Finding a double escape motion

Playing Technique
#1

Just curious if other CTC members have had any success in discovering a workable DBX motion in the way that has been outlined by @Troy again and again (e.g fast and sloppy, let motor learning do it’s thing, etc).

Im not asking how long it takes (“how long is a piece of string”). I’ve had to retrain my piano technique from scratch and I know from experience that it can be a long road to replace bad habits.

What I am curious about: What were you trying when it finally happened?

Are you able to apply it at will, or does it have to be worked out on a passage by passage basis?

Thanks for any response.

#2

All technique is worked out on a passage by passage basis, that’s why it takes years. Think about it - if you’re playing, let’s say, three notes on one string and a fourth note on another next string, that fourth motion is going to be a little different. It has to be bigger, to move across the strings. Your hand or arm might even move a little too. And so on.

Over time, you cover so many of these little motion combinations that new phrases don’t feel like you have “work them out”, but that’s only because you already have, in terms of the component parts.

When you get to the end of the road, it may feel like you’re using one technique all the time, but that’s only because everything is memorized by that point.

2 Likes
#3

Thanks for the reply @Troy. This makes sense-after all it’s impossible to do something we’ve never done.

1 Like
#4

Keep in mind also that most double escape players don’t really make the same motion all the time. The fact that these motions are all tweaked on a pattern by pattern basis becomes clear when you film them up close and look at them. We do that in detail in the new Primer section on picking motion:

I think people get it in their minds that there is this one magic technique that’s going to automatically play all phrases, but that’s not really the way any guitar technique works. Yes, depending on the style of music you’re playing, you might want some way to be able to make downstroke and upstroke string changes with alternate picking. But you really don’t care which cocktail of motions get you there as long as you can play the phrases you want to play. The amount of work you have to do is probably pretty similar in the end game, and involves playing a wide variety of phrases and letting your hands hopefully figure out by feel which motions can work for those.

Obviously it can help to have some general broad knowledge of which form you’re using, like arm position and pick grip, and which general type of motion you want to create. But once you have that, I recommend just trying to play the phrases you want to play and see what you end up with. The Primer and the forum is here to help if you get stuck.

2 Likes
#5

My curiosity about cultivating a given picking technique comes from the fact the the motor learning-let-the-cards-fall-where-they-may approach of intuitively working out phrases has sort of failed for me, and I’m having to construct a way forward that doesn’t involve further injury.

Unfortunately, I can’t without injury. My intuitive way of playing is to string hop. Which retroactively could explain why my playing never felt “right”, or why I could never get a strong picking thing together.

I’ve worked with a teacher to replace bad motions at the piano with healthy ones. Left to my own devices at the piano, I came up with similarly inefficient ways to play that ultimately left me injured. The result a year of retraining is that I believe now that I can cultivate a healthy technique at the guitar. But also that hoping for the best probably isn’t going to work, given how “baked in” these bad habits are.

Edit: To be clear, I’m a Jazz Guitarist.

#6

Of course, you shouldn’t be using inefficient motions. I’m more referring to the desire to choose favorites among the good motions that do work, which we see a lot when it comes to double escape motion. People look at it like a menu and think very analytically, “I want that one”, i.e. because that’s the better one. Instead, I think you should go with whichever one works first. That’s the fastest route to good technique. You can always add more motions down the line. Because everything you learn to do well only helps you learn the next thing.

If you haven’t figured out any motion that you can do smoothly, feel free to link to a clip, we’re happy to take a look. Not wasting time on deads ends at the early stages is important.

#7

Since I came across CTC I’ve been working with different DSX/USX combinations. These, I can do smoothly with no pain.

However there is SO much straight ahead style playing that is un ergonomic to the guitar and that doesn’t suit these two approaches. I’m just trying to develop something flexible and pain free, so that I can play the way I want.

Also, I should read your responses very thoroughly instead of quickly responding. Thanks for the great advice, your work has addressed questions I didnt know I had.

#8

In the page I linked to, we look at Steve Morse, Molly Tuttle, and Olli Soikkeli who all at some level try to simplify their playing into these core motions at various points in phrases. They’re not doing this consciously, nor am I sure it’s really even possible to mix and match motions consciously at the level of individual pickstrokes at normal playing speeds. The only way to develop these techniques is at some level by feel.

You start with an arm position and motion that works, and built outward from there. Once you know what efficient motion feels like you’re no longer in any real danger of somehow lapsing into incorrect form or hurting yourself. So I wouldn’t worry about doing whatever you did in the past to cause injury.

This is all very theoretical and we would need to know more about what your actual technique looks like right now. But in general, unless you’re using a Gypsy picking style which is really kind of its own thing, most other base arm positions and primary motions can simply be expanded to include more motions over time to play any line you want.