Does Wrist Flexion Equal Stringhopping?

Playing Technique
#1

@Troy I’ve understand all the concepts you and your team explain regarding alternate picking except this one: When I asked about David Grier and Marshall Harrison, both times you said they were able to do an upstroke on, for example the G string, followed by a downstroke on the D string without using downward pick slanting on the G string by using “wrist extension.”

However, in the videos in which you gave your very first explanation of the pick slanting where you say you always had trouble doing that outside string change I described and you said the reason is you didn’t use pick slanting which forced you to use stringhopping which is wrist flexion. You said pick slanting was necessary to avoid string hopping. You said once you discovered pick slanting you were finally able to play licks involving string changes, especially outside string changes. Without pickslanting you said the pick got “caught between the strings” which forced you to do string hopping.

Is there a case where wrist extension does not equal string hopping? How would someone know when wrist extension is string hopping and when it isn’t string hopping? What makes the difference, of there is a difference between wrist extension and string hopping? Finally, is using wrist extension instead of pick slanting only a viable technique in cross picking but not typical heavy metal style alternate picked runs and licks such as descending 4s for example?

I’m mainly interested in if the application of wrist flexion instead of pick slanting to make outside picking string changes is viable for metal style playing - not bluegrass since I’m a metal player and the bluegrass players don’t reach speeds of 16th notes at 225 or 240 BPM.

The Definition Of Stringhopping
#2

I’m pretty sure wrist flexion and extension to play a single note once is string hopping. Almost picture knocking on a door motion: that’s strong hopping. Now wrist flexion or extension only on say the downstroke and then deviation or rotation on the upstroke is crosspicking because you’re actually doing less work and truly alternating muscle movements.

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#3

My understanding is that it’s stringhopping whenever you use the same muscles on down and upstroke to escape - regardless of the underlying mechanic. So the problem is not which muscles you use - it’s that there’s no rest at all.
Anyway, wrist flexion is probably the string hop that most of us - if not all - did or do.

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#4

Great responses guys! That’s exactly right. Here’s our “fancy” treatment of the subject for those that haven’t seen it:

https://troygrady.com/channels/tutorials/what-is-stringhopping/

The Definition Of Stringhopping
#5

Thank you Troy. It’s interesting how the further you look into the mechanics of the great alternate pickers, you’re finding that pick slanting, which was presented as the almost magical cure for your technique problems in the series of videos that used to be at the top of the Masters Of Mechanics videos and videos such as “the pop tart lick” video, now you’re finding that pick slanting, while helpful, isn’t as necessary as those early CTC videos describing your frustration with “getting caught between between the strings” made it out to be.

#6

Yeah, that’s in fact right. I was thinking the other way round, means string hopping wrist flexiion?
(It’s like that is every dog an animal and reverse thing)
And I’d say the answer is no, indeed i never saw that in real live, but theoretically you could do stringhopping, with pretty much any other mechanic.

Probably it’s nothing to worry about, I just wanted to point that out in case someone plays around with mechanics, i can imagine that people can produce stringhopping by combining finger movements (as an example) with another component. That would produce another version of stringhopping.

Still I think it’s not a problem to equal both in mind, if somebody produces another version on his way to find his or her motion he’d simply don’t use it.
But the 100% correct answer to the title of this topic should be no, wrist flexion is a subset of stringhopping.

#7

Not sure what you mean by this. The usefulness of pickslanting is as it always was. I you want to play the “Pop Tarts” lick, there’s really not any simpler way to do it. Further, crosspicking techniques like David Grier uses are based on pickslanting movements. When David uses the escaped wrist extension movement, that’s downward pickslanting, amazingly - just done with a pronated arm position. You can do just that movement by itself if you want. This is what I’m demonstrating in the two-minute crosspicking tutorial. Each single-arrow movement is a pickslanting movement. Combined they create crosspicking. Individually they are pickslanting. Tomato, tomahto.

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#8

@Troy. I just got something in mind. Martin Miller uses that great finger motion, and i just looked at that video, and it seems to me the reason that it is not stringhopping is basically that he seems to have a clever strategy when to use the fingermotion, so it only appears every 2nd stroke or less.
Now when i think about that, with that same strategy up, would that work with wrist flexion?
I played around with the finger motion some weeks ago and I’m totally unable to get that done. Now I just tried that with wrist flexion which feels weird too, but I’m not sure if it’s just missing strategy or the motion itself.
Would it make sense to play around with that? For crosspicking Martin’s approach seems to be the most stable one, the parameters to make that work doesn’t seem so tiny.

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#9

Yes, crosspicking can be done with pure wrist movements as you describe. This is what Molly Tuttle and David Grier do, and what I’m demonstrating here:

https://forum.troygrady.com/t/everything-you-need-to-know-about-crosspicking/?source_topic_id=2585

The “single arrow” movements are the two different pickslanting movements, one which is deviation, and one which is deviation + FE.

I don’t know what you mean by stable but there is no “best” crosspicking technique. Basically there are many ways make escaped pickstrokes, Martin’s method is simply one of them. Carl Miner’s method is another, Molly Tuttle’s is another, and so on. These players are the best of the best and just as accurate as each other. There is no “best” way.

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#10

Thanks for replieing! :slight_smile:
I should have spend some more time with that notations for the movements, I just didn’t notice that you already picked that up, sorry for bothering witth that.

With ‘best’ i meant stable in a way that enables you to keep accurate even when changing the instrument or changing other small parameters.
I still have that flamingos in mind, that still basically fit to the players you mentioned. There are so many variables and very small changes give high chances to let the system crash.
In Martin’s case the whole system looks kind of invincible, the pick stroke, pick depth and the hight of the finger motion are all wide ranged without causing problems - at least visual.
Which makes the other players probably even greater, cause they are able to perform in that small range without even sensable worries.

My mind was just flirting with that Martin approach, cause I rarely find time to practice anymore (now for a long time) and it looks as if it does not require much work to maintain it after having it.
Probably that’s jsut wishing … as so often :grin:

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#11

Good point, Guy From Germany!

You are correct. One example of string hopping another way would be to raise the whole forearm vertically until the pick had cleared the string. Instead of wrist extension string hopping, it would be shoulder extension string hopping.Still, it would be slow and sloppy

#12

In my experience this is true of pretty much every technique we have looked at, and more generally, true of lots of motor skills. There are some cool research papers on this topic, to the effect that while it may (I stress “may”) get harder to learn new motor skills as you age, maintaining high levels of existing ability well into old age is possible with only moderate levels of upkeep.

#13

“Not sure what you mean by this.”

OK, I think I can explain it better in this post…

“The usefulness of pickslanting is as it always was. I you want to play the “Pop Tarts” lick, there’s really not any simpler way to do it. Further, crosspicking techniques like David Grier uses are based on pickslanting movements. When David uses the escaped wrist extension movement, that’s downward pickslanting, amazingly - just done with a pronated arm position. You can do just that movement by itself if you want.”

We have to be very careful with our choice of words here if we are to avoid confusion. I agree that the usefulness of pick slanting is at it always was. There probably is no simpler way to play the pop tarts lick. I agree with you on that.

However, what I said was the “necessity” of pick slanting is not what those early videos that used to be the very first videos that appeared in my subscription to Masters Of Mechanics (meaning in order from top to bottom this were the first videos listed) made pick slanting out to be. They made it seem clear that pick slanting is a necessity. They were videos with names like “Get Down For The Upstroke.” That is Cracking The Code Epsiode 9 and is no longer listed in the Mastes of Mechanics subscription but is available free on YouTube. I’m just clarifying which group of videos I’m referring to. By the time I wished watching all those episodes it gave the impression that pick slanting was a necessity - the only efficient way to be able to get the pick to escape being caught in between the strings. Prior to that you said you had used the inefficient string hopping method.

Since then you started showing videos which research cross picking and to put it is simply and clearly as I can - you have shown there are other fast efficient ways to escape the strings than for instance using downward pick slanting when playing a note with an upstroke on, say, he B string followed by a downstroke on the G string. There is, for example, what I call the pendulum shaped wrist movement Daviid Grier uses to make all his his pick strokes and enable him to allow the pick to escape from between the strings, yet without using pick slanting in the sense that it means using upward pick slanting on a downstroke on the A string folllowed by downward pick slanting on the very next note - and upstroke on the D string.

I hope that clarified what I meant in my previous post.

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#14

I hope that’s true.
I picked up my guitar again some weeks ago, after basically 20 years (with short intermissions).
Eventhough everything feels like in place the fretting hand is kindof dead. It still tries to execute commands and the commands are still there but the motion itself is gone. No fingerindependency and the pinky has the strength of a toast :frowning:
At least there’s some hope now that I don’nt have to start from scratch to regain some fluidity.
I just reworked my picking and tracked pretty much all steps I did and planned to upload all that once i get more than dinding out of my guitar.

… so if anyone finds a fretting hand on his way - that’s probably mine (It’s diatonic and the name is Wilbur)

#15

I’ve noticed a tendency on here to idealize certain techniques before being able to actually do them, and I would really caution against this. Everybody’s got a favorite among the “wish list” movements they can’t yet do.

I think this stems more from being dissatisfied in some way with our own playing and thinking there is one ‘magic’ approach that’s going to fix those problems, and less about these techniques really being that different. More often than not, once you actually learn to do these movements, you find that these picking techniques are much more similar in capability than they are different, and much more similarly comfortable than they are uncomfortable. It’s really just about which ones you know and are used to, and which ones you are not.

More generally, none of these movements really solve the biggest issues with guitar playing which is the need to rehearse things and map things out to some extent. Whether that means literally writing down phrases verbatim and rehearsing them somewhat mechanically or doing so more subconsciously while “noodling”, that’s just the nature of this beast and it’s never going to change no matter what picking movement you use.

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#16

Fortunately I’m not dissatisfied :slight_smile:
I see the wishlist in a more positive way. First to mention we have one - that’s new and good.
In my case it was more the wish to change something and then look what’s there and in second step, what may be approachable.
The second step didn’t work for me in Martin’s case but that’s fine - I’m glad Martin’s case existsed at all :slight_smile:

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