curling the pinky is very normal for many players. no big deal
the one thing that sort of stood out to me right away was the angle of the hand when you are picking the high e string. It reminds me of what I used to do years ago when I sucked really bad. I mean I REALLY sucked on the high E and B.
Lets say you are comfortably picking on the A string. Now, how do you then move down to pick the high E string?? I guess there are 3 basic ways:
- dont move the arm at all, but bend the wrist sideways (ulnar deviation)
-
open the elbow joint more WITHOUT moving the arm from the shoulder
-
open the elbow joint more AND move the arm from the shoulder
So options 1 and 2 are going to change the wrist angle so that the wrist is pointing down more towards the floor, and the wrist and pick etc will move back towards the bridge
option 3 will lessen the amount of changing angles and thus the whole picking setup will be more consistent from string to string.
With option 1 and 2 its more like each string will be a totally different instrument due to your wrist etc being in 6 different angles. Does that sound like something that will be easy to build upon, or like something that makes it 6 times as difficult?
Why do I say all that? Because to me that position you are trying to pick from is just a very difficult looking position. IMO the wrist is pointing way too much to the floor. If you freeze the vid after your downstroke, the pick is almost vertical. Meanwhile the string is horizontal.
Yeah, of course there is “edge picking” where the pick will be angled slightly at an angle to the string instead of being exactly horizontal, but to me you have WAY too vertical of a pick.
I used to do the exact thing on the high E and B and id often simply miss the string. I could pick the B and miss the E altogether
Id rather see you maybe take the wrist position on the low E or A and then, withOUT radically changing the angles etc, move the whole forearm and hand down more as a unit and more in a straight line down (without the hand swinging back as much towards the bridge). To do that youll probably have to move the upper arm from the shoulder while also opening the forearm angle too as I described in option 3 above.
You dont have to have the pick exactly horizontal with the string but IMO youd be WAY better off with the pick a lot closer to horizontal than you have it now.
Im a pretty good picker but there’s no way I could pick from that wrist and pick setup in your vid. (I tried for close to 30 years and still sucked. Sound familiar??)
I wouldnt even worry so much about crossing strings yet until you have a nice smooth and fairly fast and effortless motion on the open strings.
now, on missing the B string…going by what you are showing in the vid
to oversimplify a bit, it looks to me like you are setup as a “downward pickslanter”…or stating it the other way, you are an “upward escaper”. So whats all that mean? Well essentially you favor having the butt end of the pick closer to the ground and the tip end a little higher. So the butt end is pointing “down”. Nothing wrong with that btw…same as Yngwie and many others.
Okay, also you seem to be moving the pick more or less correctly for that downward slant orientation. In other words when u do a downstroke the pick sort of buries itself more towards the body of the guitar, and when you do an upstroke the pick “escapes”. After an upstroke your pick is free up in the air lol. So your downstrokes go in towards the body and your upstrokes move away from the body. This is really clear at around .49 in your vid
Again, that “in towards the body on downs and out away from the body on ups” is correct for the downward pick angle you have. The problem is, I dont think you understand what it implies and the “rules” that go along with it.
Essentially you are going to have to change strings after an upstroke…or stated the other way around, you need to go to a new string with a downstroke. Same as Yngwie does.
So if you are going to do a pentatonic pattern with 2 notes er string starting on a downstroke, your motion would work. (im ignoring the excessive “vertical pick” edging)
So this should work for you:
E–8--5---------------
B---------8–5--------
G-----------------7–5
Down up, down up, down up, no probs
but what about this basic pattern with only one note on the high E?
E—5--------------
B------8–5-------
G-------------7–5
with your downward slant and matching pick motion, if you pick the high E with a downstroke, you will have 2 issues:
-
you’ll be on the wrong side of the high E string
-
even worse, youll be “buried” down sort of under the high E and to get to the B you gotta “stringhop” back over the E. Thats extremely inefficient and slow and sucky feeling
Well what to do? Well, if u want to keep your current downward setup etc, you have to start that lick with an upstroke on the high E. If you upstroke the high E you are then “escaped” and you are then setup naturally to pick down, up on the B and then setup again to pick down, up on the G.
Remember, with that setup you have to change strings AFTER an upstroke, or stated the other way, go to a new string with a downstroke.
Same for 3 note per string scales. What to do if you want to do this?
E—8–7--5------------
B--------------8–6--5
Well if u go D-U-D on the high E, you again find yourself buried down on the wrong side of the high E with no good way to the B string.
But if you go U-D-U on the high E then you will be setup to easily go to the B string with a downstroke. of course then you’ll have the same problem on the B lol. If you go D-U-D on the B then you are stuck again lol. good stuff. This is the nature of 3 note per string scales
of course there are several ways around this issue. Yngwie would generally either use 4 notes per string or he’d simply throw in a pulloff where needed.
So for this pattern:
E----8–7--5-------------------------------
B---------------8–6--5---------------------
G--------------------------8–7--5–4-------
D-----------------------------------------7–5
He’d have to go D-U-pulloff then on the B string D-U-pulloff, then the rest would fit his picking style so the G string would be D-U-D-U and the D is just D-U
Anyway, Id like to see you get away from that vertical hand, vertical pick look and move back some towards a more horizontalish pick. Even a 45 degree angle would be better but id try more like a 30 degree angle or thereabout
no clue who the guy in the pic is but this is in the ballpark. He’s moved the whole hand and arm lower without pointing everything straight down to the floor:
or our boy, looks around 45 degrees to me:
less than 45
you get the idea. at least its something to try. When I ‘reached down’ with the pick like you are doing I really sucked badly, especially on the high strings and used to entirely miss the strings quite a bit
I think I’m pulling off the impossible as well because I’m actually getting worse the more I practice it. I think one of the biggest issues is I’ve developed really bad technique of playing 30 plus years and for the life of me I don’t know how to fix it as you can see in the video. Maybe it’s a simple adjustment with how I position my hand, hold the pick etc,??? I’ll never figure it out on my own until I fly Troy out to Las Vegas and sit him down in person so he can see what I’m doing wrong. Or by miracle You guys can figure it out for me here. If I have to completely relearn how to “walk” again with the RIGHT technique I’ll do it. It’s just incredibly frustrating When you’ve put in the 10 thousand hours and you never succeed because you don’t know what you’re doing wrong. 
Help!
. I’ve almost reached Giveups’ville.
