise in CAGED and arpeggio playing?

I know in CTC you talked about the need for hopping, and until yesterday it didn’t even occur to ask how someone “gets around” with a significant slant as opposed to perpendicular.

I created a thread on this yesterday, not even knowing about your crosspicking seminar, but it seems to me that some method of crosspicking is going to be used for the vast majority of playing, and the pickslanting is only needed for shredding.

1 Like

I haven’t mastered anything!

At this point I think we’ve got a handle on most (every?) way you can move from one string to another. There are two types of pickstrokes anyone can make: single escaped, and fully escaped. All alternate picking styles are combinations of these pickstrokes. If you do only single-escaped, that’s one-way pickslanting. If you mixed single and full escapes, that’s two-way pickslanting. And if you do all fully escaped pickstrokes, that’s what we call crosspicking.

Out there in the real world, players mix and match all of the above as needed. If you caught our crosspicking broadcast yesterday, you saw some Andy Wood footage of how he switches between crosspick and pickslanting modes.

Within the next six months or so we’ll have all this outlined very neatly in the Pickslanting Primer. And yes, number of notes per string should never be an obstacle, as some combination of these strategies will handle any phrase you can think of. Stringhopping is never “necessary”.

4 Likes

Sorry, didn’t read all the way through! From filming the players we have interviewed I would say this is not really true - it’s a mixed bag, based on all sorts of factors. Some players look pickslanty (Marty Friedman), some look more crosspicky (Steve Morse), some mix and match (Andy Wood). Your technique influences your musical writing which in turn influences your technique. I was a dwps player, with ascending sweeping, for 10 years and wrote all manner of awesome stuff that way which a pure alternate crosspick player would probably never think of to play. Whether or not they could play those lines is irrelevant, if it would never even occur to them to do so.

“CAGED” or “3nps” doesn’t really matter - just because you use three note per string fingerings doesn’t mean you are required by law to always play all three of those notes every time, in a line, moving in one direction. And just because you use mixed fingerings doesn’t mean you always have to play mixed numbers of notes per string. And even if you do use mixed note per string fingerings and play all the notes in a straight line, you can handle such scenarios very easily with humble one-way picklanting:

https://troygrady.com/seminars/volcano/clips/volcano-style-hybrid-scale/

In actual real-world music making there are really very few scenarios that absolutely totally require one and only one type of technique. 1nps playing is one of those scenarios. But it’s a very specific situation. Most people, getting great at any single one of the strategies is enough to hang with anyone on any stage if you have the vocabulary for it.

3 Likes

So true … btw in real music world situation there is also legato, finger / hybrid picking that come handy to deliver (think Allan Holdsworth for example). The focus on picking technique should never overrule the fact that picking (with a pick) is not required for every note.

2 Likes

Awesome - I wasn’t able to get home in time to watch this on Wednesday, and I definitely want to see it. Even an unedited stream, in the meantime, for MiM members or something would be awesome. Thanks!

1 Like

@Troy Can you tab out the 4 String stuff you were doing in the webinar. It sounded really pretty, and I couldn’t quite figure out what you were doing.

Also, you didn’t quite grasp my question, but your response pointed me in a good direction. I’ve been focused on the 3 string forward roll with pattern 432432 42 , which has that little hiccup of 2 notes at the end to make it 8 notes. I was saying I’ve been working on this as 4 pairs of 2 notes, 43-24-32-42 and you, not understanding said, you just think of it as 6 movements. 432 432

This got me to realize you were doing the continuous version of the forward roll, and I had never really worked on that. 432 432 432 432 …

In a couple of hours of just doing this, I’m already seeing more consistency, even when I switch back to doing the hiccup version. I think the hiccup version of the forward roll is much harder to start off learning and get that consistent feel, and now I think better to master the continuous version of forward roll and reverse roll, before moving on to forcing them into 8 notes.

1 Like