Hanky Pooh Picking Tooh

holy S%$# that was funny!

I nearly spit my coffee on to my work monitor, thanks!

did you put aluminum on your teeth for this??

1 Like

Missed half of the ‘lyrics’ but still laughing :joy:

1 Like

That’s exactly one of the challenges here, because…

…you can’t always feel stringhopping when it’s blended in with more efficient movements. One jumpy movement every six notes in a roll is not as noticeable until you figure out how to do the pattern without any jumpy movements at all, and can compare both methods. I think this is one reason why players hurt themselves while piling on practice hours, because they don’t feel the strain building up until it’s too late.

I welcome all sorts of experimentation but just as another data point, I never do this. I mostly just try to make the picking movement I’m trying to learn, usually one that avoids hitting the strings I don’t want to hit. It doesn’t always work, and the camera helps reveal when that’s happening. Swiping and other common picking errors are sometimes very difficult to hear and feel, especially when you’re playing with gain.

The idea behind going as fast as you can while “trying” to do the target movement is that it can help show you whether or not you actually are doing that movement. Or it can help show you some other movement that your hands figure out on their own which is similar, but more streamlined. Like, you might do something that sounds sloppy to you, but then you film it and you’re like, hey that actually looks better than it sounds. And then you can take the parts of that phrase where the movement looks good and try to become more deliberately aware of them.

The whole aspect of your technique changing as you speed up, it’s just very hard to know whether that is happening or more likely how it is happening, until you actually do it and film it. Tons of value to be mined there.

not sure if I follow here, which probably means I got something wrong, as always :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

If I have a stringhop in a pattern, shouldn’t that slow me down noticable?
The idea was that we always have tremolo (using the same mechanic) on a single string as a reference, even when combining different mechanics, a single string should give me an idea of how it SHOULD feel without hopping by using the ‘weakest’ mechanic.
Sure there are scenarios (like string skipping) where special investigation is needed, but to find the general motion that’s basically what’s in my head.

I agree that for complex patterns it can be hard or impossible to spot a single stroke, and sure without reference a feeling can’t be qualified.
I also agree that (metronome-) exercises are not the choice to build up tempo or develop a motion (but great for accuracy and keeping tempo).

What confuses me is that missing reference.

1 Like

This is exactly the reason I keep posting picking videos. But I’m not really getting specifics on how to improve my picking. I guess what I’m expected to do here is maintain DWPS perfectly unless I have to rotate. Issues I have with that is I hardly ever write music where I need to pick that way. I’m not going to put Gilbert sixes into a song. I did that Solo exercise in Thriller just for the hell of it, but it totally didn’t fit. I don’t like the sound of Gilbert 6s.

My purposely swipe comment on crossing adjustment isn’t a good idea, I didn’t try it.

Not in a real world way that would always be obvious. The best of the best, Martin Miller types, can do these movements reliably at 165bpm or so. You can easily stumble through something at 140bpm with some inefficiency and just think you’re not that good at it yet. It’s just not obvious.

In the first 10 secs it seems to me you do it the way Troy did it in the short tutorial (wit hfew exceptions).
You keep DWPS (all the time) and use wrist extension on the upstrokes.
If so there’s no rotation, it looks as if but it’s caused by wrist extension.
It’s the door knocker, just controlled only for downstrokes.

Rotating was my first try to crosspick too, I dropped that pretty fast, I’m pretty slow in rotating the system and just didn’t feel good.

1 Like

This doesn’t really strike me as your problem - your movements in these clips look fine to me. If pure alternate like this represents what you’re currently working on then I would say it looks good and keep doing what you’re doing. I’ve suggested doing the “fast but sloppy” test and filming it in slow motion to see what we can glean. I would also suggest writing a bunch of phrases you really want in your vocabulary. That’s what lead to this video:

I didn’t sit down to specifically to work on a movement. It was also just tooling around with cool major add2 ideas, because it’s a sound I have always liked, and sort of fell into practicing them while also experimenting with these movements. So that’s one approach - write some lines, try them with the movements you are currently working on, and see what happens. I had been tooling around with these ideas, on and off, for maybe a couple years to get to this point. In terms of pure alternate, you’re already ahead of where I was when I started. But there is a certain amount of patience involved, over stretches of time, six months, a year, if you want to bake in a completely new style and smooth out the movements.

If I wanted faster results, just to get the lines in any way possible, a great deal of this could be done with this strategy:

https://troygrady.com/channels/talking-the-code/combining-alternate-picking-and-sweeping/

For players who have decent fundamentals and just need better string switching for more complicated phrases, a two-way sweeping solution is probably the fastest way to get the most results, provided the line fits. There are always phrases you can find that won’t. Or won’t fit it as well as a pure alternate solution. But they are generally specific cases. But then you choose a different one. A massive number of possibilities becomes available when you do two-way pickslanting with two-way sweeping.

Finally, don’t neglect the humble one-way pickslant. Dwps and uwps don’t have a ‘sound’, per se. They’re just movements. If you write a line and it can be done with 1wps, then you win. Collect $200 and pass go.

For me, these are all tools. If I didn’t have to teach this stuff, and constantly force myself to start over again learning new movements I am bad at, I would basically sit around all day writing phrases and lines, using whichever movements I was best at.

I’m just throwing out ideas here. I’m not 100% clear on what your musical goals are but you have plenty of fundamental mechanical chops and also plenty of musical knowledge. Any of these pathways could work well for you.

3 Likes

Here’s the thing man, I just want to pick all the notes I’m playing. Hahahahaha. I’m not going to design everything I play musically around even notes per string. I HAVE to use 2WPS in one way or another. I’ve got 2way economy picking down pretty well. I’m real insecure with alternate picking.

Probably we mean the same thing. If have the feeling that I play something worse than other things (not good at it) I doublecheck if there’s something wrong or unclear motionwise.
It’s not that I always find an answer, or even if that I have an option to fix the problem.
But then (and this did CtC for me, so thanks Troy), I wouldn’t practice it, i would have done in the past.
Now I have a better understanding and a great comunity to figure out if practicing it makes sense or is a waste of time.

1 Like

Lmao, awesome clip man. I probably need to build a magnet huh?

I think you should look at this less about the technique, and more about the line. Write the line, then choose the technique that fits it. What’s the line you want to play? Serious question, give me an example. We’ll go from there.

1 Like

I guess my main thing is sometimes I have to do stuff that’s like cross picking, and I want to be able to do that faster.

So then what’s the reason to alternate?
At that point it should happen rarely (if at all), that you need pure alternating, unless it’s just to be able to do it.
If you feel good with economy I’d rather practice passages you can’t play with economy (if you find some), instead of practicing technique for technique.

EDIT: Troy was faster … does this man do anything slowly?

2 Likes

What’s the line? I think my biggest problem in helping you or anyone is understanding specifically what it is you want to play. If you are open to doing whatever technique works for the line, then there is almost always a way to get the line.

2 Likes

Thank you for all the help guys, I’m gonna keep practicing. If I come up with a line I just can’t execute I’ll holler. my main concern right now is not burning in any hops, but you say it looks okay…

@theGuyFromGermany I stay economy most of the time. Alternate turnarounds.

Thank you guys, I’m hitting the hay. I’ll see you tomorrow. :bear::guitar:

1 Like

“The new single Booboo Da Boo is sure to take the world by storm.” “Not since Mumbles have we seen such amazing song writing.”

-A chimp in a jungle somewhere
:monkey_face:

Well, @troy this is my first attempt at 902. lmao. Looks like I went UWPS. I’ll keep messing with it. I haven’t had a lot of time to practice lately.

1 Like

That looks pretty good! Nice job. This looks like the supinated version to me. But it’s the ski slope test that really determines whether you’re doing the supinated or pronated version, not the visible orientation of the pick. Just locate the two bones. If the ulna is closer to the body/strings than the radius, then you’re using the supinated version. If you’ve already done that then no problem - both of these setups are equally capable picking-wise. Though muting may be more available with the supinated than the pronated setup.

1 Like