@Cherphas. I am mostly using the movement where the pick goes in out of the strings, the turning a doorknob movement. You can see it better in this vid.
However, this motion with the downward slant has it’s limitations and therefore i am using a different technique for years with less slant. Nowadays i am trying to get the Martin Miller technique down.
Hi David! I think you may be referring to wrist flexion and extension, not supination. Pronation and supination are motions of the forearm, not the wrist. It’s the turning motion EVH uses for his tremolo, for example. You can also use a fixed amount of forearm supination or pronation in many styles of playing.
The examples you’re showing here - again, great photos - primarily demonstrate the effect of wrist flexion. That’s the bend in the wrist which creates the gap under the arm. Very often wrist flexion is accompanied by some amount of forearm supination. However, again, flexion-extension is the wrist part, and supination and pronation are the forearm components.
To make matters more confusing, downward pickslanting does not require flexion of the wrist or supination of the forearm, and upward pickslanting does not require pronation of the forearm. I will apologize for this since I know the Pickslanting Primer gets this wrong currently. The newer material we are filming now will be much clearer about these releationships.
Regarding the gypsy-style “flexed / supinated” approach, or the less flexed style where you rest on the strings or body, they both work fine. The lack of muting isn’t a huge problem, especially with clean tone. Here’s a recent instagram clip demonstrating a medium flexed / medium supinated setup:
Even with high gain, a phrase like this sounds mostly fine, because when the fretting hand gets to the low strings, the fleshy parts of the fretting fingers naturally mute all the upper strings. So any noise “erases” itself in the middle of the lick. Michael Angelo Batio is also famous for a flexed setup, and even when he is not using his string dampener device, you don’t hear too much noise, because the fretted notes are louder than the noise.
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But the lower strings will keep unmuted. If i do the gypsy style with distortion the lower strings will give to much noise for my taste.
When i play for instance string aperggio with overdrive, downward slanting and extended wrist it is gonna be a mess because of the ringing strings.
When you use the Andy wood extended wrist style, you can still have muting - but the muting comes from the center of the palm, between the eminences, or from the watch band area of the wrist. It does not come from the side of the hand. That’s the trick. Reorient your arm accordingly.
When i want to do that i have to lower my hand so far that it is nearly in resting postion. Maybe it is a physical thing, how the build of your hand and how thick the palm is…?
nothing in the world like fast ascending 3nps 16ths with one way slanting
uwps makes it work
g---------------------------------------------------9–12–9--11–12 etc
d----------------7–10–7--9–10–9--10–12
a----7–9--10
pretty much straight off of PG Intense Rock
Thanks again for the vid! It confirmed a few things for me so I can move forward with my practice. I practiced pentatonics licks a bit last night and I am making progress. I think I get frustrated because I can’t play as fast and clean as EJ and Troy right away lol But there is definitely a difference from when I first started on this and now. Progress!
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Very nice to hear i could be of any help.
I had (have) the same problem for a long time. When I need to “perform” in DWPS orientation, my body automatically wants to raise the hand from the strings. I guess it’s the body that tenses up to perform a motion that’s not really burnt in yet. Not sure how this would help executing the picking better though.
I worked quite a lot on this and I can definitely control it better now. But occasionally when I’m video recording myself I can still see the hand lifting at times. Gah!
I think that if you just keep working on it consciously, the body will adapt eventually.
This a great exercise Troy! I am using the same technique now with a bit less downward slant i guess.
What has been essential for me lately is the stringtracking as you do it in this example.
From the shoulder and more in a straight line as supposed to what i was doing before with a more fixed wrist moving as a part of a circle towards the bridge from low to high.
The tracking in a more straight line works so much better for me.
Also what is see in this vid is when you get to the lower strings it looks like there is more thumb/indexfinger motion due to the fact that you fix the other fingers under the high E string. It is an optical illusion because you are making the same motion over all the strings.
Isn’t this also a bit the case with Martin Miller?
In the last interview, where he shows some examples with his fingers stretched instead of fixed unfer the high E string, it seems that the thumb/indexfinger motion is less present.
The lifting of the hand works great with clean stuff if you want to let the notes ring. It is with the distortion that i find the resting hand position is better. Also i find there is a bit more overall control with the resting position.
I rest the hand very lightly though.
i have a natural tendency toward upward slanting and i use my pick hand thumb to mute the higher strings
That gives a different kind of muted sound which i don’t like; it almost kills the sound immidiately. I like that half muted sound which you get when using the palm resting lightly on the strings near the bridge.
Mute with your fretting hand.
Also a very different sound then palm muting.
Oh you’re talking about palm muting. Try muting with the side of your hand right by the palmar crease. Look at how Paul Gilbert mutes. Also lessen the angle on the UWPS, just enough to clear the string, it will make the muting easier.
This whole topic was about downward vs upward slanting. And for me any many others with downward slanting you can much better control the palm muting especialy when playing the higher strings. Very logical because with downward slanting the side of your palm already rest on the higher strings and with upward slanting it is away from the higher strings.
Nowadays i have a more neutral hand position, maybe still a little bit downward.
I’ve always preferred palm muting with UWPS because it makes string escape easy when playing Hetfield style downpicked riffs.