Failing to Escape

[ottoborden]

Hey,

I’m new here and to pick slanting as well. I’ve been practicing for the last few days and I feel like I’m doing well. Before pick slanting I was doing Ben Eller’s ‘Punisher’ chromatic exercise at around 60 bpm 16 notes. Since starting with slanting I’m doing basic 4nps chromatics at about 100 bpm 16 notes (no muting at the moment though ) I tried pushing the speed up to 105 bpm just a bit ago and found that my picking started to break down.

I was still supinated for DWPS and pronated for UWPS (wrist flat on the body of the guitar). I’d watched myself play up and down the strings and focused on keeping the proper rotation throughout. So I tried this using DWPS on the high E string:

E |-4-3-2-1-|

Then freeze at the moment I would normally switch to the B string. I pushed my pick straight down towards the body of the guitar and my pick was still in between the High E and the B string. So it seems that for whatever reason I’m not fully escaping far enough to move to the B string with a down stroke. And when I paid closer attention I noticed that after the 4 notes on the high E I would shift my right hand up slightly so that the down stroke would make contact. This obviously breaks the flow and is not proper pick slanting technique as far as I can tell.

So if you’re still reading (thank you) my question is this. Do DWPS and UWPS require me to incorporate an extra bit of wrist deviation on the last pick stroke before switching strings? Has anyone else had to do this? I wonder if this is a relic of my old picking habits in which I tried to be efficient and move as little as possible?

Also, as best as I can tell now without recording myself all my pick movement is coming from wrist deviation and none from my forearm.

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BREAKING NEWS:

Started watching the AntiGravity series after posting this. In it Troy mentions that Eric Johnson never bothered with small movements. Got me thinking that this is just an artifact of my old attempts to gain speed that needs to be unlearned. When I attempt to go faster I just instinctively start making smaller movements with my picking hand. These small movements are not necessary to speed when using pick slanting no?

Any one have any thoughts on that?

[WhammyStarScream]

You’ll always have to move a greater distance to reach a new string than picking just one. That’s justs logic and physics. Kind of explains itself.

Smaller movements will always be faster, but for any realistic playing you don’t need them, in fact the constant inertia shifting of your hand with bigger movements can really help in keeping in time and keeping consistent. Small movements are hard to feel and get disturbed heavily when moving around on stage unless your anchoring technique is really stable.

Really have to see your picking for any real analysis.

[Brendan]

To echo @WhammyStarScream we’d have to see video to really get you the best answer on this. But in general a little more rotation or a little more deviation should be fine, various blends of those motions can work as long as it gives you the results you’re looking for.

Indeed we’ve talked quite a bit about speed / efficiency and how “small movements” are more a result of fast picking motions (muscle force * switching frequency) rather than the thing that causes it.

See further discussion here (and you’ll probably find plenty more too if you search ‘speed’, these are just the first couple topics I found):

Picking Speed vs Motion Size - Explained

This is one of the few instances where Troy and I disagree on one of the theories he has put forth in Cracking The Code. Although I continue to give reasons to back up my theory and feel confident i’m right, I still think there’s a chance Troy could be right. Troy usually is right; I just think in this particular case he’s not. I suppose you could say Troy and I partially agree. You pointed out that Troy believes the size of the motion matters when using Hyper Speeds. So do I. I also believe t…

The Lazy Sloppy Zebra or "Transition Time“?

This is maybe a weird title for a post, but I share it in a few seconds (tl;dr!!) I found this old book by Troy Stetina “Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar” from 1990 and there is a chapter about speed practice, wherein there is a subentry on page 31 about “Transition Time” (Stetina, 1990). In short, this is about putting together the length of a note, the length of a pick stroke and finally the influence on the possible frequency of strokes when picking fast. A zebra-crossing-like diagram,…

[Troy]

So if you’re still reading (thank you) my question is this. Do DWPS and UWPS require me to incorporate an extra bit of wrist deviation on the last pick stroke before switching strings?

Possibly? What I can say is it’s not something you should really have to think about too much. Especially when you’re doing pattern-based “exercise” type lines, like the venerable 4nps chromatic pattern, and you’re doing the descending version. Players like @tommo have reported the descending “outside” version of the pattern feels easier in terms of the switching strings aspect. Meaning, the final upstroke already leaves you so close to where you need to be for the downstroke on the next string that there is really no thinking about getting there, you just do the downstroke.

Conversely, some people find the ascending version to be harder because the final upstroke is moving you in the opposite direction from the next string. I personally don’t notice this difference as much. There is probably a subtlety with respect to the different motions you can use that we haven’t quite nailed down entirely, and I suspect certain picking motions might take care of this a little more smoothly.

Re: motion size, I wouldn’t worry about “size” per se. Size is the result of how hard you play and how fast you play. The pick moves a certain distance during the time it has available, and that distance is the result of how much force you’re putting into it. The available time is governed by how soon you trigger the next note. So speed and force control the size, the size doesn’t control the speed or force.

Instead, worry about smoothness and naturalness of the motion. If the size gets smaller as you speed up, that’s fine. If you don’t want it to (for whatever reason), then you just add more force to the pick attack. Again, this causes the pick to travel farther during the amount of available time before it has to turn around.

It’s possible that adding a little more oomph to your pickstroke will cause the bigger motion you need to get to the new string, helping out the string changes, at least in the “outside” scenario. Something you can test anyway. When it comes to motor learning, I’m a fan of relentless testing and experimentation, not relentless repetition of something that’s not working.

[ottoborden]

I see this discussion has been split over to another thread. I just wanted to report back for anyone who may come across this in the future.

So I’m up to 4nps chromatic 16ths @ 125bpm now. What I found over the last week was that my problem came down to not chunking properly. I realized at some point that I was trying to focus on every single note I was playing and that was breaking my flow. Once I reevaluated and focused only on the first note of each string and grouping the pick strokes up into sets of 4 I was able to speed up pretty easily. The problem I described above resolved itself when my mental model of what I was playing changed.

I realize 125bpm is nothing special around here but for me this is a breakthrough. When I was younger I practiced chromatics and other scales until my wrist was so sore I had to stop. And even still I could maybe hit 125bpm on a good day. But even then it was choppy and didn’t sound or feel smooth. My pick was always getting caught up between strings.

CtC is revolutionary for me. Thank you @Troy.