Hello! I have never been an alternate picking so all of this is very new and exciting to me. I’ve always used mostly legato or combinations of picking and pull-offs. Been playing more jazz than rock for the last few years. I recently subscribed to masters in mechanics because I want to improve my picking technique. I figured I’d start with the Cascade seminar since I’m a fan of Eric Johnson’s playing. Here is a video of me practicing some stuff from the first few chapters of Cascade. Downward pickslanting is totally new for me so it was pretty awkward at first but it’s getting bit more comfortable. Am I doing it right? Any feedback on the technique or the practicing? I think the hardest thing is ascending and I think that may have something to do with string tracking. Also it is much harder to mute effectively when ascending as you may notice. Any feedback is appreciated!
Tricky angle but i would say it is crosspicking with some string hooping elements not dwps. Dwps does not have “smiley” pick path and side to side movements. Dwps has diagonal pick path - a stright line. Try to push the pick to the guitar body diagonally and pull back up the same way. 
Okay thanks! Will try to see of I can do something about the picking.
Hi! Thanks for posting!
As @Groff points out, when you play the little units of two notes on individual strings, you’re using a semicircular movement similar to what players use for crosspicking. When you play the triplet phrases that move across the strings, it’s less clear because of the camera angle what’s going on. You may be making a more dwps-style movement for those.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with a crosspicking-style movement if you are doing it smoothly. Martin Miller does this for pentatonic playing and he’s quite fast with it. The only real test for this is whether you can do it quickly and still feel smooth. If that’s the case, by all means keep doing it.
The more general issue here is not being aware which movement you’re making, and potentially making different movements at different times or speeds. This can make it confusing to know what you’re working on because you’re not comparing apples to apples. In general, practicing the fast units of two on a single string is probably only amplifying this confusion. As you can see in this clip, every time you do that, it’s pretty consistent. So there’s really no point in continuing to repeat those - whatever that movement is, you’ve already learned it.
The triplet phrases sound pretty good so it’s not even an issue of doing them wrong. Again, it’s just about learning what movements you’re making and choosing one to work on.
So where to go from here?
I would film another clip looking a little more down the strings, i.e. where the headstock is pointed more toward the camera and we can see the picking movement more clearly in profile. Doesn’t have to be long, thirty seconds or a minute. Just play few repetitions of the triplet patterns at different speeds so you can get a good look at the movements. Then you’ll know what you’re dealing with.
Also, if you haven’t watched the live broadcast on picking motions, do that now:
https://troygrady.com/channels/talking-the-code/introduction-to-picking-motion/
This will familiarize you with a few of the most commonly used pickslanting movements and the arm positions used to execute them.
You may find out you’re making a crosspicking movement, and you may be good at it, and you might choose to keep working on it. Or you might be doing a crosspicking movement some of the time and a pickslanting movement some other part of the time. And then you can choose which one or ones to work on.
Thank you Troy! I will watch the broadcast and then I will do another video some day soon.
Hi again @Groff and @Troy! Thanks again for helping me! Is this more like dwps? I tried to incorporate more wrist deviation rather than forearm rotation and it seemed to help a little.
This looks fine! Yes this looks like a downward pickslanting movement.
But! There was no need to change anything if what you were doing was already working. That’s why I suggested simply using the same form in the original clip, but filming it from this perspective. I still think that is worth doing. Learning these movements is hard, and that includes movements you are already making that you might not realize are distinct from one another. Crazy as that sounds.
The form in the first clip looks like it has potential as a crosspicking type movement, and if so, that is worth developing. Give it a shot and film that one again and see what it looks like.
Here’s a video where at first I do what I feel is the same thing I did in the beginning and then after 20 seconds I switch to the second thing for comparison three times and then end it with the first thing again. They feel a little bit different from one another but they’re about equally easy to do. I think they have slightly different tones to them. Maybe the dwps helps a little bit with ascending but I didn’t do that in this video.
Cool! I like them both.
The first one has more of a crosspicking look to it. It’s not clear if the downstrokes are also escaping, or just the upstrokes. But even if they aren’t, they’re closer to being so than in your more strictly dwps motion. That makes me think this movement could potentially be adapted for crosspicking type purposes with only minor tweaks. What happens when you use the first technique for a phrases where you have to switch strings after downstrokes, does it work? Something like this:
https://troygrady.com/seminars/antigravity/clips/gilbert-sixes-uwps/
If you choose to work on this movement, one goal could be trying to make it feel smooth on as a wide a variety of phrases as possible, regardless of the pickstroke used for the string change. You can try it on upstroke-switching licks like the EJ stuff, downstroke-switching licks like this one, mixed licks like scales, mixed numbers of notes per string phrases like Andy Wood type stuff, etc.
The second movement which appears more traditionally dwps, again, that looks good. It’s nice to have some pickslanting movements in your bag of tricks since they are generally simple and fast, and you can click into them when you have phrases which you already know are going to only use one kind of string change, the EJ stuff being only one example. If you choose to keep this and work on it, you’re mainly looking to keep that movement as simple and smooth as possible, straight down into the strings, straight back up. If over the next month or so that speed on that starts to go up and it starts to feel more relaxed, then you’re probably doing it right. Just verify by filming it.
So two options. Good work here!
Thank you so much for the feedback and practice ideas! It’s very helpful.
It does not clear the strings on the downstrokes since I originally thought I was doing dwps. But I agree that it can probably be adapted pretty easily. I will try that Gilbert thing tomorrow.
I think both are valuable for me to keep but I will have to think about what I’m gonna choose to focus my practicing on right now.
Thanks again
Both movements are new to me but it seems to me like the crosspicking thing might be more versatile if it means that I can do real crosspicking, and the dwps slightly faster and cleaner.
If by that you mean note accuracy, I don’t notice difference in these clips. Ultimately, any of the picking techniques we look at can be used with accuracy, and I don’t think of some as “more accurate” than others.
As you point out it’s early so I wouldn’t worry about it. You have a good start here, keep up the good work.
very cool way to practise this , very nice Thanks!