I’m trying to apply figure out what direction to take with my practice routine, and of course, I want to be as efficient and effective as I can be to develop as quickly as possible.
Have you found any hard and fast rules about when and how to apply uwps or dwps?
For example, as I’m practicing the pentatonic minor scale I kinda feel like I should dwps ascending, and uwps descending.
Is it all just a matter of personal preference, and even if so, what have you found that has worked for you?
You should watch the pick slanting primer. This is a bigger topic than one might think and the primer gets to the point fairly quickly compared to the more in depth material
Hi @AGTG, I posted a few weeks ago this quick reference chart, hopefully it’s helpful:
The concept here is that it’s not so much about which lick, scale, or direction, but rather note to note transitions. For some scales in one direction (all up or all down) the problem solving can be relatively simple, but in ‘real’ music in my opinion it makes sense to figure out slanting solutions for each individual string to string or note to note transition. You’ll find that there are usually several different ways to skin the cat, and I think the most educational and valuable process is to experiment with which ways seem easiest to you and also produce the sound that you want. But again, you have to look at each individual string change. In some cases you might find you can do the whole ‘lick’ with one slant, in others it may require a change, in others you may want to refingering or relocate the pitches to require fewer slant changes, etc. Get my drift?
If you’d like, one thing I personally enjoy doing and I think others here like as well, you can post a screenshot of a lick or excerpt you’re trying and we can discuss different slants and pickstrokes throughout, and likely fingering changes as well.
For example I’m not a master of two way pick slanting, and my cross picking really sucks, but I’ve gotten clever at using CTC-inspired concepts to re-arrange licks and riffs to make them playable at fast tempos for myself, because I think I understand the string changing and slant principles well.
I actually did go through that a few weeks ago. I’ve mostly been practicing two way pickslanting for descending 3nps scales with it, and inversely economy picking while ascending.
That’s coming along, but I’m trying to apply the dwps/uwps in other contexts and was wondering if anyone had come across any scale patterns that benefit from one approach or another.
I printed this out, and I do find it helpful.
But yeah, I’m totally seeing how becoming this flexible, even on the fly, with transitioning to whatever is needed for the number of notes per string, the shape of the chunk, whatever, will be the ultimate goal.
I want to get there, and I can see how two way pickslanting has helped drive out bad habits to become more efficient.
I guess maybe I should spend some time coming up with chunks that utilize these concepts for greatest efficiency and then extrapolate them out over full scales to extend them, kinda like what Troy did with the two way pickslanting video tutorial.
Personally what i would recommend is rather than spend a lot of time working on scales and arpeggios and picking up speed with them, I would first ask: what do you want to sound like in your improv or compositions? Or if you’re just covering licks (don’t know you or what your playing goals/style is) then what’s happening in those licks/riffs?
Try to find musical material - not just scales up and down - that you would actually use, that you want to play faster than you can currently play, and problem solve the mechanical issues we’re talking about here. While you do this definitely listen for timbre and tone and articulation and try to get what you want out of it.
This is exactly what I needed to hear. I don’t listen to a lot of shred players anymore. I need some creative input. Since I like to play scales, and Vinnie Moore was one of my favorites back in the day and he likes to traverse scales, I just looked up some Vinnie Moore video tutorials and found some awesome repeating patterns from scales I can make my own.
thanks for the advice
You’re welcome! Additionally, it’s great to try to compose your OWN riffs (even ‘pre-improv’ so to speak) and then see if you can work out ways to play them efficiently. You might come up with some cool stuff!
Excellent advice above. I’ve spent a lot of time… Like over 30 years, playing dead end scales. You might be interested in some of the discussions in the theory forum
Learn two way pick slanting. That will give you the freedom to play any rock/metal lick. Why limit yourself to DWPS or UWPS when two way pick slanting gives you the best of both?
Ok, now I see the purpose of this chart. Interesting… What does the “X” in the swipe represent?
That has been my focus the last few weeks, but I’ve only really applied it to descending patterns because I have naturally gravitated towards economy movements ascending.
Do you think it’s worth mastering in both directions if I can already economy pick faster currently when ascending?
Great!
That is the string that gets muted. So you’d play the fretted note and muted string at the same time as indicated. Make sense?
It’s really up to you and what your needs are to be able to perform everything you want to be able to play. If it were up to me, then I’d say this: I can currently economy pick as fast and maybe slightly faster ascending a scale then alternate picking the scale.It’s only a slight difference in speed but to me it sounds a little cleaner as well. There are however, some licks which aren’t as well suited for fast economy picking as 3 note per string scales are, so yes, for the sake of having the freedom to play those licks fast if I so desire, I would learn two way pick slanting regardless of how good my economy picking is.
Ok, I appreciate everyone’s input.
I came across a CTC youtube video that had a comment from someone who totally was in a place to see exactly how to practically apply slanting in simple terms, and here is what he said:
“Use downward pickslanting if you want to change a string after an upstroke. Use upward pickslanting if you want to change strings after a downstroke. If you want to use dwps or uwps you just manipulate the notes per string to end on a desired pickstroke by using hammer-ons, pull-offs, or slides.”
The commenter was Andreas Nasman, so credit to him. Troy commended his insight as accurate, too.
The video can be found here: