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 
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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!
@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.
I missed the last hour of the workshop, so I didn’t hear the responses to my questions, but I had a chance tonight to sit down and focus on the 902 motion and that’s been a huge help. I think you’re on to something there @Troy! I also really focused on my pick grip because I’ve been having a lot of issues with slipping. Highlighting that was really helpful as well. I noticed improvement this evening already with a variety of different picks.
Looking forward to catching the last hour once it’s up.
Excellent. The grip is important because it’s one of the many things that we can iron out as far as variables. This particular motion is simpler if we can eliminate all the weird things that people do as a result of trial and error, and boil down the primary challenge to executing the motion itself. You may not choose to use this grip forever, or it may become simply an alternate that you can activate when you like. But if it helps you get the movement straightened out then great.
I frequently don’t grasp things! That’s my secret.
In my defense I will say that you did not specifically elborate on the additional two notes. Mechanically, if you can do the repeating six-note variation then you can probably do any crosspicking pattern, since the six-note version contains every string change you can make.
The challenge is really about the motion. Eventually, you will get to a point where the motion does not change, no matter which pattern you play. It can take time - months, maybe. It is possible to do the movement correctly on certain patterns and not others, and at certain speeds and not others. Purely as a result of the human learning curve. When in doubt, film and compare.
That’s true and the reason why this little roll is so powerful. Actually most (every) patterns (including 4,5 6 strings) can be considered variations or ‘nested’ forms from that basic building block (both fwd and bwd versions). That truly helps eliminating tracking problems when considering more complex patterns. Actually the tracking issue becomes a moot point when you control the fwd/bwd roll on every 4 string positions.
Hi Troy and all other cracking the code guys,
Big Fan of your stuff and it really helped me out a ton!! Thanks so much 
i came up with a hybrid crosspicking pattern which helps me at least …maybe its interesting i dont know
keep up the cool stuff guys
cheers from Düsseldorf Germany
Fabian
Are you alt-picking and finger-picking simultaneously? If so… I think it’s a great technique, and I’ve been trying that myself… but it still feels awkward for me.
Thanks mate! It´s a combination of both, i can´t get it with just crosspicking in the moment (might understand it more watching more of CTC stuff) here i use : down -middle- down- middle - down - up…for me thats way more easy but i also want to be able to do proper crosspicking!!..something like this
Doing those 4 note loops is a good warmup technique. There are a few good X-picking videos here that can help you with the basic form, and this workshop video will help point you in the right direction as well.
The recorded version is now up!
https://troygrady.com/channels/talking-the-code/crosspicking-with-the-wrist/
This includes the two-hour talk with 18 answered questions. We covered a lot of ground here, and in re-watching this, we went through and pulled out 55 clip examples as well. Some of these are musical etude-style things. Others are closeups of movements like the Andy, Molly, and David clips we referenced in the talk itself.
Everything is in the timeline for point and click access. We’re working on tab and will probably have that done in the next week or two. But you can play all the examples in Soundslice and use the speed controls right now.
If you’ve put in any time working on these techniques, you now have the clearest reference that we have produced thus far for precisely what the two “deviation” forms of these movements look like when done correctly. Hopefully this cuts through some of the confusion. We’d like to see some people start to get this. Let us know how you make out!
