First Post Can You Identify What I'm doing

Technique Critique
#1

Greetings All Pickers!
My name is Jen and I live in the SF Bay Area.
I’ve always had a guitar around, but mostly just been a singer/songwriter (aka acoustic strummer).
I really want to play fast country and jazz runs and recently found this wonderful resource.
I can’t determine if I’m an Al Dimeola (wrist) or a forearm (because I feel my palms are just off the bridge).
Any observations would be extremely helpful!
And THANKS Troy and Crew for putting so much effort into this website!

3 Likes
I don't wear Picks
#2

I would guess you’re a mix of wrist and elbow!

3 Likes
#3

Agree with @Pepepicks66! Hard to see from this angle but I wouldn’t be suprised if your motion was downstroke escape (DSX).

This means that it should be easy for you to switch strings after a downstroke. A classic exercise that would work with that is the following:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------etc.--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------5-6-7-5-6-7--------------------------------------------------------------
--------5-6-7-5-6-7------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-5-6-7----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 D U D  U etc..

Give it a try and let us know :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#4

For me it looks like a mixture of elbow and wrist.

1 Like
#5

Thanks for the input.
I watched the video with Steve Morse and I’ve had some wrist issues in the past so it makes sense that this seems to work for me.
Without overthinking things this early on, I do tend to do a lot hammer on’s lead playing from low to high and more picking from high string to low :thinking: