I’m sure you’ve seen that video from Anton, the one in which he vaguely alludes to a “wrist dance” as being some sort of qualifier for correct motion. I believe this wrist dance is rotation, but incidental rotation that occurs when using that particular wrist motion in a relaxed enough state - meaning, the focus itself is not on making a rotational movement, the rotation is a byproduct. For the most part it seems to disappear as Anton (and Paul) speed up, for whatever reason.
1 Like
Holy crap… this was the video I didn’t know I needed… I can do this waaaay better than my recent wrist dbx attempts…
I guess it makes sense, seen as my primary fast playing stuff is forearm and wrist usx…
I feel so stupid for not realising it could work both ways with a setup adjustment 
Cheers for that ! Time to lock myself away for a while and practice
2 Likes
I’m very glad it helped you!
1 Like
Hey @Tom_Gilroy thanks for the little video. I noticed, when you start playing the little arpeggio lick and demonstrating, that your thumb is pretty straight, if not totally straight. Do you think this detail makes it easier? Or would a bent thumb/holding the pick further down the thumb work with this as well?
When I developed this technique as a teenager, I mostly used a bent thumb with about 45 degrees of edge picking, and I demonstrate the movement with that grip in the “Mode 1” video I posted earlier in the thread. That definitely works mechanically, but there are a few drawbacks, like I mentioned to @joebegly .
A bent thumb indicates activation of flexor pollicis longus (FPL). This muscle muscle is located in the forearm. It’s more than strong enough to provide a tight grip on the pick. However, if FPL is strongly activated and it pushes against the side of the unsupported index finger, it creates torque on the index finger. Fingers don’t twist and there is no muscle that can oppose this torque, meaning the stress is entirely upon the ligaments of the index finger joints. If you develop the habit of activating FPL too strongly with an unsupported index finger, it can result in injury. In this last year of teaching, I’ve had several students come to me with this problem looking for a solution.
This problem can be prevented by supporting the index finger with the middle finger so there is greater structure absorbing the force produced by FPL. You may not experience it at all if your FPL activation is light and only to create an edge picking angle. I may have had some minor index finger pain once or twice as a teenager, but nothing that became a persistant injury.
The edge picking created by the bent thumb grip can create a scratchy attack, which can be cool for effect but it’s something I’d prefer to avoid by default. The bent thumb grip requires an initial adjustment to facilitate hybrid picking. Finally, since FPL crosses the wrist, activating it when I don’t need to will create some amount of tension which damps the oscillation of the wrist and requires greater exertion of the muscles responsible for the picking movement.
If instead we use a straightened thumb and we secure the grip using the CMC against the index finger reinforced by the middle finger, we activate flexor pollicis brevis (FPB). This is a smaller muscle and is located in the hand, however it’s still plenty strong for the purpose of holding the pick securing. If we activate FPB strongly, we push into the fingers in a direction that they can more naturally absorb force, and so the injury risks of incorrect FPL activation don’t really apply to FPB.
Interestingly, the straightend thumb also aligns the bones of the thumb like a frame or ramrod which pushes the pick through the string on downstrokes. The grip can be quite held loosely with the security being provided by the structure of the bones of the thumb. There’s no risk of injury because the forces are in the direction that the bones are adapted to absorb force.
Also, since FPB doesn’t cross the wrist, activation doesn’t damp wrist oscillation. It also allows for a more direct transition to hybrid picking and it helps to avoid some of the scratch. However, it gives the fingers less clearance from the strings.
2 Likes
@Tom_Gilroy thanks for the response. Interesting points. When I first learned to pick fast, I had more of a hitchhikers thumb thing going on but it wasn’t very exaggerated, just a bit. Now, I tend to have more of an Andy Wood type bent thumb thing going on, but I don’t squeeze hard enough to ever have had any pain. I think Tommo also has some bent thumb. But for some reason, I’ve always struggled to keep my thumb relatively straight like yours or even Antons (relatively straight, fully straight, or very very minimal bend in thumb). Is it just a matter of me needing to reposition? Learn a new habit?
Edit: just looked back at the videos I sent you from our consultations, and my thumb has a nice bend to it in those if you needed to go back and reference or I can post it here
I have a hitchhiker’s thumb too, and I make use of it for my trailing edge grip.
I looked over your footage. You were reinforcing your index finger with you middle in those clips, which helps to minimise any risk of injury. You don’t look like you’re squeezing too hard with FPL. I don’t think the bent thumb is necessarily bad, and in your case it’s playing a role in your string tracking and your control over angle of edge picking.
You can certainly habituate a straighter thumb, I started with the bent thumb and moved towards the straight thumb as my default over time. It might seem like a small detail, but the muscular activation in straight thumb vs. bent thumb is different. It’s possible you’re just unfamiliar with the feeling of using FPB to create pressure instead of FPL. It’s also possible that without the bent thumb, your string tracking and edge picking control mechanics aren’t yet robust enough, so you continually revert to the famliar bent thumb to facilitate those functions.
Maybe I’ll post a video of attempts with a straighter thumb because I am curious. How would you suggest I approach this optimally? I feel where the pick sits on the thumb and index finger has major influence on this
Just seeing this now. I honestly would resist the temptation to overhink this or re-watch the lecture thingy I did a few years back. To be honest, I haven’t found understanding the “technical” of it to be very helpful beyond knowing what form options are available. Here are the things you need to know and do:
First thing is to know is that there is an “Andy Wood” form, a “David Grier / Molly Tuttle” form, and an “Albert Lee / Steve Morse” form. That’s really all you need to know about the technical side. All the tech stuff, which took us years to figure out and explain, was just a way to help clarify that all these techniques exist and which ones are which based on the form. This is easier said than done, since many players flip flop between these without realizing they are doing so, and I did too when trying to figure this all out.
The next thing you need to know is that the motion feels like moving parallel to the plane of the strings. It feels like you are intentionally going sideways in a way that does not trap or escape. You may know, intellectually, that the pick must escape. But you shouldn’t try to “do” this and it won’t necessarily feel like it’s doing that.
The third thing you need to pay attention to is speed and physical easyness:
The only thing you are trying to deliberately do is go fast without tension or fatigue. If it’s not working and you can’t go faster than 140, then something is up with your form or motion and you have to fiddle around with it and try again, because that’s too slow. From a few feet away there is nothing visual you can discern about what any of these players are doing that makes it easy. The macro elements of the form all look the same. Someone can have Andy’s general appearance and complain of tension. Someone else can have Andy’s appearance and go 150bpm or higher. That’s what you’re looking for. Sloppyness doesn’t matter at first, just the speed / easyness.
Finally, fourth, I know I’m a broken record about this, but you can’t learn this by exclusively trying to alternate pick arpeggios. There’s not enough “meat” there. You have to try and play everything from this one centralized form with no forearm flip-flopping like what we used to call “two-way pickslanting”. You’re not switching from your USX mode to your DSX mode, you’re staying put and allowing the hand to do all that for you, in the way that feels the easiest. In your case, the kind of single-position seventh-chord-oriented jazz lines you would normally try and do with economy are great for this type of learning because the fretboard organization pays no heed to single-escape organization. All your 212 type phrases, 313 type phrases, those + enclosure notes and slides and stuff. That language is great for this.
Here’s an example from today’s Magnet-related Instagram post of what the roll stuff looks like up close. We’ve seen this before with Andy’s clips, more or less, so this isn’t anything you haven’t seen before:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CmHTU7jjW-j/
Instead, the main thing is doing the above four things. It may take a while to figure things out because all this motion learning stuff is fundamentally a trial and error process, just guided very generally by your technical knowledge.
Ah not sure where I got 140 from then. I thought I’d read, in other critiques, of 16ths @ 120 being the bare minimum for DBX since string hopping at that speed won’t work (for long). So I figured I was good to go if I could do 140 with general comfort 
To be clear I can play higher than that and I think the motion is the same, it just feels more challenging. It’s not as clean and the error rate increases. I think I know by now I should expect that and the process is:
- find the speed where the errors start
- slow down just a little and fix the errors
- go faster than where the errors were before
- rinse and repeat until we get to some high number (16ths @ 180 bpm??? )
Also, duly noted about your broken record statement. To be honest I haven’t spent as much time on the non-1nps (mostly because the arpeggios sounds SO good on acoustic) as I should have been. I am addressing that and already see the benefits. In the back of my mind, even though I knew you were right, the only thing I planned on getting out of my DBX venture was the ability to play arpeggios, since I already have single escape the higher speeds.
Where does the wrist/forearm blend fit into that? Isn’t that different than these other 3, but equally capable of DBX?
Sorry I thought I was responding to Jake about the 140bpm stuff! But same advice anyway.
You may have single escape at higher speed but what if you want to alternate pick a jazz line or an Eric Johnson type pattern or play a classical piece on a mandolin? Yes economy can tackle a lot of things, so I’m not judgy. I like them all. But if you have to play things other people wrote, and you have to play them as notated, this is where the mixed escape stuff shines and why players in bluegrass and classical gravitate toward some type of mixed escape style, among other tricks and techniques. Plenty of sweeping in classical mandolin, for example, and notated as such if you can imagine that. But the core melodic stuff is usually mixed escape alternate.
Re: the three styles, I just meant, for doing mixed escape with wrist motion there are these three styles. I assume that’s what we’re talking about here since that what Jake appears to be going for. Otherwise, if you want to know how many different picking motions can play mixed escape lines, there are tons: types of wrist forearm, types of wrist-fingers, types of elbow-wrist — keep on going and going. Just think of all the Jimmy Herring, Martin Miller, Kiko Loureiro, Doc Watson, Billy Strings players out there who don’t fit neatly into one of these single joint categories.
1 Like
Which interview or seminar will contain clips for this type of material? And are you saying to just focus on letting the hand do all the motion or to include forearm rotation if it’s necessary?
@Tom_Gilroy thank you so much for the detailed video. I wanted to make sure to watch it with guitar in hand and a decent chance of no interruptions, which I did today.
If I’m understanding your explanation correctly, this was a set up I’ve experimented with. Long story short, results were mixed.
I started to type out my theories and observations about the different variables and positions, but I think it might not be too interesting or useful to anyone, and likely is ground covered in other threads I’ve started about my (attempts at a) DBX motion.
That being said, there’s very good food for thought in there, and more stuff for me to consider as I keep tooling around. I may follow up here in the future with more magnet clips.
1 Like
1
2
3
4
Thanks again for taking the time to check out and comment, Troy. I think we’ve gone over the whole dance with this several times over over the past few years, and I would say I have all of the above covered except #3 - I’ve probably not spent enough time trying to find something that feels good ‘very fast’ , even if sloppy, and I’ve likely not done this because I’d either A. get tension or pain as I’d tool around in search of something that didn’t produce tension or pain (definitely a tricky part of this process) B. if I did get something that was fast and felt ok, I wouldn’t be confident that there were actually any real downstroke escapes happening.
I think now with the magnet I can think of some ways to address “B” above.
I’ve absolutely been addressing a variety of material beyond strict 1nps arps, and if anything I think in the past year my DBX-related practice has been more so repertoire (bluegrass, bach, riffs I write) rather than technique focused. But I figured the simplest demo to throw up for viewing would be the classic roll.
(For what it’s worth, I generally try to avoid doing any jazz vocabulary with strict alt picking or any attempts at a DBX motion, for aesthetic and phrasing reasons that aren’t really worth getting into here, but it’s definitely great for other styles and sounds I play.)
I’ll try to put in a little more time to the ‘fast and sloppy’ and see where it gets me. I guess thinking about it now, that might be the ‘eating my vegetables’ portion of all this because it’s unpleasant: if I have 10 minutes here and there to grab the guitar, it’s definitely more enjoyable to play something that sounds good and clean!
No worries. Don’t mean to twist your arm. You’re under no obligation to try and learn new picking motions. You can have a normal hobby, like a normal person, which involves sunshine and parks and corn dogs. It’s only because you’re asking about the subject and these are the best answers I have to prevent you from getting stuck at the awkward phase.
Sorry for the confusion, I’m just commenting on wrist motion because that’s what it seems like Jake is trying to learn. In wrist technique, only the hand moves and the arm is (mostly) not generating the alternate picking motion. If you are in doubt about which picking motion you currently do, and/or should be doing, make a Technique Critque and we’ll take a look.
The Andy Wood interviews and Olli Soikkeli interviews are good places to look for lines that don’t conform to USX or DSX fretboard organization, and have mixtures of 1, 2, 3, and 4-note-per-string fingerings in them. All the bluegrass interviews as well, of course, if you’re into that kind of thing.
1 Like
Maybe I phrased something in an unintended way, but I definitely don’t feel arm-twisted! My last comment to you was more so me just confirming your response and reminding myself to try the one thing in there that I think I probably haven’t spent enough time with.
If something came off salty, it might be a combination of a little disappointment at not ‘getting’ this fully despite a number of years hacking at it + general fatigue from chasing around our 9-month old all day.
Nope, didn’t come off that way! I was just pre-emptively apologizing, because I write a lot of customer support emails.
Since you have young kids, one thing you can do is have them learn it and copy their motions. Because they are learning machines who, over the next few years, will become whole walking, talking, motor-skilling humans in the same amount of time it takes you and me to fail to play the arpeggio phrase.
3 Likes
@Tom_Gilroy I rewatched your video over the past few days because some details were echoing in my head and I wanted to check if I was remembering them correctly.
Turns out I had a misunderstanding about where the pisiform bone was, so in my earlier comment when I had said I tried this set up before, that wasn’t quite accurate. I was tooling around with things more this morning.
I’m probably going to have a few Q as I keep experimenting. First two are:
-
Once the tempo gets going, are there any cues I can use to help be aware of whether I am using wrist extension on the upstroke escapes? I noticed this happening a bit on slow mo, but A. hard to notice in the moment and B. even the visual stuff in footage is sometimes hard to analyze re extension vs rotation especially as I’m changing strings. I guess that’s two questions.
-
(3?) Obviously finger movement is unnecessary, but I find myself making small thumb adjustments sometimes possibly if my escape is very shallow/subtle and a little finger movement helps get the pick ‘up’ just a little bit. I think this might be motion from my knuckle (think plucking a berry off of a bush) but there might be other related joints making it happen. Any thoughts on this?
Hi Jake,
Regarding cues, there’s sometime to unravel here and I feel I have to do so carefully so I don’t give you the wrong impression.
As for noticing things in the moment, I’d really stress that looking for visual cues is much less important and much less helpful than consciously focusing on how movement feels. It’s ok to look at your picking hand now and then, but you need to learn to navigate through tactile reference and kinaesthetic feedback. Having your eyes glued to your picking hand isn’t going to help with that.
I have a process for developing this with students (and for myself), but essentially it comes down to starting with exagerated large movements and creating a “pendulum” which synchronises to your internal sense of rhythm. In this stage were looking looking for movements which have a large range of motion, which are powerful and allow for strong, clear accents but which feel effortless and have a low background of muscle tension.
As for visual cues when reviewing footage, that’s a different matter. With the RDT+Rotation blend, the forearm will be supinated on the upstroke and there shoud be a noticeable downward pickslant. If the forearm is neutral (radial or thumb side in contact with the bridge or strings) or there is an obvious upward pickslant, you can only escape through radial extension.
I wouldn’t want you to obsess over it right now, but generally I think that the fewer variables we have, the more predictable and consistent we will be.
Finger/thumb movement isn’t usually necessary, but it’s not entirely without function either; it absolutely can assist with escapes.
However, if this movement is only introduced at higher speeds, then no amount of lower speed practice will help to train it. Moreover, finger/thumb movement can interfere with the structural integrity of your grip. Also, the musculature of the fingers and thumb are more complex than simple antagonists, and many muscles of the fingers and thumb cross the wrist, meaning varying tension of these muscles could interfere with the kinaesthetic feeback of your wrist movement.
EDIT: I’m always happy to help review footage, or if you’re interested we might be able to come to some Quid Pro Quo arrangment regarding lessons if you’d be interested.
1 Like