Escaped downstrokes - lick not flowing as smoothly as it should

Technique Critique
#1

I’ll continue to update this as I work through it, but while watching the Crossroads diminished 4s video and trying something, I noticed there were specific DSX runs that, despite having a picking technique that tends towards escaped upstrokes, I was having trouble with, specifically I kept seeming to miss notes a lot on the B and E strings, like the pick would just miss the string.

So, I shot some raw footage - this is sloppy, I promise it was cleaner before I mounted one of those wrap-around-things mini tripods to my guitar’s upper horn to shoot some video. :rofl:

I THINK I can see what the problem here is - my picking stroke isn’t actually strictly escaped downstrokes, and in places it’s arcing into a two-way escaped motion. No biggie… except, it seems it’s also not consistently escaping with upstrokes - specifically towards the high E string it seems like a lot of the time I’m moving towards escaped upstrokes and burying the pick below the string as I pick through the high E, down towards the pickguard. That’s where it feels like, at tempo, this is starting to fall apart for me. It’s also not perfectly clean - 0:26-27, for example, I’m pretty clearly catching the B string as I come off the G.

So, something that I thought I had a pretty good understanding of what I thought my picking hand was doing, I’m seeing it hasn’t actually been all that consistent at even moderate tempos here.

I’m thinking the best way to address this is to really focus on burying the upstrokes, paradoxically, and play with really conscious rest stokes on upstrokes in this pattern for a while, to try to stop my hand from trying to esape every which way it wants. I’ll spend a week or two working on that and reshoot some video and see what it looks like,

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#2

Hey @drew! Could you post a short tab for this lick? I think it would help me/us to understand what the various escapes should be & compare with the video.

For example it’s not totally clear to me that this lick can be done with DSX only - but I may be wrong :slight_smile:

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#3

Hey tommo - thanks for your interest! I could think of a couple ways to play this, for sure. It lends itself to DSX starting with a downstroke, but start it with an upstroke and you could do it USX easily enough, or of course cross picking is a viable option, too. I just honed in on this, not because I play a ton of diminished stuff, but because it’s something in theory I should be able to play easily, and if I can’t, then there’s probably something going wrong in my pickstroke that I should probably smooth out.

  x  b. x. b. x. b. x. b
|----------13-13----------
|----12-15-------15-12----
|-13-------------------13-
|-------------------------
|-------------------------
|-------------------------

That, just looped. Picking notated x for “escaped” and b for “buried” which I’m not actually doing as notated in a few spots, hence my interest and this thread. :slight_smile:

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#4

Aaah ok now I see! Yes there seems to be a little bit of “incomplete escape” on some downstrokes.

What happens if you try to anchor the [fleshy bit of the palm just below the thumb?] on the lower strings? Are the DSX pickstrokes facilitated?

EDIT: watching again it seems you do anchor that way, but sometimes that point of contact lifts away from the strings - this is unexpected as it should not be required for DSX-only playing. I would expect something like this for the occasional USX picktroke instead :thinking:

#5

…which is definitely how I play lines that don’t lend themselves to a single directional escape, which I thought was a weird little inefficient hiccup in my playing before I joined here. That was onew of the biggest breakthroughs I’ve had as a CtC member, realizing that that little “cocking” or “winding up” motion was actually something I should embrace. It’s just I’m now finding myself doing this when there’s no reason at all to do so, and I think that’s why my accuracy falls apart on the E and B string (particularly on the descending part, as memory serves), that the rotation is changing the trajectory of the pick enough in a part of the lick where it’s unnecessary, that I’m starting to miss the strings.

It’s interesting to me too that - haven’t shot recent video to confirm this, i should, mybe tonight (I’m technically “at work” right now) - for runs where I’m doing a more sustained DSX run on a single high string, I don’t seem to be doing this. The Gilbert 6s pattern for example doesn’t feel bad at all, though again I do feel like there are certain ascending combinations where I start to have some similar contact issues, and I wouldn’t be shocked if I’m doing this same rotation at speed - something like this, looped (just the top two treble strings for speed of tab):

|-15-14-12-------------------15-13-12-|
|----------15-13-12-15-13-12----------|

…the jump back up to the high E I don’t always hit cleanly. I’ll check this in slo-mo tonight or over lunch, but I bet I’m doing the exact same thing.

Either way, I THINK making a very conscious rest stroke on my upstrokes here should be helpful, by forcing me to not try to rotate over the top of the string (which in turn necessitates a buried and not escaped downstroke, or makes it more likely I’ll miss the string all together) in this pattern. And, longer term, should give me somewhat better control over how and when I’m moving to an escaped upstroke on more complex runs.

Interesting stuff!

#6

Took another crack at this. Slightly faster speed, definitely clener… But, clear as day, I’m switching to a downwards slant/excaped upstroke on the E string, and while it’s not too bad here, it definitely causes a few problems here and there (there’s the mess on the B string right at the end).

Seems slightly easier on this guitar, for some reason. Slightly lower bridge?

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#7

I mean… it looks like you cleaned it up already! It’s true that a bit of the extra twist might still be there - but it does not seem to affect your ability to play the lick!

One possibility to experience the “straight in and out” motion is to try and use the elbow - as we know it can only do DSX by construction! Maybe that’ll give you a reference for what the more linear motion feels like? :thinking:

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#8

Good thought. Yeah, I feel like it’s getting better, but it still isn’t as fast or as accurate as theoretically it SHOULD be, and I do feel like repeatability is still a struggle, where there are times things go very well, and times they don’t.

I’ll give that a shot when I have some time to sit down and really try to learn a new picking mechanic, hopefully before the weekend!

#9

Ha! This is kinda funny, but I solved my problem.

You were right - the second video isn’t perfect, but does sound like, whatever oddities are going on in the motion, it’s at least working. It FELT better at the time too, for reasons I initially couldn’t place, but when I picked up my silver Strat I rememered fleetingly thinking, “huh, it feels a little easier on this guitar…”

Cue lightbulb moment.

Video to demonstrate the problem, but also because I sort of figure out how to reposition to solve it in real time, which I suppose is kinda funny all things considered.

The short version - the trem on my inca silver strat is both set closer to the body of the guitar, and has a trem bar that sits lower to the trem than the one on my sienna burst Strat, which has a trem that sits visibly higher and a bar that sits higher from the top of the trem than it does on my “main” silver strat that I’ve owned for… um, 23 years, and have done a good 70%+ of my woodshedding on. My picking hand was able to pass over the top of the bar on my Strat - makes you wonder if this is part of why I eventually developed an upwards escape, but was hitting it on my burst Strat, forcing me to use a dufferent hand position and, probably, also forcing me to have to swoop back down towards the body of the guitar to hit that high E.

I seem to have figured out how to adjust while shooting that video, but I also suspect checking to see if I have a shim in that neck pocket and if so removing it to lower the trem in relation to the body, should go a long way towards allowing me to play this more cleanly on this particular guitar.

Weird how little things can have such a big difference!

(I also had my phone sitting, mic-side-down, on a music stand, which is why this is so quiet and muffled - sorry!

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#10

Hey Drew, another option that came to mind is that you could try to anchor on the low strings instead of the bridge saddles (as anyway you only need access to the top 3 strings) - this way different guitars might feel more similar to each other… as they all tend to have strings :smiley:

Of course this means you’d be picking a bit further away from the bridge, so the tone will be a bit different as well.