JudasPriester Technique Critique

Technique Critique
#1

I just recorded three videos: one with a loose-finger-approach, thumb-pad to angle grip and two with the “Crosspicking with the wrist” setup approach.

I have to say first:

  1. the practical thing is this, that I had to crouch to be seen by the camera, so it is a bit cramped body and two videos have no melody, just mutingtones, because I had to hold the guitar neck out of the camera and playing felt uncomfortable. But in all three cases it’s the blueprint “VInnie-Moore-Pepsi-Al-di-Coca-Meola”-pattern. (no crosspicking roll, because of the thread topic). Ah, I used an old ipad 4 and we have 1:33 at night in Germany

The one with the loose fingers I started with a "Vinnie Moore meets Malmsteen"approach, in other words: d u d 02-string change u d pull off, which is a relativley simple task.
Then comes the much harder Antigravity attempt, at least in my interpretation :smiley: 50 percent of the time it feels smooth, 30 a little bit forced, 15 percent hoppy, 5 percent I don’t clear the strings after the upstroke.

  1. Nevertheless, in the other clips I tried it like in the first crosspicking broadcast and I tried to concentrate on an all wrist motion - fingers in the air (as much as possible). There is still a tiny amound of forearm rotation, isn’t it? Overall it feels smooth to play this way. To ensure the right feeling of both escape motions I began the clips with short tremolo dwps and uwps.

To sum it up: many things feel smooth (not to confuse with natural), but the forearm rotation is always there, even in my dreams. To minimize it, do I have to supinate my forearm even more?

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Anti-Gravity Chapter 24 - aka What is two-way pickslanting, and how do the movements work?
#2

Okokokok let me think of this hmmmm
I think I’m getting it. To be sure I have one more question:

I watched “Crosspicking with the wrist” and I tried it and I copied your arm setup like you suggested in the video to kill the variables:

Flat pick grip (90 degrees to thumb and nearly to the index joint), slightly supinated, 902 movement.

The problem and the reason why I am asking in this thread is: When I make the 9 o clock movement, i. e. the upstroke, my forearm is always rotating while deviating the wrist (like in the classic dwps-Yngwie style) and I cannot get rid of that, unless I do it at a superslow speed, but that is super boring, death to chunking and the opposite to what you recommend.
Edit: And falls apart when speeding up every time.

Is this rotation a bad thing? At least it destroys the idea of a flat wrist motion. Maybe should I concentrate more on a “true” side-to-side motion aka deviation? This works fine in the air, but on the guitar body, especially when switching to Les Pauls… ughh

Insisting on the rotation produces a movement which is like mixture of “crosspicking with the wrist” and Antigravity.
Finally, I should make a video for the forum to look at, maybe today, maybe in a few days, because I need the disk memory of my ipad for conducting oral history interviews :slight_smile:

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Anti-Gravity Chapter 24 - aka What is two-way pickslanting, and how do the movements work?
#3

Great question! First off, there is nothing wrong with this, per se. Combining wrist and forearm is common - see my next response. However, you can also learn to do this without the rotation component. Are your fingers touching the guitar at all, or are they up in the air? If you touch the guitar, you are more likely to use rotation on upstrokes. If you anchor only at the wrist, and leave the other fingers in the air, it is easier to conceptualize how the wrist is supposed to go side to side on its own, with no help from the other joints.

When in doubt, post a clip - that’s always a good way to go.

It sounds like you’re describing this:

https://troygrady.com/channels/talking-the-code/crosspicking-with-the-wrist-and-forearm/

This is the sequel to the first crosspicking broadcast, and it’s all about how to mix in varying amounts of forearm movement to get a different kind of crosspicking motion. As far as I can tell these two approaches, the all-wrist approach and the “wrist with some forearm” approach have similar capabilities. All wrist might have the advantage for roll type playing where you need to jump around quickly between three strings, because the wrist moves that way on its own. And that’s a big maybe, because Carl Miner uses some arm in his technique he’s a roll playing master.

In general we did this second broadcast because lots of players use arm and wrist movements together, so this kind of doubles as a lesson about the common ways you can combine them and what happens when you do that.

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#4

Sorry, just seeing these now - they were tacked on to the end of that other thread, so I moved them to your own technique critique thread. In the future, just make a new thread for these sorts of things.

Honestly, the amount of “forearm” being used in these clips is so hilariously small that I am not really sure what the problem is, or if there even is one! This all looks good to me, with or without forearm.

Yes you have the one example with more a Teemu Mantysaari style, with some built-in Gypsy-syle wrist flexion. That’s a classic “dwps” style setup so you will naturally see a little more forearm involvement there to try and do two-way escapes. Even then, just as in Teemu’s own playing, there is really very little arm involvement here.

One thing I will say is that it is hard to critique clips when there is no amp on, the pick attack is soft as it is here. The resulting movements are tiny, it’s hard to see what’s going on, and both “correct” and “incorrect” attempts all look kind of the same. Turn on an amp, hit the strings with a little bit more force, and that may also provide a little more kinasesthetic feedback as to whether something really is as smooth as it can be.

Also, if you’re going to try the 902 stuff, I recommend trying the roll patterns. It really helps to do that using pickstrokes that deliberately cover the entire three-string distance. In other words, you don’t want any movements that are truncated or shorter than the others, no matter where they appear in the pattern. You’re looking for the hallmark wide and smooth arc on every note and you want to try and maintain that as you speed up. This will make it clear if you really are making the correct wrist movement for the given arm position, and whether that motion is smooth. And that feeds back into the scalar type lines like a type of crosstraining.