In Chapter 9 of forearm rotation it refers to flexion of the wrist. It makes sense when in Chapter 8 it was described as useful to make it easier to reach the lower strings . But in Chapter 9 it says for tremolo etc. I tried it to see if it facilitates reaching the lower strings and I see that it does to a degree. Do you have to use this? And if so is it used while UPX and DPX on the lower strings or just UPX? I assume it doesnt matter as long as it is used to facilitate playing the lower strings better
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For this I would generally answer that it is an option you can consider, but you don’t “have” to do anything in guitar playing, because there are a million ways to achieve great picking 
Having knowledge of all the options hopefully helps us all to find our own way.
With a flexed wrist I personally find it easier to achieve USX. However, I know that Batio, for example, does a primary DSX motion with a flexed wrist. Of course, we can argue that Batio does not use the “wrist+forearm method” to generate the picking motion - his exact use of joints/muscle remains a little mystery as far as I know.
I’ll tag @Troy just in case I missed something, as I’m not super fluent with the forearm thing.
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The forearm-wrist technique only does USX. That’s it. There’s no need to wonder about downstroke string changes because this motion doesn’t do it! That’s why we only show examples with upstroke string changes, and why we only discuss downstroke sweeps.
Think of it like a language. The motions available in this language are like the sounds you can use to make words in your language. And the only motions available are pure alternate picking, switching strings via upstroke, or with a pullof where the last picked note is an upstroke. And also economy patterns like DDU, DDDU, etc. Anything you want to say in this language, those are the ingredients you have to use.
Re: whether you need to flex or not, are you asking about reaching the lower strings? Because we called one of the chapters “The Tracking Mystery” because of how tricky this was to look at. I just played the examples and didn’t look at the footage until later, so I didn’t know what I would see. I tried to explain this in the video as I was doing it. There are examples where my arm doesn’t appear to move at all, and I don’t appear to lift off the bridge at all, but I can reach all six strings. I think flexion-extension is the only way to do that, because I don’t know what other joint it could be otherwise. But notice, this is not the flexed form with the big gap underneath it. You can flex your wrist and still rest on the bridge, to create the effect I’m describing here.
Sorry for the confusion on the terminology, btw. I know we’ve buried everyone in acronyms. “DWPS” refers to the pickslant. “USX” refers to the motion. “UPX” doesn’t exist.
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Thanks guys. Yeah I have been trying to write out all the ingredients or core principals so I see the big picture of it all. I like Gambals economy approach where it includes all pick escapes and slants for sweep picking. I love how in one of the videos you say, “The ability to sweep through adjacent strings preceded by or followed by alternate picking of notes.” When I heard that, that was an AHA moment where I saw the big picture of it all. Regarding the USX I totally use the supination with the 9-3 escape with a slight flex in my wrist while still on the bridge. That flex and supination allows me to reach those lower strings.
Regarding Yngwie or Eric Johnson I notice they do alternate picking but with a focus on the downward pick slant which facilitates USX. Like I said I think I like Gambals system better because it seems to be universal. Troy, do you prefer the Economy of Motion versatile system or are you more of a Downward pick slant/USX or upward pick slant/DSX?
You’ve said this a couple times (I added in a quote from another thread) and I don’t quite understand. There’s a “Crosspicking with Forearm and Wrist” broadcast, as well as the entire Antigravity pack (edit: i.e., the “Reverse Batio”). The old “2WPS” paradigm, which (as I understood it, at least – this could be mistaken and I’d like to clear that up) was a forearm+wrist technique. Are you saying that escaped downstrokes in that paradigm are just a wrist motion tacked on to a primarily USX form?
(Edit 2: I don’t mean this as a “gotcha!” I’d just like to understand what I’m missing here )
No worries, I understand what you’re asking!
The answer the motion we teach in the “forearm wrist” section of the Primer and the one we teach in the “crosspicking with the wrist” lesson are not the same. They use different arm positions, different anchor points, and the actual motion is different. They are related, maybe like a fox is related to a dog, but they’re pretty different in function and feel. You could of course learn both over time, and switch between them if you like. But it’s stlll switching.
The reason I’m making this distinction is for clarity. You’re a regular and you know the material. People walking in for the first time don’t. Very often they come here having seen our YouTube stuff and they’re left with the impression (for which again I apologize!) that downward pickslanting is the pro-level technique that makes everything work. So what you do is you make the pick “look slanted” and now you can play fast scales and other typically virtuoso things. And of course that’s not really what’s going on. A USX motion only does an upstroke escape.
The way you get these other escapes is by changing the picking motion to some other motion. This often entails form changes as well. So strictly speaking, if you follow the lesson in the forearm-wrist section, you will learn how to do a USX-only motion. It’s a great motion! You can play lots of other stuff with it. You can learn other motions over time, but this is an important concept that the motion you learn there is for that language only.
These other motions run the gamut from kind of similar to not that similar. Just as an example, you can look at the kind of straight up USX motion we teach in the “forearm wrist” section of the Primer, and compare it to something like what we demonstrate in the “two way pickslanting” part of the Primer where we look at 3nps scale playing. Nominally, both of these motions involve some combination of forearm and wrist. But when you line them up back to back, the differences become apparent:
When you watch the “scale chunk” example in the wide camera shot, you can see how much less arm and more wrist there is. This motion is much closer to what we teach in the “wrist motion” section of the primer in terms of the arm setup, anchor points, and motion. Ironically, there is very little of what we used to call “two-way pickslanting”. It’s mainly the wrist just moving in opposing directions, with a tiny amount of forearm motion during inside picking. This is why we want to remove this section and replace it with something that is more clear, in simple language, about what is really going on and how someone would learn to do it.
I don’t mean to split hairs. I want people to learn. But I also don’t want to confuse the hell out of them in the process, and this is already a confusing subject. But if someone asks me how you get a downstroke escape by using form like what I’m using in the “Mixolydian Pickslant” example, my answer is, I don’t. Not really. If I need access to both escapes on a continuous basis, I would probably not use that form, and instead switch to something more like the “scale chunk” form, or something like what we teach in the “wrist motion” section.
Sorry for the confusion!
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Once more I’m blown away by the detailed reply, thanks!
It’s a bit hard to tell from some of those older clips how much rotation is going on, but I had actually noticed that it seemed much “wristier” than (as I remember) had been proposed.
Right, and that’s the problem. Rotating your forearm to create an alternate picking motion isn’t really doing “two way pickslanting”, at least not the way someone like Gambale does it, where the arm is not really rotating as part of the picking motion. He and other economy type players come the closest in spirit to what “two-way pickslanting” sounds like it means, i.e. changing your form, picking motion, and pick orientation so that you can do multiple continuous picking motions in that new escape motion / pickslant / sweep arrangement.
The thing we noticed during alternate picking, where you have a “primary” motion and then occasional and very brief appearances of a “helper” type motion — that’s a thing that definitely exists and that elite players do. But I think calling it “two way pickslanting” is really confusing because people start looking at the slant of the pick instead of looking at what the motion is they’re supposed to be making.
So we’ll need to teach this somehow, and we’ll probably also need to mention that we used to call it “2wps” and don’t any longer. What should we call it? I don’t know! Currently accepting suggestions…
I’d propose “USX+” and “DSX+”, or “UdX” and “DuX”, though I think the former pair is less prone to confusion. Particularly since the “helper” motions are different for each setup – it seems like primary-DSX folks tend to use forearm to get an escaped upstroke and primary-USX folks use something like a “wrist extension flick,” if I haven’t missed the mark.
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@Troy
Hi Troy I left a comment above and just wanted to make sure it doesnt get buried in the post. Been trying to piece things together and want to continue with some of your further insight. Here it is again.
Thanks guys. Yeah I have been trying to write out all the ingredients or core principals so I see the big picture of it all. I like Gambals economy approach where it includes all pick escapes and slants for sweep picking. I love how in one of the videos you say, “The ability to sweep through adjacent strings preceded by or followed by alternate picking of notes.” When I heard that, that was an AHA moment where I saw the big picture of it all. Regarding the USX I totally use the supination with the 9-3 escape with a slight flex in my wrist while still on the bridge. That flex and supination allows me to reach those lower strings.
Regarding Yngwie or Eric Johnson I notice they do alternate picking but with a focus on the downward pick slant which facilitates USX. Like I said I think I like Gambals system better because it seems to be universal. Troy, do you prefer the Economy of Motion versatile system or are you more of a Downward pick slant/USX or upward pick slant/DSX?
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Yep great insights. When it comes to wrist players I don’t know how different these motions really are though. I think it’s often a wrist-forearm kind of thing, like what we see when Andy Wood does it. And what do elbow players like Vinnie Moore do? Maybe looks a little more forearm to me and less wrist?
That’s why I think we need a generic term for primary motion + occasional helper motion. That seems to be how people use the term “two-way pickslanting” and why it seems to have stuck.
Sorry, got sidetracked! This is like asking, which is better, Spanish or English? English has more words. But certainly not all English speakers have bigger vocabularies or are better speakers than Spanish speakers. A Spanish speaker is not really at any kind of disadvantage in terms of learning to speak eloquently. They will just use different words.
Also, if you’re asking me (maybe you’re not!), I would totally not try writing out concepts as a way to learn these motions. For one thing, there aren’t that many concepts! You’ll be done with that in ten minutes. And two, there is no real thinking involved in learning these techniques. It’s hands-on, and done by feel.
The first step is to choose a motion that you can do well. Then you can try some basic phrases with it and get them smooth and synchronized. The simplest motions for this are the single escape motions. Even someone like Frank Gambale, who on paper has multiple ways of doing things, when you actually film his playing, only uses one motion for fast alternate picking lines. This is the motion:
So my best advice is to try all the motions and choose whichever one works best right now. In other words, choose whichever one is fast and smooth and actually does the escape you want it to do. That is the fastest way to proceed. Why bang your head against the way trying to learn one motion when another already works?
Keep us posted.
Thanks Troy. I guess i have always been a musician that likes principals and the big picture even with music theory and teaching music. Here is my “truth” with what I found works for me
- I rely more on the wrist flick 8-2 motion for DSX with a pronation orientation (and with the pick more on the edge of my index with my thumb wrapped around a little bit)… and for USX I use a 9-3 wrist motion with a supination/slightly flexed wrist
** I dont worry about pick slant since I can do these escapes from a neutral point and plus the wrist and forearm motions accommodate these escapes
- For me I realized that pick slant become predominant when sweeping. Downward pick slant for downward sweeping and upward pick slant for upwards sweeping
The simplicity of these two approaches acts kind of like a touchstone for me when learning the other approaches throughout your website. Great stuff indeed!
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“Intermittent double-escape”?
USX with intermittent double-escape, versus DSX with intermittent double-escape?
Beyond that, I think the language of “primary motion” and “helper motion” you used in the reply I partially quoted above is useful and highly generalizeable.
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When you mention the Escape and then intermittent is that synonymous with the former being the dominant primary motion and the intermittent double escape being the helper motion? Because double escape is essentially both USX and DSX, right? And when I hear intermittent it seems secondary or not continuous
The defining aspect of what has formerly been called “2WPS” is that it doesn’t include full time “double escape” but has occasional “double escapes” mixed into technique that is mostly “single escaped” (either DSX, or USX).
If we take Batio as an example, the majority of his alternate picked notes fit what CTC calls DSX. But there are some lines where rather than having the customary “trapped” upstroke of DSX on all the upstrokes, he will have a small number of upstrokes that escape, while still having all the downstrokes escape, and having the vast majority of upstrokes be trapped.
Conceptually, it’s a little like having a key signature in sheet music, where any notes that don’t fit the key signature need to be specially marked as “accidentals”. I’m going to guess that using the word “accidental” with respect to a picking approach would create even more confusion. “DSX plus accidental escaped upstrokes” would probably increase confusion.
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Yeah I like that explanation. Good job at clarifying! I was thinking that’s what ya meant but you used the right semantics to drive the point home. Its a trip how there are core elements to these things like USX vs DSX and the respective forearm-wrist-edge picking-pick grip motion mechanics. I never would have figured this stuff out without Crack the Code. Ive been trying to learn both USX and DSX with the hopes of eventually subconsciously doing both but as you pointed out I think there will still be a dominant inclination to one and an “accidental” usage of the other. Thanks for making me think!
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Upstroke Escape (every upstroke escapes), Downstroke Escape (every downstroke escapes), Double Escape (when every pickstroke escapes), Mixed Escape (some downstrokes and some upstrokes escape as required)
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Nice! Simple and to the point
It would be kinda cool to have a quick reference list of the criteria that call upon and craft the usage of DSX and USX, Double Escape and Mixed Escape based on the players and their habits. Maybe too much? Perhaps. But this is what I mean:
DSX Predominance: In the Gambale video Chapter 3, it is mentioned that he primarily uses a Downstroke Escape because of the optimization of a two or even note sequence on one string that ends on a downstroke. And at 13:21 on that video its mentioned that the simplest and fastest alternate picking motions all requires an even number of notes per string. This confused me a bit. Does this mean that DSX motion is ideal for alternate picking in general? Because I would think that the ideal pick escape is simply based on whether the last note is an upstroke (USX) or downstroke (DSX).
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