Essential two way pick slanting licks

[aliendough]

I was thinking that maybe Troy and his team could write up some what they consider to be essential licks that would help players get the feel for two way pick slanting under their fingers. Licks that are specially designed to change picking orientation on each string change.

What do you think?

[Troy]

This is a great question but I’m going to reframe it a little. I don’t consider any particular exercise or pattern ‘essential’, and my best guess is that a smorgasbord approach of trying lots of things is the most natural way to learn. You don’t learn language by mastering one word at a time, and you don’t learn physical skills like walking or bike riding one limb movement at a time. You learn by standing up and falling down, then standing up a little longer, then falling down again, then maybe trying holding onto a couch or table to a balance, then a little crawling here and there, and so on. Things come together over time with lots of different kinds of attempts, each with a lot of little fails in between. They’re all sloppy at first, then they get a little cleaner, and then they really rapidly start to get clean toward the end. That’s the general progression.

This is the thrust of what Noa Kageyama and Pietro Mazzoni were talking about with “random practice” in the “Science of Practice” interview we did. I know those interviews came off a little academic for a lot of viewers, but brass tacks, that’s what they’re saying. Pietro himself said that if he had to learn piano over again, he’d do it this way.

Based on this kind of research, I think we’d be better off thinking in batches. Like, let’s choose a handful of things a beginner can sample from during practice time when they’re first starting out. Then, when things start to come together, start rotating in some other things. And gradually move forward that way.

So… to CC viewers have already gone through this progression, what goes in the beginner batch? What goes in the intermediate batch?

I’ll give you descending sixes in the beginner batch. I wouldn’t do it exclusively, or even for huge amounts of time. I’d do it small sessions in combination with other stuff, with frequent breaks in between, as your results and personal preferences dictate.

Other suggestions please.

[JustinArmstrong]

I’d say the Paul Gilbert lick goes somewhere in the beginner/intermediate batch. I suppose it’s not the easiest lick but I used to practice it along with sixes and seemed to help. For whatever reason the “inside” picking version was intuitively easier than the “outside” picking version, but I think both are great to practice.

[Troy]

Good. I’d add to this, in general, that I think we should resist thinking about mechanical practice as limited to little lick fragments and “exercises”. Cracking the Code is certainly guilty of promoting this mentality by organizing everything in packs of slow motion clips. But our understanding of what makes practice work has certainly evolved. And the truth is that if your practice consists solely of repeating tiny phrases a million times, that’s going to be pretty limiting both musically and mechanically.

Musically there’s no vocabulary building. And even mechanically, when you draw hard boundaries like that, you’re limiting the kinds of movements you can sample, and you’re limiting the smorgasbard effect that interleaved/random practice is supposed to provide.

It’s also worth pointing out that relatively few of the players we’ve interviewed say they learned this way. A few have. But more often, you’ve got guys like Albert Lee, who can’t play anything in a straight line, but will blow away almost anyone through the changes. It’s obvious that his song-based approach has helped him build musical vocabulary. But what if there was a follow-on benefit to the speed of his mechanical learning too, by introducing variety? The more we look at this subject, the more inclined I am to say that this is in fact the case.

[JustinArmstrong]

I would agree with this. I didn’t really crack two-way pickslanting until I started learning bluegrass crosspicking. I mean, they’re kind of related but the motions are pretty different. But when I went back to practicing some two-way stuff, I could actually do it efficiently. Somehow doing randomly different things helped my development.

Actually, my question is what is some good music to practice two way pickslanting? As fun as Batio and Gilbert are, there music seems based largely on mechanical patterns that have been talked about. What stuff should we check out that would make our development more in the Albert Lee sort of way? John Mclaughlin maybe?

[aliendough]

Justin I agree with you on that Paul Gilbert lick. For me, it’s like one of the essential shred licks.

[aliendough]

For me, some of the licks in the beginner and intermediate batch:

Circular 18 (Conquering the Scale)
Shift 12 (Conquering the Scale)
Shift 18 (Conquering the Scale)
Ascending 6 Upstroke - The Reverse Chunk (Conquering the Scale)
Ascending 12 - The Speed Kills Scale (Conquering the Scale)
Arpeggio Maj7 Modulation Long (MAB Interview)
Fours Circular Upstroke (MAB Interview)
The Antigravity Lick

Those are what I can see are my favourites and are helping me.

[JakeEstner]

Hi (first post)

I am not that great at two way slanting but have a lot of one-way slanting concepts down fairly well.

Trying to dig in a bit more these days.

I’ve thought about it in a few different ways but it could follow logically in my mind that we could approach a progression somewhat like this:

1. Picking all notes on one string, and intentionally shifting the slant back and forth just to practice that movement. So that would be pure isolation of the slant change - first just with an open string, then perhaps with a simple left hand pattern to maintain clarity while the slant changes.
2. Picking say, 9 notes on the B string then 9 notes on the G string, back and forth repeating. So the slant will have to change but there is a lot of time to do so. Again starting with just open strings, then adding in left hand patterns (or have fun composing a musical phrase that fits the bill)
3. (and on) - gradually doing fewer odd-numbers-of-notes per string on this two string sequence, 7, then 5, then 3, only moving to fewer notes per string when the technique and tempo are mastered - but stopping at 3, because once we get to “1” it’s more like cross picking.

A week or so ago I composed a sweeping line that required 2WPS that I thought would help with the issue, and in a sense it did by highlighting more specifically what was going ‘wrong’ when I had to change slants.

Anyway, so I’m going to give a whirl to the above. I’m open to comments if Troy or others here think I’m on the right/wrong track, over thinking/under thinking. Etc.

Thanks for the time!

[PickingApprentice]

I don’t think that any lick is more useful than another out of context, but what is important is having enough variety of licks to cover different aspects of the motion mechanics that you are working on and point out you weaknessea. For example, I find inside picking easier. If I practice 5 licks that are all inside picking, I wouldnt be addressing the problem of outside picking and wont make the progress I want. So I choose licks that force my to pay attention to my weak spots and will help towards chunking