For 2WPS, where there is a transition between DWPS and UWPS, is it true that most players use an escaped→escaped (“crosspicking”) stroke, and not a trapped→trapped stroke?
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There is not a single answer for this. For example, if you watch me play a scale in slow motion in some of the Pickslanting Primer clips, you can see multiple things happening. Depending on the phrase, you can sometimes see my forearm changing position over the course of a couple notes, but my wrist motion might only change to a different wrist motion on the very last note. That’s common. The final note on the string might appear “double escaped”, but that’s not really a good description of what actually happened physically, because several different ingredients came together, at different times, to create that “string change”.
Honestly I don’t now how important it is to try and control these things, or even how much you can control these things. I think it’s probably unlikely that there are players who make zero double escaped motions ever in their playing. This might even include you. Do you play the Paul Gilbert lick? If so, you need double escape for that.
The whole “down, up, rotate” thing has served us well for limited number of pattern-based phrases that '80s shred type players grew up trying to play. If boiling things down to a simple formula like that helped, fantastic. But we lose players who don’t want to play “shred” lines because we haven’t had a way of teaching them how to do the complex mixing of motions that players like Andy Wood use for that.
That’s what we’re working on now. The double-escape motion will be a part of that, because some lines, even shred lines like the Paul Gilbert lick, require it. And again, most people are probably already doing it sometimes anyway - it just needs to be more conscious.
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