@Troy : working further on crosspicking rolls I realize something about forearm movement as far as I’m concerned, and a major reason why I need it. Actually I need it for only one move that is to ‘kick’ the upper string for inside change. For other changes the motion can be more linear, but that ‘kick’ is crucial for me to achieve the pattern. Now the pattern can have whatever combination of string change or string skip (like in fwd or bwd roll or more complex patterns) it has to be here for that specific change and is triggered by forearm (and I can’t do otherwise).
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Yes I know, this is how a lot of players describe two-way pickslanting phrases when they try to combine forearm movements and wrist movements. i.e. There is a feeling of digging in on certain notes, usually inside picking sequences. But with the wrist crosspicking approach there’s a lot less of this, and everything looks, feels and sounds smoother as a result.
To be clear there is nothing wrong with forearm movement. I use crosspicking techniques with deliberate forearm involvement on every note. But the pick travels a different pathway. Remember, wrt the guitar, deviation moves parallel / side to side and FE is up and down. Neither of these movements move parallel to the pickups. If you’re asking the pick to move that way, you are asking your arm to engage some other gears, like the forearm.
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@blueberrypie 43243242 - Is that forearm kick you are talking about, occurring during the first 2 to 4 move of the forward roll? If it is, we have talked in the past about that inside picking move being hard for both of us.
I was definitely forearming that before. I actually began this adventure forearming every note and my wrist just doing rotation to form “the pick and the pendulum” motion [copyright pending]. Slowly my forearm movement went away and I was almost all wrist, except I was still really forearming that “hard for me” 2 to 4 inside picking move.
After hearing Troy talk about the fixed forearm and rewatching Andy Wood and Molly Tuttle do the forward roll, I clearly saw they have absolutely no forearm movement doing a forward roll, so I joined the fixed forearm club.
For me, I no longer feel the 2 to 4 inside picking move is any harder than the rest of it. It’s just all equally hard 
My BPM max definitely jumped a notch and I was “more” consistent. I say more, because I still have good and bad days. But that 2 to 4 move is not the problem. It definitely all feels more fluid.
Also, when I was doing that that forearm movement kick back, my forearm had to get down to that position to be able to spring back. So actually some forearm motion had to happen over the first 2 pick strokes moving downward. Maybe those minor forearm movements lead to inconsistency??
of course, this is only my experience, and I’m still working at it.
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It’s interesting, I just rewatched a part of the Molly Tuttle Interview, and she is almost saying the same thing as you. It’s at minute 44:30. Troy specifically asks her about just that inside string skip and if she does something to make that happen. Her answer is that she also feels this particular movement as difficult and that she uses her forearm to make it happen.
However, when she demonstrates the roll after that, there is no turning of the forearm. Or maybe just a little bit, but I could’t really sense it, and Troy also comments, that he doesn’t really see forearm movement. But it looks to me that this particular movement still looks special and different from the other string changes. I can’t really put my finger on what it is, would be interesting to hear what other people think about it.
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Andy actually does have some forearm movement, exactly as we’re discussing here - during ascending inside string changes. It features in much of his playing, not just roll patterns, but also other phrases like scale playing. In a scalar context we would see that as temporary, i.e. two-way pickslanting, which is fine.
Molly on the other hand, correct - comparatively little forearm engagment.
In general, since we’re still learning about these different recipes or strategies, let’s call them, I can’t look at any of these and say they are categorically right or wrong, especially not if the player can do them easily and fluidy without speed or tension barriers.
But these are observations worth noting for now in the event we do notice correlations or limitations later on.
Molly is a pronated player so her downstrokes are wrist flexion. When she reaches farther away from where she’s anchored, toward the treble strings, that flexion movement reaches a little farther, and you might see a small amount of forearm in response to this. And I do mean small, as in, almost imperceptible. This is fine. The parts move in response to each other and there is no reason to try and stop that. It doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the movement she’s making nor is it something anyone needs to “try” to do make her movement work. If anything, her finger motion is a much bigger question mark as to the role it’s playing, similar to Martin Miller’s technique.
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Hi @Troy
I was only talking about the forward roll for Andy. Look here, I don’t see any forearm?
https://troygrady.com/interviews/andy-wood-acoustic/guitar-clips/forward-roll/
Also, to clarify, I’m not taking about rotation of the ulna and radius, which is occurring in the forearm. I was talking about string tracking forearm motion, which I thought @blueberrypie was talking about.
Ok thanks. I think we’ve been discussing the rotational component. That’s what I’ve been discussing anyway!
Indeed Andy is anchored as far as the ulnar side of the arm but the little bit of forearm rotation also does help get from point A to point B. For these patterns which are anchored and every pickstroke changes strings, we can debate how useful it is for someone who is learning to think of “tracking” as a separate movement at all, rather than just trying to do each pickstroke correctly.
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Sorry, I misunderstood the thread. I guess I can speak for myself, in learning crosspicking I was confused at first.
When I first started crosspicking ( learning here ) I did try to separate them. My wrist wasn’t doing ulnar or radial deviation to reach down and up to each string. Pure elbow for string tracking + Pure rotation to pick string. That did not work out well. 
After I allowed ulnar and radial deviation for string tracking, things got better, but I still had elbow for that inside pick movement from string 2 to 4. Once I got rid of that, everything became more fluid.
Not really. I’m talking specifically the ascending inside string change move, like string G to B starting on an upstroke. I figured out that when doing a roll, and whatever the pattern (including with repeated double pair of strings) it’s the ONLY move I really need a forearm motion.
So for example this pattern would have the forearm ‘kick’ engaged by every upstroke:
B---d---d---
G-----d-----
D--u-u-u-u--
The other move are almost linear, i.e. pure wrist deviation I guess. Like with the following pattern (which is the same but with reverse pickstroke):
B---u---u---
G-----u-----
D--d-d-d-d--
And the pick pathway is always oblique wrt the bridge (or pups). So I’m currently working on eliminating unnecessary forearm moves actually and it really is beneficial to for both speed and control. And cherry on the cake muting is totally possible.
I see, so you are trying to even eliminate forearm rotation when it is not necessary. I’m definitely rotating on every pick still… maybe to an unnecessary amount.
Absolutely. I’m not saying it is something to be done, but is surely for me. I realized that my forearm would wiggle unnecessarily causing a loss of control, even if that would not really cause any strain. Actually what gave me the first clue is that after filming myself I found that I tend to dig too much in between strings, and my thinking is that was caused by too much forearm / unstable hand position.
Thanks for clarifying this. There is another question that’s been on my mind for a bit now. When you did the “forearm fixation” thing with Martin Miller and his girlfriend, you said that they could pretty much do the movement right away. Now I’m curious: were they able to play cleanly right away? Or was it more that the movement was smooth and it was clear that they can do it, but it was still a bit sloppy?
I don’t know if it makes sense to ask this question, because at least Martin is such a great player, it wouldn’t be too surprising if he could play cleanly right away. He can do it anyway. I don’t know his girlfriend, but if she is also “playing in the same league” then the same goes for her.
I hope it’s not a bad question to ask, but since “we all here” try very hard to learn crosspicking and ask ourselfes if we are doing it right and all that, this would be very interesting.
Due to my confusion. When you create the crosspicking course, I think it would be helpful to clarify what “forearm fixation” means, because the forearm can move by either rotation or by elbow movement. So you can fix either of those individually or both at the same time.
Your definition of “forearm fixation” is both. Completely fixed. Correct?
When I say “forearm” I almost always mean forearm rotation. If I meant forearm movement in the other sense, I would refer to that as elbow joint flexion and extension. In other words, I’m almost always referring to joints. In the animations we’ve done for the Pickslanting Primer and elsewhere, this is how we’ve represented these concepts. If I’ve been inconsistent in my forum posts, I apologize, that’s my problem to fix not yours!
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They could do it just fine, and they were hitting the notes. They were not super fast. It was like someone riding a bike and mostly going straight but having to pedal with a little more effort. I did this with Brendon Small too and he was able to do it right away as well. He did that all on his own, no hands-on orientation. But mainly because I saw he was already basically making the movement. He’s another pronated player.
Basically I think this specific movement is just not super complicated for someone to learn, once you narrow down exactly what it is you are asking someone to do. There are relatively few moving parts, the hand placement is clear, the grip is clear. You’re already doing it yourself and it looks pretty much exactly like what I do.
Do you think it’s weird that something is easy enough for a person to learn almost right away when you show them, but hard to figure out on their own because they don’t even know what they’re looking for?
Well, welcome to guitar picking!
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I get it, user error, not yours. That helps, it’s always the joint, not the thing being moved. Thanks! Funny, I took your advice, misunderstanding your advice, and applied to something else, and it helped me! Who knew?
No, I don’t think that’s weird at all. It’s this thing where once you know what to look for, you see it very clearly, whereas before you can stare at something for a long time without noticing anything.
I would like to clarify something else. You said that
The way that I understand it, in a pronated setup the downstrokes use wrist flexion and deviation above the sring and deviation only below the string. Is that what you meant here?
Ah, interesting. In this case, it’s of course not true what I said earlier, that Molly Tuttle is saying something very similar to you. Sorry about that…
Correct. If the string you are trying to hit is farther away, then the flexion leg of the journey is longer, and may bend even more to reach the string. As this happens, you might also see a very small associated twisting of the arm to cover that greater distance, particularly if the picking path Molly is choosing is not strictly deviational (i.e. windshield wiper) but a little offset from that to essentially require a blend of all the wrist / forearm motions.
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