I was a member for 3 yrs. It helped some, but did not give me the results I wanted. I am just wondering since I am new to CtC, if some of the skills I learned can help me advance faster?
Hey there! Were you a student of Tom Hess? I never looked at his lessons, but read some of his material, and they didn’t click for me. How good were his students?
The things you learned may help; however, you need to keep an open mind and keep experimenting. Any time anyone says “this is what you need to do”, is time to start questioning. Best of luck! z
Yeah, I was a student. To me there was just too much shifting from directional picking to my downward picking style I used to play rhythm guitar. So, I went back to doing legato based lead guitar. I never thought about using my rhythm style picking for lead guitar.
I’ve run a couple guitar forums with a few buddies now, and while thankfully it hasn’t happened in a while, we’d perpetually get spam purporting to be from Tom Hess himself but from accounts like [email protected] offering us the limited time opportunity to sign on to be part of his affiliate program, and put up a bunch of ad banners and in return get a cut of any lesson revenue from any of his subscribers who happen to click through our banner - “odds are you already have my students here, you might as well get a cut of it, right?” or some such. The whole thing was insanely sleazy, and this is before you even get into the fact he has a “Guitar Sex” lesson plan, whatever that means.
At this point, i think the onus is on convincing me Tom Hess is not running a giant pyramid scheme of sorts with dubious-quality lessons underpinning the whole thing, than that he is. 
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Very dodgy figure, can’t believe people still fall for his scams.
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Yeah, I mean, generally I try not to speak ill of people, and I suppose technically it’s not fair to joke about his program being some sort of pyramid scheme (though I really don’t get the revenue share/affiliate thing, I suppose maybe it’s how he advertises, by basically paying people for referrals on an ongoing cut-of-subscription basis…?), but I CAN say that his advertising or recruitment or whatever tactics were pretty sleazy.
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Okay, I’m a bit dense - whats the difference between economy and directional picking?
Pickslant just refers to what the pick looks like — it doesn’t say anything about how you actually do it, as far as your arm being pronated or supinated or whatever. It also doesn’t affect the motion / i.e. escape. That’s caused by whichever joint you are moving, and which direction you are moving it.
When the part of the pick you hold on to appears to slant toward the ceiling, that’s upward pickslanting. It just affects the attack of the pick as it hits the string.
Short story I recommend not worrying too much about the pickslant by itself. Mainly with all these techniques you’re just trying to do some kind of joint motion, and very often the “slant” is automatic given the common grips people use and the arm positions they use on the guitar.
The terminology of whoever you are speaking to
To me, any picking style which combines alternate picked string changes and swept string changes, I would call economy picking, and that’s how we use it in our lessons. If the approach uses sweeping in both directions, I call it two-way economy. If it’s one direction, I call it one-way economy. So this guy’s approach is two-way economy picking, Frank Gambale’s approach is two-way economy picking, Eric Johnson’s approach is one-way econonmy picking.
That said there are variations in what these players do at a technical level, even among two-way sweepers. For example, Frank generally does not play Eric Johnson- or George Benson-style lines like the “fives” pattern, where you do downstroke sweeping and alternate picking together. That’s the “DWPS” side of his two-way approach, where you generally only see sweeping string changes in Frank’s playing, and not the kind of fast alternate string changes you find int the fives pattern. However he does do that upside-down, in UWPS mode. This is when you will see complicated combos of alternate and swept string changes. Also, whenever Frank is alternate picking anything fast, it’s always DSX motion. It’s unclear to me if he actually does a fast USX alternate picking motion, again like an Eric or a George. Which may explain some of these preferences.
TLDR terms. What do the terms mean in terms of the motions the player is doing? That’s what that player means when that player calls their style whatever they call it.
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Crazy thing about this universe, you can become a whiz at getting digital content in front of as many eyeballs as possible, and it can be completely independent of the quality of that content. In fact, if it’s controversial or suspect, it’ll likely get shared/discussed more often, resulting in more traffic, more eyeballs.
Sorry for OT.
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If looking for a slant in this players technique, keep in mind, he uses his picking hand thumb to mute the strings lower than the one he is playing, and not the palm. He uses it all the time for lead playing, but not rhythm. I’d highly recommend not doing this as it comes with a lot of limitations. I spent a long time, longer than I’d care to admit, with this technique and in the end found I needed to retrain and get that out of my playing. Also, muting with the thumb will only really work with a strict two way economy style.
I think it’s true that “economy picking” has a variety of different definitions, depending on which player you are talking to.
But “directional picking” is a term that I usually hear from people from the “Tom Hess school” or whatever it’s called. And it seems to always mean: go to higher strings with a downstroke, and to lower strings with an upstroke.
I never understood how it would work if there’s a string skip, though.
His students don’t do string skips 
Here’s my attempt to interpret the linked video through a CTC lens:
In the video, he uses the terms “economy picking”, “alternate picking”, and “directional picking”.
One TL;DR point: In the video, he says that the technique he refers to as “directional picking” was not invented by him, but he claims to have coined the term. The linked video doesn’t contain a demonstration of that technique (though apparently other videos on his channel do).
In the video, he broadly refers to “economy picking” and “directional picking” as (paraphrasing) “two different approaches to inside picking”.
General observation about his overall picking technique: when he plays at “fast” or “moderate” speeds he uses a wrist-oriented DSX approach, though for some licks he lets the pick stay trapped on both downstrokes and upstrokes.
“Economy picking”
TL;DR: He demonstrates a fully trapped version of “two-way sweeping”.
Says the economy picking approach requires planning number of notes per string in advance to eliminate hopping string changes;
Example lick is a loop of four notes descending: 2 notes on B string, 2 notes on G string, repeat. He starts with a downstroke on the B string.
He appears to have a DSX setup, but in the example, he does trapped strokes in both directions and the example lick gets “two-way swept” with no escape strokes, so maybe he means organizing licks so that no escapes are necessary; basically “two way sweeping” without the addition of escapes.
“Alternate picking”
TL;DR: He applies a DSX motion to the previous example, but appears not to realize that you can sometimes optimize a lick by starting with a DSX upstroke rather than of a DSX downstroke (or by using USX).
He discusses and demonstrates how what I’d call a “strict alternate” approach to this lick can be problematic (for him, DSX starting with a downstroke, with either stringhopping or a helper motion for intermittent upstroke escapes). He recognizes that “hoppy” motions are inefficent. Without discussing the concept of a “helper motion” explicitly, he observes that there are people who are able to make this version of “alternate picking” work, but argues (and I agree) that it takes a lot more effort to get good at that compared to the “economy” (i.e. “two way sweeping”) approach he discussed previously.
However, he either doesn’t recognize or doesn’t reveal that this lick can be played non-problematically with strict alternate picking (without hopping or a helper motion) if you use DSX starting with an upstroke, or USX starting with a downstroke. He only discusses what happens when he uses his fast picking motion (which happens to be either DSX or fully trapped) and starts on a downstroke.
Ironically, when he demonstrates this approach “slowly”, he ends the first four notes on an escaped upstroke (unlike when he plays fast), and from there still talks about having to “jump over” the string to get to the next stroke (that “jumping problem” is an accurate description of what would happen if you tried to play this with strict alternate picking with a DSX motion, starting on a downstroke; the first four notes descending would then end on a trapped upstroke; (Edit: for “strict alternate” you actually would have become “stuck” already after the second note of the phrase, unless you did something like a helper motion or a swipe to set up the third note).
He then spends roughly 10 minutes going through a series of examples that apply the “economy picking” mechanics from earlier to slightly different 4-note-descending 2-note-per-string phrases.
Example 2: one fretting difference, but same picking mechanics.
Example 3: more of the same picking mechanics.
Example 4 uses high E string and B string, but same overall picking mechanics as before.
Example 5 uses high E string and B string; same picking mechanics.
Example 6 uses high E string and B string; same picking mechanics.
Talks about mixing examples 5 and 6; same picking mechanics.
Example 7: uses B string and G string; same picking mechanics.
Discusses different fingerings for the fretting of example 7.
Example 8: uses B string and G string; same picking mechanics.
“Directional picking”:
Describes as another form of “inside picking”.
Claims to have coined the term in the early 1990s, though not to have invented the technique.
Says no “advance planning” of notes per string is required (in contrast to the approach he referred to earlier as “economy picking”).
This video contains no demonstration or explanation of how “directional picking” works.
From another video on his channel, it sounds like “directional picking” is the term he uses for single-escaped picking mixed with sweeping. It’s not immediately obvious to me whether he recognizes that DSX is just one way of doing single-escape picking (i.e., not clear whether he ever applies what we’d call USX). It’s also not clear to me whether what he calls “directional picking” also includes the strategic use of hammer-ons and pull-offs (which would bring it in line with what we understand as the DSX approach of players such as Vinnie Moore; or the USX approach of players such as Yngwie Malmsteen).
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I’m just saying, this is just how we have been using the term “economy picking”. If you’re saying there are too many other meanings floating around, and it would lead to confusion, then I’m fine with choosing other way of describing things to clarify. But for now, this is the best we’ve got.
To wit:
Just as a phrase, “economy picking” is a good general description of what happens when you combine sweeping and alternate picking. i.e. You economize on pickstrokes. It’s been in use for decades so far as I can tell, with no specific universal meaning other than referring to sweeping and alternate picking together in some form. So it seems like a good choice as the general term to describe any such combination.
Beneath that umbrella, you’d have one-way and two-way as the next hierarchy. Then beneath one-way, you’d have the dwps and uwps one-way economy approaches — or whatever other term might be better. Maybe “downstroke” and “upstroke” economy since the sweeping generally only occurs on those pickstrokes.
Beneath two-way you’d have, if you care to name them, the styles of individual players who have some idiosyncratic way of doing of sweeping in two directions. Frank calls his approach “Gambale sweeping”, so that’s the term we used in the feature. This dude says “directional picking”. It’s possible that Frank would see “directional picking” as just a ripoff of his own approach and not distinct enough to merit any sort of name.
At a technical level, Frank’s approach isn’t the same in both directions, with an emphasis more on the “UWPS” side of things, possibly because of the alternate picking motion. He wouldn’t describe it that way. But that’s what he actually does. So although we used his term “Gambale sweeping” mainly because that’s his brand and he liked the video features better that way, I’m kind of fine with that since in reality it does refer to something specific / distinct.
The “directional picking” thing, I haven’t looked at it, as to how it differs. Is there a whole class of two-way styles that work sort of the way it does? If so, maybe some general term to describe that.
Otherwise, I’m kind of fine with economy as the umbrella, and one-way and two-way beneath that. But open to whatever.
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That would be strange if that’s what he means. Anyone who has ever used this term, and we used to get emails on this a lot in the pre-forum days, was always asking about two-way sweeping. Without looking into it, from the context of the questions I gathered that direcitonal just meant “sweeping in a given direction until you can’t sweep any more”. I assumed this would leave you with a bunch of inside picking situations at “directional” turnaround points where you would need actual alternate picking of some variety, albeit limited.
This is basically what Jimmy Bruno and Oy Noy do. Though interestingly both players have real escaped alternate picking techqnique and will do entire lines all-USX and all-DSX if it works better that way. They’ll also play the same fretted phrase two completely different ways, starting on an upstroke or a downstroke. Both Oz and Jimmy seem to be more “ambidextrous” in terms of alternate picking and how they mix and match than any other players we have interviewed. Whereas Frank only alternate picks DSX, Oz will literally change it up right in the middle of a phrase. It’s interesting.
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I could be wrong about that part. I didn’t go very deep down the rabbit-hole. But because he had framed “directional picking” in the linked video above as an alternative to his definition of “economy picking” (which itself appears to be trapped two-way sweeping), I figured “directional picking” had to be more than that. The “directional picking” bits I did watch were heavy on the importance of sweeping in the direction of a string change.
This is what I learned ‘economy picking’ was as a teen - I posted a thread here about it a while back when the Gambale vids were posted where Troy clarified a lot of things. I’m guessing that this interpretation of economy picking spread around during the early 2000s guitar forum years, especially on the Ultimate Guitar where you could say basically whatever you wanted and people would believe you.
Playing this way does massive advantage IMO in that it is the most ‘set and forget’ picking technique in terms of improvising single note lines (apart from maybe crosspicking, but I simply do not have the chops to crosspick at the speed I can sweep); It feels like you can structure your playing more around pitch contour and the direction of the phrase rather than planning your licks around a specific picking idiom. I always found that Frank’s economy picking ‘rules’ felt too prescriptive and added another layer to an already extremely difficult style of music.
I remember that thread, and if I recall what you were actually doing is a little more complicated than what you thought you were doing. But I don’t remember if you ever filmed closer up to get a closer look at some of those sequences.
Which way are you referring to? If there is a “type” of economy picking that is worth looking at, and saying, ok, this is one particular style that has a specific set of, let’s call them, rules, and lots of people play this way, that’s worth knowing.
Otherwise, I’m not sure any of these techniques are really “set and forget”, since they’re all just using memorized patterns of some kind of another. What’s memorized for one person is not memorized for another. And vice versa. I find the EJ / Benson / Gypsy style to be completely improvisable, where there is this feeling of not having to think about things, because all the picking patterns are memorized. Of course, someone who didn’t learn those patterns is going to hate it and think they can’t play the lines they “want” to play. Etc.
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Tbh, he is just trying to have his own brand of economy picking. HIs explanation of the “difference”, is that you don’t refinger things to suit the picking. If you think of two way economy picking, there is zero difference between directional picking and economy picking. But having your own “brand” of picking is a marketing thing. He also says that directional picking is proven to be the best picking technique and that other techniques are inefficient and not valid.
I did his online lessons for a longer time than I’d care to admit. Forcing thumb muting and directional picking on students right from the start and with very vague descriptions of the mechanics. “Use your wrist when on one string, use your arm to change strings”. If you challenged the thumb muting technique, you’d be lynched. That’s pretty much it.
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