Been playing for 30 years-- but never able to pull off EJ/Eric Gales ripping pentatonics. That is my goal- as you can hear it’s very sloppy- looks like my picking is subtlety downward in slant, but whacking all sorts of strings! Any recs on how to improve?
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Hi! I changed the title of your thread to your username, which will make it easier for people to find / remember. I put the YouTube link in the body of your post. When you paste a YouTube link directly into a post, on its own line, the forum will expand it into a video so people can just click to watch it right there without going to a new page.
No biggie, just an FYI!
In general this actually looks pretty good. You are using dwps correctly in the high speed part of the clip, and you appear to be making the string changes happen. You just need a little more hand synchronization.
Also, I think you can see in the slower portion of the clip that you are using a different picking motion more similar to what we have been calling “crosspicking”. Your faster section is an example of what we think of as a pickslanting technique, not a crosspicking technique. A lot of players who use a crosspicking type motion when they play at moderate speeds sometimes don’t have the pickslanting motion for playing faster, so they hit a speed limit. In your case, you don’t seem to have that problem. You change the picking motion. So nothing wrong with this - you can use two different motions if you like. I’m just pointing this out because if you notice that things feel different between these different speeds, and you don’t know why, this can be confusing when you’re trying to standardize and clean up those motions.
Have you watched any of our tutorial material yet? The Pickslanting Primer and Cascade Seminar are the places where we discuss pentatonic playing. The sections of the Primer on chunking and building speed with the six note pattern might also be of use in ironing our your hand synchronization issues. You can find those in the Yngwie section of the Primer. Then the EJ Primer and Cascade seminar for the actual pentatonics. Mixing in a little of these two activities help each other out, like weights and running.
If you’re not yet totally clear on what picking motion you are using, I recommend watching the “Introduction to Picking Motion” video where we discuss those. Again, being aware can help reduce the confusion when you’re trying to standardize your motions.
The “Getting Started” guide has links to all this stuff, as well as a little checklist for working through it. You can find that right there:
Good work so far, you’re already farther along than most, and you’ll have this in no time with a little more work.
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Thanks for the feedback Troy!!
This slow mo is so elucidating- I see the origin of my slop! I’m hitting all sorts of extra strings when not intending to. When I hit the up stroke on the B string I accidentally hit the G string - more than just a rest stroke!
I will continue practing the 6 note Yngwie pattern, EJ Chunking, and Paul Gilbert licks- but I’m not sure how to systematically improve and not just sloppily continue bad habits.
I feel like I cross from DWPS to UWPS ok- but both ways I’m still not playing as clean as I’d like
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Have you watched the introduction to picking motion broadcast? Which motion mechanic are you attempting to use? I know what I’m seeing, but what I’m asking is what you are attempting.
Pickslanting is a type of motion, and you choose it, it doesn’t choose you. For a lot of us, we just did “whatever”. We were fed advice that everyone plays differently, so whatever we do is “ok” because it’s what’s “natural” for us. As a result, we never learned to control our motions deliberately, and we never learned other motions if we wanted.
To some extent, you will always employ a little of this intuitive trial and error, in the sense of going for it and seeing what your hands do. This is a good way to get things started if you don’t know where to start. But where the actual work of practice comes in is learning to identify, by feel, exactly when certain motions are happening, and then learning to repeat those motions intentionally. The filming you are doing here is a good start because you now have a testing method which is really clear.
I do this type of work in short increments of a few minutes, trying to perform a specific motion, and testing to see if I’m doing it. There’s some good discussion of this process in this thread here, including an excerpt from a recent subscriber broadcast where we discussed self-teaching motions:
Again, in general, attempt something, make changes, test again, and so on. If you’re just repeating the same motion then yes, you are correct, you’ll just be making the old motions permaent.
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The motion mechanic I’m attempting is DWPS- my forearm is slightly supinated, my thenar eminence is on the bridge- and I recognize I have to flex at the elbow and even abduct my shoulder a little to get to the bass strings… that being said, when I go to a two note per string pattern, which I find WAY more challenging than 3 or 6 note per string pattern, I seem to pronate and play with UWPS to access the bass strings. Bottom line- my single string lines ala Yngwie feel smooth and are fast enough for me. The two note per string lines are lagging behind. Practice those chunks?
To me, your last video looks more like cross picking than the one way DWPS you use in the fast playing in the first video. The picking motion has a swing to it and if the motion were just a little bigger, it seems that the down strokes also would clear the strings.
I have no value judgement about this, just thought I’d share my observations.
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Sorry, by motion mechanic I mean wrist, elbow, forearm, etc. Are you shooting for lightly supinated dwps wrist? Have you watched the Intro to Picking Motion Broadcast? I’m just trying to get a sense of what stuff of ours you have seen, because it helps me understand how well we’re doing in getting the message across - and where we need to go next.
Good observation. In general, when some aspect of form changes mid-phrase, that’s usually an indication that the motion itself is not totally learned and habituated. For sure, you can have things habituated on one type of phrase, and not on another. And that may be what is happening here in terms of the 2nps phrases versus single-string phrases. Some footage of the Yngwie stuff, in regular speed and slow motion, may clarify. If you see similar variation there over a couple different trials at different speeds, then that would imply that the motion mechanic isn’t completely baked there either.
This is all super normal, and a lot of people are in your shoes. It’s not like you learn a movement and instantly have it on all phrases. Every picking situation is to some extent memorized, even if it doesn’t eventually feel like it when it becomes fully chunked. So the final leg of the learning process is a long tail of finding all the picking sequences you are likely to need in regular playing, and making them all smooth and consistent. Even fingering affects this, because different fingerings “feel” different, and that can throw you off. So you sometimes end up re-learning a little of the same picking motions with a different left hand. Not completely from scratch, but a little.
The process for doing this is still the same: attempting to make a movement, verifying that you did it, if so then trying to reproduce it by feel, if not then changing something and trying again - and so on. The things you can change are numerous - anything from the some aspect of the phrase itself to some aspect of your form, to gear - even different guitars can help shuffle the deck.
I would first see where your Yngwie stuff is at and then go from there. If that checks out, then try other multi-note-per-string scalar phrases and see what they look like. You don’t need to go directly to 2nps phrases. You can also try things that are more similar to things that are already working. The more stuff you can get, the more other stuff you will get. Eventually, you surround and conquer all the phrases you want to play that don’t look the way you want, making them consistent to the motion you are attempting with trials and testing.
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Here is my single string lines fast and slow
I’ll be a monkeys uncle- the slo mo looks like I’m doing UWPS! And I thought I was a DWPSer!
Troy, to be honest I haven’t been able to get through all of the initial 2 hour video, nor complete the subsequent wrist motion video. This is not meant to be insulting by any means- You have done more for my playing and others than anyone else! (I even tried the online lessons with Paul Gilbert – they were entertaining but not extremely valuable for improving picking technique which was my goal).
But the format of watching the video (it’s more than a video- it’s a movie!), with guitar in hand, leads to mindless noodling on my part, and my tiny squirrel brain goes elsewhere!
I’ve really enjoyed the tabbed picking examples with video- that format is very user friendly to me.
Again, thanks for the comments - they are extremely helpful.
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Yes your slow speed technique is a 902 style crosspick, and your fast technique in this clip is elbow, which is as far as we know, is always uwps. That’s the only way the elbow works.
Honestly the elbow technique looks good - I’d keep working on that, maybe with some of the great tips @Bill_hall has posted recently.
In general we are working on more chapterized versions of the mechanics stuff. However it’’s going to be very similar to watching those lessons in sections, which you can do now, because they are already delivered one subject at a time. If you are unclear about any of the movements you are making I recommend taking those 15 mins at a clip or whatever works for you. Otherwise you are flying blind. Especially with the crosspick stuff since you are already doing it and you just need more awareness.
It’s all linked in the getting started guide at troygrady.com/start.
Otherwise again you are doing fine here and you seem to have a good command of the concepts and how to evaluate your results with video.
Going back and trying to learn about the 902 crosspick- at around 33:10 in Crosspicking with the Wrist- we see Andy’s slow mo example- and you say it’s UWPS- but to me the angle of his pick slant and supinated forearm suggest he’s actually DWPS. Are my eyes deceiving me?
Also, I had an idea for a potentially helpful summary video to help us newbies figure out our motion mechanics … what if you were to blast through and just physically demonstrate all of the different mechanics out there. Minimal explanation- just a way for us to watch, emulate, and see what feels the most comfortable and smooth.
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UWPS means trapped upstroke, escaped downstroke - those are its only requirements. It can be achieved with either a supinated or pronated arm position, with supinated probably being the most common. This is the whole crux of the clock face method and was a big step forward for us in understanding how the wrist works.
What the pick looks like in space is a separate thing and later on in the tutorial I show you how to dial out the pickslant with your grip.
We’ve tried this type of “all visual” tutorial before and it mostly doesn’t work. Nobody knows what they’re supposed to be looking at unless you tell them. I wouldn’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at, or I would have been doing all these motions years ago.
The second problem is that there isn’t just one version of a thing, especially when you get to multi-joint motions like forearm and wrist blends. Understanding the concept is the best way to know what is going on when you look down at your hand.
I understand you’re looking for a more compartmentalized presentation, and we will get there. It will be as pithy as we can make it, but some amount of explanation will always be necessary to give you the shortest path to doing something.
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