Good day,
recently I just started with Pickslanting primer and found my primary motion to be an elbow motion. The most problematic part I’m facing now is string nosie. While playing, I’m resting the thumb side of my hand on the strings. The problem becomes most noticeable when I’m playing the higher strings (b, e strings). In that instance my hand isn’t actually resting on the E string at all, but when I do an upstroke, it touches it, which cause the noise. Althogh I my hand rests on the A and D strings, they seem to make some noise too. Does anybody have any experienced with this as well? How do You handle top strings noise while elbow picking? Maybe a better question would be, what is your elbow picking hand placement on the guitar?
Any chance you could record a video with the problem highlighted? Would be better to “diagnose” the issue and come up with more pointed feedback.
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Of course, no problem. Just a tiny bit busy nowadays. I’ll post it ASAP.
Hey,
posting the videos. The noise can be heard a tiny bit in the background. Although from my perspective it is much louder, my phone’s microphone really likes to mute certain things probably to avoid background noise. I’ll try to add distortion, see if the noise would be more prominent in the video. If so, I’ll post those videos as well. My technique will probably not look that good altogether. It’s just that the noise has been bothering me the most. Can’t really be playing connected to an amp with it.
Are you adding that extra not in the beginning intentionally?
Also, do you start the chromatic lick with a downstroke?
Well I don’t know if this will help but I had the same problem recently when I tried to change my picking motions and escaping angles.
When playing the high E and B I was getting noise from my thumb and side of my hand brushing against the lower strings. I realised I had to change my picking angle to fix it.
If you’re using an elbow motion then your wrist will be naturally in an upwards pick slant position and that means your thumb will be rotating towards the strings and yeh there’s a good chance of it brushing against them.
For me I changed my wrist angle using the body of the guitar as an anchor for my forearm and the strings and bridge as an anchor for my wrist to try and keep it in the right place. But I’m a wrist player of many years so it was easier I guess and I was really just reverting back to my old wrist motions but adding some anchoring to try and stabilise things.
I’ve experienced this before. It’s almost like a ‘mistake’ that I can’t always recreate. I think it might have to do with how much pressure I’m applying into the strings or something. So maybe just a little lighter contact will help?
I’m a natural elbow and DSXer and I guess over time I either have gotten better at avoiding that rubbing string noise on the lower strings or it just doesn’t bother me! In fact, I think I started playing DSX because it kept the strings from ringing out. I honestly thought your examples sounded totally fine!
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