DSX and Ulnar Offset progress?

Playing Technique
#21

I don’t pretend to know anything about ergonomics, so we probably won’t address that. But pick attack, yes. In this case the guts of that video will be pretty much what we just typed out right here.

i.e. Your pick attack is determined by edge picking, and your edge picking is determined by your approach angle, and your approach angle is determined by your arm position and the guitar’s neck angle. Whether we define approach angle as the angle the arm makes with the ground / parallel, or the angle the arm makes with the strings, we’ll settle on one definition of that so it’s clear.

For bluegrass it’s a bit of a moot point because most of these players hold the guitar close to level. You want flatter edge picking for the correct tone, especially with the heavier / more rounded picks, so you need lower approach angle.

So it’s not just how you hold the guitar, it’s all the parts, right down to pick choice and grip.

3 Likes
#22

ok how is this? is this what you mean by lowering the approach angle? I think it feels flatter to me - I am trying to come to the strings more from the back of the guitar rather than the top…

Let me know if this is what you mean or do I need to get flatter in another way?

#23

image
image.jpg740×493 236 KB

Like this?

#24

Yes exactly. Bryan’s arm is coming in over the bridge, closer to parallel with the strings. Here’s another decent shot. He’s not quite as low here so clearly there is a range and you don’t need to micromanage the approach angle that closely:

The notes in your second clip all sound pretty loud and the speed is fine — plenty fast enough to play most bluegrass. So this shouldn’t be an issue. You just have to start playing through some stuff at a reasonable rate of speed and monitoring the results.

Playing loud at the limit of what the instrument will produce will always take some physical work. Doing that was just a test. But you should be able to get a medium level of volume at a fast speed with what feels like minimal effort. That’s the trifecta. If you can do those three things together, that’s how you know the form is right. If it’s not, then keep tweaking.

But please, again, start playing through stuff. There’s a bunch of those DSX-only lines in this clip too — lots of stuff you can transcribe. And if you’ve got a string change that doesn’t fit, either try to play it anyway, or adjust the line to fit DSX only. Typically this usually involves only adding an extra note to one string and subtracting from another string. Doesn’t even have to be the same note. Just mod the line until it works, or again, try to play it anyway.

#25

Ok thanks - I see that. Ok I’ll get on this and see what I can do and post back some lines…

Actually I do notice some tension in my wrist as I do this, I can play without it but it feels like a bad habit that creeps in, so I will need to focus on playing smoothly and relaxed too…

Thanks again @Troy

#26

Hi,
Ok so I have been working on a couple of the Bryan Sutton lines - would you be able to take a look at these - how am I getting along here ?

Do you have any feedback? they both feel smoother, but the ascending lick (billy in the lowground) definitely feels smoother, but I can’t figure out why I find the descending lick harder. I can play the ascending one repeatedly, but only around 1 in 10 attempts on the descending one sound any good, and even then it’s not clean.

I have actually repositioned my guitar to be resting on my left leg - it feels easier to reach the strings and my right shoulder feels less tense, as I am not stretching round the back of the guitar - is this a sign that my guitar is too big in terms of the size of the body? I am only 5’8’’ tall. I guess that means my arm span is not as big as the average person (I think I am a little below average height) would this make a difference I wonder…

Thanks again,
Rohit

#27

Nice work. First clip sounds good, better than the second one. You’re connecting on more of the notes. Keep doing that. Take that line and make more variations on it and build a longer phrase that you can keep doing for more bars. The more you can get going and keep going, the way bluegrass players do when they play whole tunes, the easier it will be to feel when something is working.

You won’t always be able to “know” why something is working or not, and I doubt David Grier or Bryan Sutton had any conscious mechanical sense of this when they were kids and first learning either. They just noticed when things were working, because the notes were louder with fewer dropouts, and they did more of those lines that were working. So that’s what you should do.

Take your knowledge of the vocabulary and see if you can come up with a long phrase or mini-tune of many bars. Patterns that connect back to themselves are good for this so you can basically just keep repeating them if you like. Then you can throw in different variations on that, and so on. Throw in some bass / chord type stuff too so it sounds like music. Basically, write your own tune. You’re just doing it with the knowledge that a certain type of phrase is more likely to sound hooked up because you’re choosing specifically phrases that are already working well for you.

1 Like
#28

Cool, ok thank you.

It’s nice that something is working. Quite often (daily!) I get bummed about my lack of progress here, but actually, compared to when I first came onto the forum I have made a lot of progress: I can pick a single string at a professional speed (which I couldn’t do before), and now I am starting to get some fast lines going at professional speeds that sound good (which I never thought I would be able to do), so actually this is starting to work for me.

So just to summarize, just keep going with the DSX stuff, and the crosspicking/changes after an upstroke I shouldn’t worry about because that will probably just iron itself out over time organically? I find this hard to imagine but I’m willing to give it a go if someone tells me from a position of much greater experience…

#29

I wouldn’t worry too much about crosspicking mechanics. Does Bryan even do continuous roll playing? I’m not even sure he does. I think he basically does roll fragments using his temporary “2wps” arm movement, like the one you spotted in Jake’s playing. Which is enough to get the vibe.

Get these single escape things happening on long phrases and get the note contact as smooth as you can. Remember lower approach angle gets the tone, so try that too. But get those notes sounding good as notes across long phrases. Once this is starting to come together, try mixing in some Workman-like phrases where you have occasional upstroke string changes here and there, but try not to overthink things. See if you can get it by feel.

But long phrases first, and make them sound good.

1 Like
#30

Ok thank you - that’s a good point - I remember from the Carl Miner interview that you told him that Bryan Sutton cheats on the rolls and doesn’t alternate pick them.

ok so the longer phrases and the note quality - that’s a good next challenge, I will get on this…

Thanks again so much!

#31

For the record I didn’t say “cheat” and I’m not really sure if that’s true in all cases! Let’s not worry too much about roll patterns. Compose some long single note lines and do what you need to get them ringing out clearly.

#32

Hi
Ok so I have started to write a mini tune - based on the bryan sutton clip. I don’t think this is maybe as long a tune as you were suggesting - but it’s a start. I guess this ends up back where it started, so I could repeat this over and over to get into the groove.

I know all the notes are not clean, I need to work on that, but it’s starting to feel a bit smoother, and there are 3 awkward string changes that I am just trying to play through without thinking about, as you suggest.

Am I on the write track here, anything that I need to think about more or just keep going and working on getting the notes clean? It’s helping me to think about larger movements to help me get into a rhythm…

Thanks again,

#33

Yep, basically — ugly but functional! And I say that with love, seriously. If you ask a kid to trace a house, you can get a really realistic drawing but the artist hasn’t learned anything. If you ask them to draw a house from memory, it’s crooked and simple but still recognizable as a house. Over time it gets straighter and more detailed. That’s how I think this goes, even with physical skills you need for music. You throw it all up there and get it happening, realistically, under your own steam, and smooth it out over time. If you can make this a little longer, that would be great. Just keep adding more lines / phrases to it. Over time, it becomes your version of Billy in the Low Ground, or just a Billy-inspired improv.

I would really like to get these notes coming through more clearly. That’s the number one issue. Why are there dropouts? Is it a fretting thing or a picking thing? You gotta figure that out. Is there some way you can test what’s causing this? Like trying a simpler phrase on a single string and see if you’re still getting the dropouts?

Re: the two-way pickslanting motions, I think it’s great that you have a phrase that requires them. But I wouldn’t try to “do” those motions so much, with the arm rolling around. I would just pretend that they’re not there. If you hit something then ok, feel your way around it. But I think this fits in with the smoothness aspect and not trying as hard. Get the notes sounding clearly with minimal effort, and put minimal effort into the 2wps side of it so that it feels more like one motion to you.

Vibrato — yours sounds like Gypsy jazz, which is cool in that context, but grass players don’t seem to use it.

This is all great and yes keep going!

#34

Thanks! You’re right - it is ugly, but at least I can get through it, and hopefully I’m building on something here.

I have been thinking about thr drop outs - I think the reasons are (in no order)

  • hand sync - sometimes the left hand doesn’t push onto/lift off the fret in sync with the pick, so I just get a muted sound. When I isolate the offending notes into an exercise, it gets much better, but when I put it all back together it all falls apart again - any tips here?

  • I think I have the garage spikes problem, in that sometimes the pick pings really smoothly off the string on the down and the up, but sometimes I find it hard to do the upstroke, the pick catches off the string. I am trying to have a lower approach angle and be flatter - but find I do need a tiny bit of edge picking to help me out.

  • Also sometimes I am picking with minimal amount of pick - which is when it is easier to play the notes. When the pick digs in I catch on the string and get a dropout.

I think those are the reasons, if you have any insight on them that would be great. But hopefully these will iron out as long as I stay very observant and am willing to make small changes to the form to get them clean?

#35

To me there’s really no difference between an exercise and a tune, it’s just notes after all. Are you saying that when you play shorter examples it sounds better? Then take a few notes from a shorter section of this and see if it sounds better.

Once you’ve got your basic motion established, there shouldn’t really be any change in pick attack to cause garage spikes unless you’re changing something about your form. It could just be a thing a you learn to do more consistently by feel over time, like hitting a golf ball more consistently straight. I would guess that playing through the tune and variations on it will telegraph to you when you’re hitting the notes cleanly.

You’re definitely going to need more variety than a single piece for this, so keep transcribing / writing. The more stuff, different keys, different lengths, different tempos, the better.

#36

Yes, when I play a 1 or 2 beat phrase from the tune I can nail it every time. Its just playing that phrase straight after a previous phrase which gets me dud notes. . It could be that it’s a string tracking thing and the form changes as I move the right arm up and down to track across strings, but hopefully this smoothes out over time.

Thanks for the tip on variety, I tend to get obsessed with playing 1 exercise for a whole practice session, I’m definitely going to have to be more disciplined in playing multiple things.

Thanks again, I’ll give this a go and post back

#37

Hi
Ok so I started working on nailing the smaller fragments as individual pieces, focusing on tracking, staying loose, and also using rest strokes to make sure my swing was larger. I think this is better, definitely fewer dropouts - what do you think?

I also got out an old “Bag O’ Licks” pdf from banjo ben that I had bought a few years ago, and started working on fragments of those, changing the picking to suit DSX changes more - and the variety does seem to help :

Does this sound better? I will add to this piece to make it longer!

#38

There might be fewer dropouts here, sure. But if you have to ask if this sounds better, then it’s not that much better! Put some more experimentation into this until it becomes really obvious to you that whole phrases are ringing out with fewer misses. The more playthroughs of longer stuff you’re doing, the more you’ll have an opportunity to hit a bunch of notes really good and then go, hey, what did I just do there? And then you try and do it again. Hopefully you’ll experience increasing smoothness hit rate over time, and your feedback on that will be super helpful to the rest of us as that happens. Maybe there’s something simple we can do to clarify even further what causes this. Bluegrass is no joke - you’re definitely fighting the physics of big guitar and big strings.

One thing I would advise is making sure your action is as good as you can get it without buzzing. You don’t want it shredder-low because you’ll hear the buzz. But if you’re pressing down on big air that can lead to dropouts on heavy strings.

#39

Yes I compared my 2 clips and they were actually not that different! The second one felt better, but that didn’t translate much into sounds.

Ok I will keep experimenting and testing. I am actually learning what works and what doesn’t in terms of grip, arm positions, rest strokes, edge picking and tracking. There are moments and small sections when it all sounds perfect, but it doesn’t translate automatically into longer sections.

You’re right this is hard, as it turns out the style of music I most want to play ends up being physically one of the most challenging! Trust me to pick that. Even Jake says it is really hard to get the knack of this. I remember from the the Andy Wood Interview that after so much acoustic playing the electric guitar feels easier (like a toy I think he described it as).

Actually I know a really good guitar guy I can take it too to look at the action and recommend what to do. It’s a Taylor so I hope that it was setup ok. I will ask him when I get back from vacation.

Thanks again!