Looking for some advice on my picking motion

Technique Critique
#23

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to share a quick video update on the technique to see if there is too much elbow movement! I’ve been experiencing some wrist tension from the flexed form, which allows me to clearly see if it’s forearm movement. While experimenting with hand positioning, I want to make sure that no elbow is sneaking back in.

Here are two movements I’m not sure about yet…an alternate picking triplet feel on one string, and another attempt at string switching.

Thanks for your time!!

#24

First comment: don’t worry too much about micromanaging what joints you are using. You can of course use all the theory & knowledge as a hint, but at the end of the day you want to judge things by feel and sound. IMO the question worth asking is: am I playing the lines I want to play, and do they feel/sound good?

In any case, this looks mainly like forearm rotation to me, especially since in slow motion I can see the pick… rotating :slight_smile:

If instead you were using mostly wrist or elbow, without forearm rotation, you would see little or no rotation of the pick (i.e., the pick would stay approximately parallel to itself as it moves around in whatever trajectory).

Finally: Can you do it a bit faster maintaining the same form? That’s always the sanity check you want to do.

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#25

@tommo, thanks for your time! It’s super helpful to get all these great perspectives on how to understand the motions.

I’ve tried it a bit faster and the movements all check out. I’m stoked to be able to start applying this to real music now! :grin:

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#26

Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in!!

After posting last night, I remembered that my downstroke sweep using the new forearm position still feels very strange. I noticed I was using almost all elbow for the sweep…after rewatching some of the videos and other forum posts, I’ve made some adjustments. My sweeping motion seems to require a lot more downward pickslanting than my normal alternate picking. I want to see if this all looks alright before I continue assimilating it into my licks.

How do these videos look? The movement feels comfortable here, but this is about the fastest I can go atm. In the George Benson lick, there are still a lot of fretting hand synch issues at this tempo.

#27

I don’t see anything obviously “wrong”, but may I ask what happens when you try to go faster?

It may look like we are obsessed with speed here I know :slight_smile: But the thing is, you can’t be certain that your movements are efficient unless you bring them up to a speedy-ish tempo. See this as a sanity check.

Our typical figure is approximately 150bpm 16th notes. Probably 140 is ok as well. It’s ok if it’s sloppy, you just want to check if the movements can actually be done at these tempos, at least in principle.

#28

Of course! Sorry, i totally forgot to floor it and see what happens. Here is a 5 note pattern and a 3 note pattern with a 1 string sweep, as well as a two note sweep.

at this point, I’m hoping that a lot of my issues are coming from fretting hand synchronization with the new feeling sweeping movement…what do y’all think?

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#29

Thanks for this and sorry for the delay!

I think you are combining two challenges at once here, which may make things a bit confusing:

  1. finding a smooth, fast and effortless USX motion
  2. combining smoothly alternate picking and sweeping

It’s perfectly fine to practice both (some variety is good), but for testing purposes I think it will be more beneficial to fix part 1 first.

To do so, just choose licks with even numbers of notes per string. 4 or 6 are popular choices (2 is also a possibility but it tends to introduce string tracking challenges, so let’s leave it for later).

TLDR → can you try and floor some USX licks with 4 or 6 notes per string? That’ll tell us whether the most basic building block is in place :slight_smile:

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#30

Thanks Tommo!

Blockquote[quote=“tommo, post:29, topic:35311”]
can you try and floor some USX licks with 4 or 6 notes per string? That’ll tell us whether the most basic building block is in place :slight_smile:
[/quote]

Of course! Here are some 4 note per string patterns, on 2 strings and 5 strings. This feels pretty comfortable to me, although fretting hand synch isn’t there yet.

At this point, the 2 and 3 string sweeps are what is giving me trouble when applying USX to licks.

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#31

Sorry for the delay on this!

You are going just about fast enough to suggest that your movements are fairly efficient, but I can’t shake away the impression that you are holding back. In any case, if this feels comfortable you already have a good basis to work on a variety of USX licks/musical ideas using a range of realistic tempos.

I forgot if we already did the test where you pick on a single string as fast as you can “without thinking”? I.e. letting your hand/arm do whatever it wants to do to go fast?

Finally, is it the timing of the sweeps that is giving you trouble, or something else? The typical suggestion in this case is to exploit rest strokes to stop your pick and control the timing, see this old video of Troy. Also, another suggestion is of course to try many different patterns that combine alternate picking and USX sweeps. Perhaps you’ll find one that feels easier than the others, and you can start from there!

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