How many pick strokes does it take to switch pickslant?

[ItsGiusto]

I’ve been trying to learn how to do TWPS for the past half year or so. Despite my efforts, I’m still plateauing in speed and coordination, and I’m not sure if maybe my motions are too complicated and incorrect to scale up in speed.

I’m not sure of the correct technique to transition from upward to downward, or vice versa. I’ve been trying to do it over the course of 3 pick strokes, like this, for example when you switch from DWPS to UWPS on the 3rd string:

1. Pick down into the string with a DWPS, so the pick is caught between the 3rd and 2nd string
2. Instead of picking out of the string, pick directly up, so the pick is now caught between the 3rd and 4th string, with an UWPS
3. Pick up, out of the string, still with an UWPS

Does this sound correct? Or should I be doing this more succinctly, in a singular rotation stroke, right before I need to change strings? As in the same 3 pick strokes would be as follows:

1. Pick down into the string with a DWPS, so the pick is caught between the 3rd and 2nd string
2. Pick up, out of the string still with a DWPS
3. Swoop into and out of the 3rd string, almost like crosspicking, and rotate your arm in the same motion, ending up in an UWPS

Like I said above, I feel like something is getting me caught in speed, and it might be this 3-stroke rotation mechanic. It could also just be that I’m a natural DWPS and I’m simply not used to, or cut out for, playing UWPS at all.

[tommo]

It seems that a lot of top players wait until the last available note to do the pickslanting switch (Batio, Di Meola, Moore, etc.) - so this would be your second method I think. This approach seems to work for me as well.

[Troy]

Does this sound correct? Or should I be doing this more succinctly, in a singular rotation stroke, right before I need to change strings?

Both work! Andy Wood and Batio are the switch / switch-back variety. This is the classic “Primary Pickslant” method:

Pickslanting Primer question (Primary Pickslant)

I think this has been discussed before, but I’ve lost track of where it was discussed. Looking at 2:36 of the clip below: https://troygrady.com/primer/two-way-pickslanting/michael-angelo-batio/chapter-7-beyond-the-octave/ @Troy is demonstrating the application of 2wps to a 3-note-per-string descending scale. We see a few chunks slowed down, with narration and annotation: Down-Up-Rotate Up-Down-Rotate But when I look at the actual movement in the video, I would swear I’m seeing: Down-Up-R…

[kgk]

For technique number one of two, in the most demanding case (least time) you have to switch in 3 strokes, and the only option is the middle stroke.

The next case is 5 strokes per string, and here one could switch on the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th, or perhaps even more slowly over several. I guess one could look at it like this:

5 = 3 + 2 (switch on 2nd)
5 = 2 + 3 (switch on 4th)

For technique number two, it seems switching can be done on any stroke, including the last, and it would have one big advantage, that one need not know in advance how many notes he or she would play on a given string. But regarding speed, I have no idea.

[kgk]

I took it for granted that 2WPS had to look like OP’s technique number one due to the “need” for simple motions.

But OP’s technique two is clever: Perhaps the 3 strokes can be viewed as 2 that keep the pick slant and 1 that looks like cross-picking, hence

3 = 2 + 1.

Indeed, cross picking starts with DWPS and ends with UWPS, right? Hmm… this almost makes it look like CP is the fundamental technique and then one can drop into DWPS or UWPS in simple cases when the number of notes on a string is even.

Food for thought.