How much escape? vs. How much lateral movement?

Playing Technique
#1

I wondered if any of you have come up with an optimal distance for each? (I know this is subjective)

This is one area where I have really drastically changed over the last few years.

I initially didn’t have much of either. But when I tried to develop my 2NPS form, I started escaping a lot more, close to a centimeter. But now I seem to be doing less and less escape, but more lateral movement to help overcome my weaknesses with outside transfers. My lateral movement now extends all the way to the adjacent strings. But now, my escape is barely anything.

pick-movement

2 Likes
#2

All you need is enough not to hit the adjacent string. Any more than that reduces efficiency. Your body will likely try to reduce excessive escape if you’re not getting any performance benefit from it, so I’m not surprised you’ve found it changing over time.

#3

I have also noticed during certain things for example 2nps pent ascending in 4s my escape is very
Pronounced but my descending 6s on two strings its hardly noticed unless you know what you are looking for.

Now that I know what an escape is i will notice it just happening during random playing and its kind of awesome.

Like when an old friend shows up.

#4

If we define D to be the distance between two strings, on the “trapped” stroke I can go no further than D (as that’s a rest stroke), I think I do about 0.8 D, I’m not sure, and on the “out” stroke, I do at least D, if not 2 D, and this is necessary to be able to change strings. I’m not sure about the escape distance, it is likely “small,” in the sense of much less than D, but I don’t have a Magnet to know.

#5

Yeah, that sounds similar to my pick-slanting a couple years back. Looking back, my biggest regret was my fixation on keeping my pick-strokes small. It severely limited my string transferring.

I’ve basically gone three stages with picking.

  1. Before-CTC. Tiny pickstrokes. Limited string-transferring. finger/thumb + small wrist deviation. Relied on economy-picking and legato.

  2. Early-CTC. Strong upstroke-escape (DWPS) (Eric Johnson impersonation) + econo. Eventually added forearm rotation to finger/thumb + small wrist deviation. Still relied on inside-transfers because of econo-habits.

  3. Late-CTC. double-escaped stroke. un-slanted previous mechanic. Using pretty much every mechanic. Progressively added more forearm & elbow to widen stroke. Finally able to properly outside-transfer.

pick-evolution

1 Like
#6

Yeah my escape went drastically downwards over time. The whole over-compensation thing is necessary in the interim for the brain to learn. I just let it happen and for some odd reason it got better. I think you’re on the right track.