DWPS, Economy/2 Way Sweeps & Alternate Feedback

Technique Critique
#1

Hey guys! I’m new to the forum and am loving all of the videos and content on the forums and the website. I figured I’d see what you guys thought of my picking. I’m good at the downs but I’ve always had a really hard time with the upstrokes.

The clips are at the suggested 150 bpm (or close).

I’m primarily a clean player, R&B, Benson-type DWPS picking guy and taking videos of my playing has been really informative. My biggest gripe with my own playing is that I still can play pretty sloppy (I blame coming up on blues, as good of a teacher as it is). I’m a pretty experienced player with lots of gigs under my fingers but I’ve struggled with the economy thing for a couple years. I’ve spent tons of time on the good ol “practice with a click slow and speed up” and it’s given me pretty frustrating progress, which has led me to looking to my actual motions, I knew there had to be something else. In general, my hands get caught sometimes and I have a lot of extra string noise. I came up listening to a lot of the great soul session players so I never really tried to train myself out of my sloppiness but the time has finally come.

My main things that I noticed from looking at the vids:

#1) I need to grip my pick harder, especially in the alternate picking video, I can see my pick moving (particularly on the thicker strings) and I’m sure that’s affecting the cleanliness.

#2) I need to tilt my hand more on the upward economy stuff, I am tilting but I don’t think it’s enough. I found Sharkey talking about sweeping and that got me thinking that maybe I should tilt more.

I’m definitely missing a few strokes on the alternate and that’s giving me the “caught” feeling.

Do you guys agree with my analysis of the vids? I’d love to hear what you guys think and if you guys notice anything else! I’m open to anything. Thank you guys!! :raised_hands: :raised_hands:

1 Like
#2

Welcome to the forum Matt! Thanks for sharing your background! It’s great to hear where someone comes from.

About your video, you’ve got a great angle and good lighting and it’s awesome that we get to see the playing in real slowmotion. But could you please include your playing at normal speed as well. It’s easier to hear what the playing sounds like and also there are many nuances that you get from seeing things in normal speed that you hard to see in slow motion.

Looking forward to that!

#3

Agree with @qwertygitarr about having regular speed, and also your analysis of holding the pick tighter!

#4

There was a little bit at 0:14 where we could hear the normal speed and what struck me was that the rhythm of the lick was very uneven. Maybe that was intended but many licks are supposed to be even rhythm so I’m gonna assume that’s what you’re going for here.

I’m not an expert on Gambale style two way sweeping but I do a lot of downward sweeping and economy picking in the style of Yngwie. What has helped me a lot is to really let the pick glide on the string I’m sweeping to before I actually pick it. So If I’m playing a note on the G string and sweep to the B string, my pick is gonna pick the G-string and then slide on the B string before the picks tip reaches the string and actually picks it. The point of this is that this gives me some control over the timing of the swept note via the amount of pressure i put on the B string.

I’m not sure if this is a strategy that works for two way sweeping that you do but here is a video that hopefully demonstrates what I mean.

#5

Hey man! Thanks for the reply! Here’s a video of some more full speed stuff.

Thanks for the short video!! I do hold the pick pretty good, so that could be getting in the way of my glide, I’ll try lightening up a little bit and see if that does anything.

I did notice that we tilt the pick different ways (edit: I don’t know if that changes the technique at all). If you start from a flat pick and you turn the left side of the pick towards the thumb, that’s just how I was taught long ago from a jazz guy :man_shrugging: The downward sweeps are usually cake for me, it’s reversing the whole motion to sweep up that’s giving me trouble. It could be a tension in the fingers that is making the whole motion a little stiff

@Pepepicks66 Conversely about the rest of this post, holding it tighter has definitely helps with the accuracy

1 Like
#6

Thanks for more videos. Great playing there!

I’m sorry to say, I don’t have the skill set to really know how to help with the two way sweeping more than what I’ve already told you. I’m looking forward to other players on the forum chiming in though. I’m eager to learn as well. :slight_smile:

#7

No worries, thanks for your help Qwerty! I’m definitely going to be more mindful and look for some picking tension, that never hurts anyways!!:guitar:

#8

Hey Qwerty! Just wanted to report that I’ve been doing some more digging on this and I came across this exact phrase that I was looking for. The missing piece was definitely the switch to the upward (I did do that in the video but I wasn’t really sure what was happening with it). I’ve been working on it most of today and can confirm that if you’re mostly doing economy, the easiest way to get economy going the other way is upward pick slanting. Frank describes shifting that hand like leaning into a corner on a motorcycle. It felt a little weird at first but it really is a smooth transition by the rolling of the wrist.

I didn’t realize it was called 2 way pick slanting so you definitely helped me start looking! Your economy in the video looked great, this could be a cool addition without doing too much work - if you wanted to go down that path! All I really did was practice in “upward” mode for a little bit while I got used to it then I reversed a DWPS lick to use it for the upwards.

I do recall doing this on accident a few times but never considered it something that I should try to incorporate all the time.

Here’s the final result, a little sloppy but way better for sure!! Appreciate you!

It also looks like you can use it to give you a little extra speed boost when you’re switching from DWPS to UWPS like this guy
https://www.instagram.com/p/CEK3BaZHmf4/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link