That’s an interesting point. Sometimes I sit in front of a mirror and practice. When I observe myself while playing in the mirror, it looks very different than when I look at my hand from above. And the difference feels quite extreme.
Looking in the mirror, I often think that my movements “look good”, and the actual playing also comes out pretty well. Very often, that’s when I felt things started to happen for me.
When I look down on my hand then, I think that it looks strange. Definitely not how I would “make it look” without sitting in front of the mirror. It’s really strange. So that’s a point that I noticed, as well.
If a picking motion originates at the wrist, the direction of the strokes is governed by the rotation of the forearm.
The wrist doesn’t move diagonally to the forearm.
Besides, even if there is a 1% of “wrist” players who wrist moves rapidly in a non L/R direction, the point was about nomenclature. The amount that the forearm is pronated or supinated relative to a neutral stoke governs the angle of the stroke.
This is also true if the stroke originates from twisting the forearm.
We’re veering off topic a little from that other thread - I’ve moved this to the crosspicking workshop thread since this is where we cover the clockface wrist movements.
Did you check out that broadcast? If I recall you may have had a trial account when we launched that. In short, the wrist is indeed capable of 360 degrees of movement, and most players use one or more of its diagonals to escape the strings. Everyone you can think of who uses wrist picking movements, from Eddie Van Halen to Steve Morse to Di Meola to Petrucci to Paul Gilbert Andy Wood and even me, use these diagonal movements. And of course, wrist crosspicking techniques like what Molly Tuttle and David Grier use, which we demonstrate in the broadcast, and which players like Morse and Petrucci are famous for in rock, will not work at all without multi-axis wrist movement.
It took us years to get a handle on this but it really clarifies just how players get around the strings when it doesn’t appear like any part of their arm except their hand is moving back and forth.
Did you ever figure out how Vinnie Moore who says he uses his elbow for fast picking, is able to cleanly pick fast licks that involve at least two strings and going back and forth from one string to the other without swiping if he’s not using one or more of the wrist’s diagonals to “escape the strings”? What is he using to escape the strings?
Who says Vinnie only uses his elbow? Give me a nickel for every time someone we interviewed says they do a thing they don’t do. Hell, give me a nickel for every time I have been wrong about something I personally do.
I’m not sure that anybody said that. He says he uses his elbow for fast picking but I don’t recall him saying that’s all he uses for fast picking. Anyway, do you know what he uses to “escape the strings”?
Taking another look at my post I realize I implied he doesn’t use one or more of the wrist’s diagonals to escape the strings, but I did preface that with the word “if.” he might use forearm rotation or finger movement to escape the strings. I remember you did a section on Vinnie Moore in the “Antigravity” section a few years ago, and was wondering if since that time you’ve been able to figure out the type of motion mechanic he’s using to escape the strings when he’s playing at his higher speeds.
I wasn’t aware there was anything to figure out here. It seems pretty clear in the antigravity stuff that he’s using forearm rotation. But I haven’t watched that in a while. Did I not mention this in that chapter?
We did not look at his pedal tone stuff so that could be different.
I don’t think my analysis / suggestions had anything to do with crosspicking.
IMO, your model has too many moving parts. I have not watched the crosspicking seminar as there are no mysteries for me playing at 70% or less. When you are below top speed, there are many ways to skin a cat, things only really get interesting when the motion flattens out and its not physically possible to crosspick.
I disagree, when you crosspick 8th at 300-320 bpm including lots of 1nps sequences - which is what top bluegrass players do - you have to be specific, and cannot have a random approach. Now if that has no mystery for you more power to you.
I don’t really have a “model” here - at Cracking the Code we just try and figure out what other players are doing, then break it down, learn it to the point where we can reproduce it, and then try and figure out how to teach it. Anything we are teaching is something someone else is already doing.
I think it’s fair that a rock player might not immediately spring into action over a “Crosspicking” video, especially one that leans on bluegrass style patterns as a learning device. But practicing those things was a huge door opener for me as a more generalist rock type player, and the movements are universal. I can now play things I could not play before.
Case in point, here’s a thing I just filmed. Here are those exact same movements we covered in the crosspicking workshop, using the supinated Andy Wood-style arm setup, with the alternating wrist motion paths, applied in a more shredtastic context:
It’s a challenge to figure out how to present all this stuff in a way that appeals to our unusually diverse audience, because jazz players are less interested in sequency scale patterns, rock players may not get hyped over acoustic roll patterns, bluegrass players don’t really need economy and sweeping, and so on. But we’re working on it and should have some more instructional stuff rolling out over the next few months synthesizing and incorporating all this amazing stuff we’ve been learning over the past couple years.
Yes, this is very true… which is why I’ve been such a big proponent of double-escaped picking. I’ve gone back to a lot of patterns that I could never play in the past… and now they are playable. And in general, pretty much everything sounds better than before. This includes patterns that I used to rely on economy picking for, as well as patterns that I used to swipe the hell out of.
As a learning device, for sure. But it’s becoming clearer that lots of players mix and match all the pickstroke types - downstroke escape, upstroke escape, and full escape. And they do it mostly subconsciously based on the phrase. That’s what Andy Wood does, and also Anton Oparin as we’re seeing in the other thread.
So then the question becomes, what’s the easiest way to teach these things to a beginner? Do you start out teaching someone the two single-escaped movements individually, as we do now, with licks that fit those movements, and then teach them the full escape for their arpeggio lines? We might think of that as the “rock” pathway. Or do you start out teaching someone the full escape movement and then down the line, show them how they can chop that in half for certain phrases that really don’t need that other “leg” of the movement. Maybe that’s your “bluegrass” and “jazz” pathway.
Either way, you arrive at a point where a good alternate picker has basically three movements they can call upon, again mostly subconsciously, without having to alter their basic setup, grip, anchoring, and so on.
I would think the Andy Wood method, or something like that. I think learning a ‘curved’ multi-mechanic approach as a foundation works very well. And it can still be single-escaped when playing fast. Basically it’s the same mechanic, but it’s a shorter stroke, and less articulation.
My 3NPS phrases are an example of this. They use the same mechanic as my 1NPS phrases… but at higher speeds, the strokes are slightly shorter, and I subconsciously swing/articulate more when I am string/transfering. It’s tiny, but it can be thought of as 2WPS, since the stroke paths vary during the outside/inside xfer.
Note the optical illusion of this when you get it right. You can clearly see that the pick is tracing the required semicircular pathway. But if you look at the first knuckle on the hand - the “MP” joint, for all you Martin Miller fans - you really can’t perceive the vertical component of this. It just looks like that part of the hand is moving back and forth. And that’s precisely what it feels like - smooth side to side motion.
Similarly, when you look down from player position, or when you look in the mirror during mirror practice, you can get this to the point where the vertical component is hard to spot. That, along with a feeling of total smoothness, is how you know you’re getting this particular movement down.
Note also that this type of strings-flat motion path is possible with any forearm setup. I’m using the 902 setup here, but 801, 7012, and the pronated 1003 all work. The process and result are the same. Stay flat to the strings, and get that smooth side to side feeling happening.
This is maybe a little misleading because obviously I’ve been playing a long time at this point, but the simplest answer is that I got them immediately. This definitely was one of those insta-click type of things. In fact, the roll patterns were the first thing I could even do with this technique. Specifically, using a pad-side grip, wrist anchor, wrist motion exclusively, and no fingers touching or even grazing the guitar body, the roll patterns worked just about immediately. That takes a lot of variables out of the equation though and I think that’s potentially helpful for those who want to try a method that may be somewhat simpler to learn than whatever they are currently doing.
Thanks, I’ll give it a spin… wrist anchoring would definitely be a different avenue.
I can’t describe why it’s challenging for me. If I do those 3 note rolls asc/desc a string at a time after each roll, it feels fluid… but when the rolls are ‘stationary’… it suddenly becomes awkward.
And I’m pretty good at string skipping and 4 note rolls, so it’s something ‘tripping’ me up with that pattern, both ascending & descending.
Four string rolls always start on the same pickstroke. The forward roll both alternates and involves a string skip. The closer you can get to the motion appearing identical for every note in the pattern, the smoother it gets.
