How does it feel to upstroke escape fast? Clockface analogy

Playing Technique
#1

I am looking at the Malmsteen seminar lessons and something I have noticed on the magnet angles is that when you pick using DWPS only, you hand lifts a little bit on the upstroke thus helping to escape from the plane of the strings.

I am wondering how does it feel that when you’re playing fast because when I’m trying to do it at a fast tempo I feel like that lifting thing slows me down and adds tension to my hand so I think maybe I am doing the movement wrong.

And therefore I was wondering too what type of movement are you doing if we used the clock face analogy, is it like 1003 a little? So that’s why your hand looks like it’s is lifting? Or do you feel it more like it 903 but the supinated setup is making all work.

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#2

If I understand correctly, if you are ‘DWPS’. it doesnt just mean that the pick is pointing downward slightly. it means that the actual pickstroke is angled too. The picking motion is NOT parallel to the pickguard etc. It is angled along with the pickslant so that downstrokes move closer to the guitar and upstrokes move slightly away

In other words you could pick in a very straight pick path with no extra “lifting” movement and youd still escape on the upstroke. The upstroke escaping is built into the dwps.

OR, you could slant your pick downward but still manage to incorrectly pick exactly flat and parallel to the pickguard anyway and then you would NOT be escaping lol, youd still be stuck.

I personally have a little better feel for it using uwps and escaping on downstrokes. When I do it right it feels like I do nothing at all, yet I clear the next string.

if you watch some of the cross picking guys like M Miller and Andy Wood, they often have a more “smile” shaped pickstroke for lots of their playing, but then when they lock into their fastest licks you can see the pickstroke flatten out a bit more.

those of us who are coming out of the stringhopping world might have some “lift” still baked in, even if we are trying to just pick flat

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#3

I might stiil be trying to stringhop.

But when I see the slow motion clips of troy using DWPS in the volcano seminar It seems like he’s lifting the hand somehow.

#4

Sorry I was going to put the link to the video I was talking about since the beginning of the post, but I forgot.

When Troy escapes with the upstroke it looks like some kind of lifting movement for the whole hand. Or maybe it’s just my idea.

#5

is there any specific time in the vid where u see him lifting?

#6

I have a similar problem with DWPS. I recently learned to do 2WPS using UWPS as my base and it works when I change the slant for just one note, but keeping constant DWPS is impossible for me. My dwps strokes are too flat to escape, so I started looking for solution by watching multiple videos of dwps players and I noticed they always add forearm rotation to upstrokes. This might be the crucial difference between those who can dwps and those who can’t.

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