Do I need to be equally as good with DSX & USX with 2WPS?

Playing Technique
#1

This may well be a dumb question (take pity on me @troy), but…

Do I need to be equally as good at DSX as USX to do 2WPS?

The reason I ask is, I think and hope (due to the amount of time spent on it) that I use 2WPS with a primary downward pickslant (I return asap to the primary slant). Take a 3nps ascending line on 2 strings - the ‘rotate’ part of the ‘up, down rotate’ occurs after note 3 and again on the 4th note (to hit the 5th note on new string with the primary slant). So is note 4 really a DSX in the same way that it would be for 1WPS? It seems to me to be more of a crosspick due to the pick striking notes 3&4 from an escaped position. Therefore (where 2WPS is concerned), do I really need to work on pure DSX motions?

Not sure if its relevent, but I do think that I am swiping some of the DSX parts, so if nailing DSX would help, I’m not afraid of the work!!

Apologies if this is a daft question but I have been through the picking primer, trying to get the updated material in my thick skull and I’m now second guessing a lot of stuff! :sob:

Many thanks in advance!

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#2

This is a pretty “inside baseball” question for which you shouldn’t apologize because all it does is show you really get the concepts!

If you look at players like Andy Wood, he doesn’t appear ot have any sort of continuous USX motion. He’s basically a DSX player who occasionally uses double escape motions for doing what you’re describing. Which btw is what we’re calling that now. The term “crosspicking” just confused everyone because it means multiple things. But double escape pickstroke only means one thing — a semicircular pickstroke type.

Now, keep in mind, there is a complexity here because there are multiple ways of making a double escape pickstroke, and Andy uses both ways. The more obvious one involves a combination of wrist motion and forearm motion. That’s the one you can see where the arm is flip-flopping around. And it’s what we used to call “two way pickslanting”, and what we refer to as “down up rotate” in the lessons. But you can do the same thing with no arm motion at all, in a way I would not really describe as “down up rotate” or even “two way pickslanting”. That’s what Andy is doing here as he speeds up this sixes pattern:

In the third and fourth repetitions, there is no “rotate” or change in “pickslant”, and yet he gets over the string just fine, simply by changing the direction his wrist is going. This is why in the new Pickslanting Primer wrist motion updates, we don’t teach “down up rotate”. We just teach the two wrist motions — USX and DSX — with the implication that you’ll just flip flop between them to do whatever string change you need to do.

As you’re pointing out, this still technically creates a “double escape” pickstroke right at the switchover point, but that’s not really what it feels like to do it. It just feels like making downstrokes and upstrokes, honestly. This is why players like Andy have no notion of using two different wrist motions. And I also wouldn’t really call what Andy is doing here “two way pickslanting” since there is no change in pickslant for this. Again, it’s just a change in wrist motion.

So, the answer to your question is no, not all players have both continuous DSX and USX picking motions. They might have one of them as a default, like Andy does. For licks that require both escapes, they may briefly use a different wrist or arm motion, but these brief motions are generally just used for the string change, and they don’t appear to be motions they know how to make continuously.

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#3

Thanks for the feedback- stellar as usual.

Doh! The old vocabulary slips out on occasion!

This method is what I have traditionally done and practiced - where I go a little pronated (or at least less supinated), but if I ignore trying to acheive the pickslant then I seem to be getting somewhat of the same thing with no arm motion at all as you describe, but sometimes with some swipes - I have tried to test whether I am sailing over the next string and get mixed results (more often correct than not, I think). I assume that this would improve with a healthy dose of tooling around.

Given the above and in my mind the non-flip flop seems the ideal- is there any point continuing to practice the version with the forearm? Is there a scenario where the forearm version has any added benefit? I can only think of upward sweep a la Gambale of the top of my head…

The forearm thing the way I learned 2WPS and I can’ t work out whether to look at it as my ‘training wheels’ that now needs to come off or of its a way to maintain the motion in practice and forget about it when performing as I have baked it in…

#4

We just document these things because they exist. When Andy Wood plays lines like this, this is about as good as this kind of line can be played, by anyone:

And you will see both approaches here, with string changes where the arm is totally stationary, and others where the arm moves around a tiny bit. So I wouldn’t say this is “wrong”. There may even be some small technical subtlety that explains why Andy’s approach here is optimal. Even still, the arm motion you’re seeing here is super tiny. He’s barely aware it’s happening.

As far as what you should do, I think that depends. If you are using mainly wrist motion, and your arm position and grip are similar to Andy’s, and similar to the ones we teach in the new Primer chapters, then you have the straight geometry and the ulnar offset. In this case I wouldn’t worry about trying to “do” arm motion. But if you see a little arm movement and it doesn’t affect your ability to play the line, then I wouldn’t obsess over trying to remove it.

#5

Pefect answer, many thanks Troy!