First video, are my wrist motions OK?

Playing Technique
#1

Hi All,
First video here. Warning, I severed tendon in my right index finger long ago and had to switch to using middle finger…so this ain’t pretty. The APE in my name stands for Always Pointing East.

The videos are same thing just different angles. I start with USX, then rather clumsily switch to DSX, then rather clumsily switch back. This is part of my issue, fluidly switching between slants/escapes and ‘planning ahead on the fly’ which seems impossible. Also, my pickslants are off kilter. Is it OK for my upward slant to be almost flat and downward slant to be more pronounced?

Also worth noting, alternate picking is relatively new to me after playing for many years. It seemed completely wrong to jump over a string only to pluck it in the opposite direction, your pick was RIGHT THERE! Lol. So I always economy picked, playing ascending/descending 3nps scales are easy/breezy. But I can’t play Paul Gilbert’s 4-note drill for shit.

A few facts, questions, and observations:
Downward pickslant is normal and home for me.
Downstrokes are much more of a natural motion.
Upstrokes are comparitively weak and uncomforable, regardless of slant. You can even hear this in video, the downstroke dominates.
Just noticed that I would never use rest stroke on an upstroke but I routinely do rest strokes after downstrokes.
Previously I never changed pickslant, so the DSX motion is new to me.
I naturally have a slight wrist rotation, how much of that can I get away with?

2 Likes
#2

Hi @APEfist, thanks for posting! It seems that we’d need a Flickr account to view those, would you be able to upload them e.g. to Youtube as unlisted videos (i.e. only available to those with the link)? These will embed automatically on the forum. Also Vimeo works, I think.

By the way, your setup looks great from the image, something in between Steve Morse and Albert Lee (i.e. supinated). Do you agree @Troy?

This shouldn’t be necessary! Have you seen the Albert Lee “amazing wrist” lesson (and also all the other Albert Lee material)? He can achieve both escapes with a ‘dwps’ setup, and you should be able to do the same from the setup you are showing here.

1 Like
#3

Thanks Tommo! I changed the videos. I’ve been trying to learn Sails of Charon and was trying a double-escape motion for it. Here’s a video of the first run in the solo, towards the end the V gets deeper but this is a new motion too. Friggin Uli! That U-D-hammer/pull thing he’s doing is too cool!

#4

This all looks good to me - I wouldn’t know what to “correct”! What do you feel is the problem?

#5

I think my main goal in this first thread is just to make sure the motions I’m using are OK before I continue practicing them. My normal pickslant is decidedly downward which is why my DSX motion is almost flat. I had to ‘rotate’ my downward pickslant to be more flat just to even consider switching to a different escape. I’m trying to make my pick motions more shallow but old habits are hard to break.

Also on the Sails solo run, that last little ascending run is WAY harder than a similar descending run but that’s probably just syncopation issues.

One last issue that stumps me: because I economy picked for about 35 years I still fall back into that when it gets challenging. But economy picking requires the exact opposite ‘escape motion’ as alternate picking for a given string change. As a result, my wrist is flopping all over trying to figure out which way to escape and this leads to excessive string hopping. It’s a mess!