If you’ve followed our instructional material, you know that swiping involves playing through a string while alternate picking. It can be a mistake, but when used systematically it’s also a technique that many players develop subconsciously to simplify string changes — especially if they use single escape picking motions like USX and DSX.
However, when they do this, they’re not just using a single escape picking motion and hitting the string that is in the way. Instead, there is a technique to doing this well. It involves making, essentially, a double escape picking motion. Here’s what it looks like:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C57ebaaup4x/
When I demonstrate swiping slowly at the start of the clip, you can see how the pick flops over the swipe string. I have dwps here so the pick slides, but the contact is still pretty obvious.
However when I do this fast, the motion changes. You can see clearly that the pick is making a DBX motion. But because it’s on a tilt, there is still some incidental swipe string contact. It’s very slight, due to the fact that DBX is a semicircular motion. On some repetitions, it almost appears to not swipe, even though, ironically, I’m trying to swipe.
When this is done correctly, it feels and sounds very smooth, like there is no string in the way. In slow motion we can see why that is — because the pick is doing its level best (pun intended!) to avoid the string, and only contacting gracefully when it does contact.
Also ironically, I think I have always done this, I just didn’t know it. We introduced the concept of swiping in 2014 with the Antigravity seminar. This where we profiled Paul Gilbert’s more accidental use of it, and Michael Angelo Batio’s more systematic use.
And we have numerous test examples of it in the clips. Re-watching these now, you can see that the picking motion during the swipe pickstroke is different, approximating a DBX pickstroke to lessen the swipe string contact:
The upstrokes escaping are super obvious here. I think many of these pickstrokes actually do escape. In fact, the only really obvious swipe in this lick is actually a downstroke, even though this is an upstroke example. Obviously, I was not aware I was doing this when we filmed this, and didn’t catch it during edting either.
Takeaways:
The “best” swiping isn’t just a single escape motion moving through the string with the same trajectory it always uses. There is a different joint motion the alter the trajectory to make less forceful contact. You are trying to escape, just strategically not succeeding.
I didn’t learn to do this by trying to simulate the motion slowly and doing “repetitions”. I didn’t even know I was doing these motions so that wouldn’t have been possible anyway. Even now, I can’t do it slowly even though I am more aware that I’m doing it. When I do ti slowly it just looks like what you see in the beginning of the Instagram clip.
In general, the more complex a technique is, the less likely you will be able to think through or simulate it correctly while going really slowly and repeating it many times. I think this is true of any motor skill, not just instrument technique.
Instead, success will most likely happen when going at some “real world” speed while controlling the bigger picture things you can control: overall form, feeling of the motion, amount of force applied, when you start and stop, etc. I think the idea that you can control smaller pickstroke-level details while playing at even medium speeds is an illusion and not what is really happening or how motor learning actually works.
The advantage we have now is feedback like you’re reading here. This gives you a clear idea how to do something, what form is involved, what motions are involved, and what something is supposed to look and sound like when done correctly. This way, you’ll be more likely to recognize when the end result is correct.