Maybe you can't handle pickslanting at all...?

Technique Critique
#21

Tommo - thanks for the encouragement. Hope it’s true what they say, that the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem;)

My trusty Korg TM-50 tells me that I can tap in excess of eighths at 200 bpm. Btw, that’s even when immobilizing my elbow so that all the motion must come from the wrist.

Johannes, thanks for your point about single vs. double escape. I intend to come back to that…

Troy, I was in fact inspired by the Magnet! There are great posts in the Gear section of the Forum which I used to guide me in rigging this thing, below. (Go for the ~100 lb. clamp if you’re interested; costs around $10, much more stable than the smaller ones):

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And now, with head hung low, voice barely a whisper… Yes, this is my fastest picking. And no, I haven’t had much in the way of lessons. (Took four from a conservatory grad. I did want his input on technique; he was of the ‘there’s no wrong way’ school… probably why I stopped taking his lessons.)

I have a pretty regimented practice routine, informed by a lot of reading of people like Philip Johnston, Bob Duke, Harnum, every method book I can get my hands on (I’ll take out 10 or more from the library at a time - metro libraries with inter-library loan programs are terrific resources for music books). I’m very into the ‘deliberate practice’ thing. So one of the many things I pay attention to is how I’m spending practice time, and that’s how I know that my ‘flight hours’ at this point are around 3000 - all of it, regrettably, with this motion (unless of course I’m fingerpicking).

[I could see, watching other players, that they were doing something different than what I was doing. I had come to the erroneous conclusion that they must be only using like a 1/2 mm of pick, the very tip of the tip… before I came to CTC.]

It feels to me, from what I’m reading here, like I have to desist from ALL single-note (as opposed to rhythm or fingerstyle) playing at this point and just focus on a more lateral (deviated) wrist motion. If instead I were to work on the wrist some of the time, while also doing scales & arps, songs, even notes-on-the-fretboard memorization work - but without effective motion - I’ll just be reinforcing my hopping problem.

So even if that means I spend the summer wearing out my G string - gotta do what I gotta do. Agree?

#22

Good news! Korg says you don’t have a speed problem, you “just” have to find a good picking motion! At the moment it’s like you are running with one leg, gotta use both!

Not really :slight_smile:

As soon as you find a good tremolo motion, film it and check whether it’s upstroke or downstroke escape. Then you can immediately look into some musical phrases that have the appropriate string changes that match your escape motion.

Do not spend hours on the G string if the speed is not coming. If nothing is clicking after a few minutes, take a break and come back to it later, possibly having changed something. Do a 3-finger grip if you have to. Look at your table tap test: you were fast immediately! You did not spend months slow-tapping while gradually increasing the speed.

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#23

I’d like to echo all that, and add one thing: I would systematically try out rest strokes. Start with trying to make all downstrokes rest-strokes, and once you’ve got a feeling for this try to go fast without thinking.
If that doesn’t work, try the opposite, making all upstrokes rest strokes, and go fast.
And don’t get overly fixated on the rest strokes either, rather focus on being relaxed.

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#24

I’d like to echo this one thing @7th11th added. I had a decently (normal) fast movement for years. Tremolos with 16ths @ 180bmp were no big deal…trouble is the escape was trapped in both directions hahahahaha! That of course led to string hopping on all my changes, so I crashed and burned after a measure or 2. Once I started incorporating rest strokes and getting used to the way it felt (while ensuring it was escaping and not just hitting both strings on either side of my static note) I started making much better progress.

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#25

I don’t think there’s anything that needs to be slammed. And I think you have a legitimate question that, until I research things a little more, I would be unable to fairly answer. But I know Troy is rationale and fair minded. I think you have to remember that a lot of what is provided here is a collection of tools and pieces of information to help you shorten those 5 year gaps. What you state may well be the answer for you and a few others. Keep researching it and asking questions. I’m sure you’ll find the answers. Good luck, good buddy. Keep picking.

#26

Try not think of this as some giant drawn-out project where you totally set aside certain kinds of playing. WeI’ve had people go from your situation to the beginnings of fast motion in minutes. And this is without doing anything other than pointing out that their current motion wasn’t working and telling them to try something else that goes fast.

That’s it. You’re not “working on deviation”. You shouldn’t really be working on any motion in particular. You’re just trying every way you can think of to move your picking hand fast. We don’t care whether it’s deviation, flexion/extension, forearm rotation, fingers, some blend of various things. We don’t care if it’s “lateral”. Not all motion is lateral, and not all lateral motion is deviation. So put that all out of your mind.

We just want you to move your hand or arm fast. Even if it’s only for a second and you’re like, wait a minute, I just got something, what was that? That’s what we want. Try all the joints, elbow, forearm, etc. Don’t take notes on our material and read up on things. I think we’ve overloaded you with data at this point. Just move the joints and see what comes out.

Try that once, for one sitting and report back.

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#27

makes sense, what you say. I follow effective music practice by Skordis Propokis, and this has catapulted my playing. He teaches two way pick slanting in his economy picking bootcamp.

#28

Thanks for those responses; gonna process all that…

I’ll post a one-string video soon, but meanwhile I wanted to add that it seems to me that my stringhopping is not only a problem for string changing of any kind - but also for accuracy.

Hopping creates fatigue, that’s number one. But maybe worse, hopping (at least in my case) means that my anchor is bouncing. Probably like a guy trying to shoot a cue ball with his shoulder, elbow, wrist and fingers all getting in on the act - it’s hopeless for him to shoot consistently straight like that. He must cut down on the multiplicity of motions or it’ll never go.

Likewise, I think the hopping is a sign of too many muscle groups vying for control of the pick. And so I end up with erratic play, accuracy-wise.

#29

Your scale playing looks perfectly accurate to me. The motion is quite consistent. In other words, you’ve learned this motion perfectly. So I wouldn’t worry too much about “losing your anchor”. Plenty of picking motions that I make catch way more air than this does and don’t even use much of an anchor at all. I mean, look at all that space under there!

The bigger concern here is the lack of efficiency, and the tension and fatigue this begets. Try not to worry too much about these smaller details and just shoot for smooth and fast.

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#30

after all these years of steel strings, I’ve forgotten how lovely a nylon string could sound.

My first guitar (and my first guitar instructor) was a nylon-er, and for obvious reasons it never stayed that way because I could never make it sound quite that good.

#31

Edited out, irrelevant commentary for this thread.

#32

Here I’m not so sure I agree, Troy. True, there’s lots of air there (i.e. no anchor). But there is also, as you’ve pointed out at other times, a constant ‘depth gauge’ in this clip. Meaning fingers 4 and maybe 3 are providing you with a physical reference point because they’re always grazing the guitar top. So while you’re not anchored, you’re still getting one of the main benefits of an anchor - reference.

That kind of referencing is not easy to pull off for ‘hoppers’ like me; maybe impossible, in fact. No anchor, no referencing - up the creek without a paddle, in terms of accuracy. (And as for my clip - I’m not gonna tell you how many times I shot that before I could show you a fairly clean run;)

Still, I take your point. Just keep my eye on the pick-motion ball. Will do:)

#33

Is this what we want to see?..

Basically same thing, in slo-mo:

…Still concerned though, because I’m ‘feeling the burn’ - can’t keep it up for more than 10-15 seconds without really feeling it in the top of my forearm (dunno what Grey’s Anatomy calls that… the ‘hairy side’).

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Attempted DBX - Trem, Arps, Scales
#34

I think someone else will give you better and more thorough advice, but try this. Keep doing what you’re doing and reach out with your left hand and immobilize your forearm arm so that only your wrist can move. I’m not saying you should adopt this as your new picking technique at all. I’m just saying doing this so that you know what only using your wrist feels like. I bet a few things will just automatically click for you if you get your wrist going while you grab your arm

Forearm is super crucial for more complex motions, but you should definitely get an idea of what it feels like to just bang away on one string with just a wrist motion. I bet your arm pain goes away too

#35

This video turned out much darker than it was on my phone which is a bummer, but I hope you can still get two useful tidbits out of it:

THE FIRST HALF OF THE VIDEO WHERE I’M JUST BANGING AWAY AT ONE NOTE

If you base your picking around simple movements, it’s way easier to think about and do. This is me just sitting down and playing without touching a guitar since around noon. Just record and go. But it sounds alright because I’m literally just moving my wrist. If there was more to it I would have to warm up. But it’s just the same motion I’ve been using all day to wave at dogs walking by my house or to wash my windows. Ya know?

THE SECOND HALF WHERE I START PLAYING ARPEGGIOS!

It sounds like you’re starting to imagine “anchoring” and “referencing” as something it’s really not once you get the hang of your guitar. The strings don’t really move where they are! Once you get the truly know where they are, they’re always there. The thing I’m playing is a variation on this really cool piece Tommo wrote but using my own picking style and it has really big skips. There’s one part where I do a different fingering than Tommo and so I’m jumping from the low e string to the high string in sixteenth notes at 150 bpm! But I don’t need to reference the body because the strings never move! If I tried to tense up and dominate the guitar, this would never work. Instead, I’m just letting the strings and pick do their dance! The only reason my pinkie is there is to VERY slightly brace a little bit of the recoil from the big string skips. Anchoring is something you should do if it helps your mechanics, but you shouldn’t do it so you know where the strings are

When I’m playing 3nps stuff fast, unless I’m palm muting, my hand is just floating and it feels like each string change is literally weaving my hand back towards the body as though guided by a thread. It’s a crazy feeling motion that is really fast and efficient. If I would have had pre-conceived notions about how to anchor I would never have found this mechanic

There are a lot of much much better pickers than me to reference on here, I am just at the beginning of my picking journey. But I hope that this quick little response gives you a bit of insight though by showing two ideas in focus

(Just so you don’t get confused. I am using my forearm a little bit in the second half to turn my arm when I hit the low note of each tremolo pattern. Also, it looks like I’m really digging my arm into the guitar but I’m not; so don’t do that either! Just very gently touch the body and stay loose!)

PS Tommo’s piece is so dang cool and I am totally going to drop a well recorded cover on here once I get it more in my bones. Like seriously five stars

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#36

Looks like a solid USX to me, fast and fluent. What happens, if you do this and just focus on relaxing a little bit more?
It looks like you are gripping the pick really tight for example. Try to be as loose as possible, this might help with the “burn”. No need to change the picking motion in my opinion.
So, good work!
That should Yngwie and EJ quite well

1 Like
#37

You did it! You left stringhopping behind :slight_smile:

This is obviously an upstroke-escape motion, so you can start working on some escaped-upstroke phrases straight away!

\begin{Shameless-Self-Promotion}

Couple of examples that I tabbed - but you can choose anything else that you like and fits the mechanics:

An Yngwie-style shreddy exercises that covers all strings with 6 notes per string (start with downstroke to have upstroke-only changes):

A bluesy etude that altenrates between slower and faster USX phrases:

\end{Shameless-Self-Promotion}

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#38

Wow! That was quick. What did you do to get this happening? Is this a motion you were always able to do but didn’t consider using, or is this brand new?

The speed aspect of this is great. Don’t worry about not being able to do this very long. That will improve over time as you learn not to try too hard. And also, I think people often have super unrealistic expectations about endurance. Who really picks more than a couple bars of uninterrupted sixteenth notes anyway? Most real-world playing has natural breaks in it that allow recovery. It’s normal to think 32 straight notes with no legato or sweeping feels a little effortful.

The only constructive comment here is that the pick attack is uneven. Some notes are chopped or cut off sounding. You can hear in slow motion how the upstrokes pluck harder and sound more grabby than the downstrokes. This is an attack problem. What you want to do is try slightly different tweaks to hand placement, grip and edge picking until this goes away and upstrokes and downstrokes feel and sound more similarly smooth.

The grip section of the Primer is your friend here. I would also check out the forearm section chapter on grip, because that’s the motion you’re doing:

In this chapter we walk step by step through how to get a smooth-sounding attack with a very similar motion and setup to what you’re doing here. You can try straightening the thumb a little for less edge picking, so you don’t have that built in bend in it. The thumb can also overlap the pick if necessary. You can also try a more extended index finger grip like angle pad. You got this far in one day so now you have a great reference point for what the motion should feel like. Just keep that in mind while you experiment with these pick attack tweaks until the notes sound smoother.

Nice work here.

5 Likes
#39

7th11th, been trying that, consciously releasing muscle tension while performing this exercise. I’ll try it some more; thanks for that tip. And Imno, I tried some of your stuff, too (but I still can’t do those faces.)

[I haven’t figured out how to respond to individual posts… is there a way?..]

Thanks, Tommo, for those etudes (and the encouragement!) I really like specific instruction like that. Rather than, ‘okay, now take those new chops into the wide world of music’… instead, ‘now go and do this specific thing to nail it down and improve it.’ I want to get to work on them both, but…

Here comes Johannes earlier point about single vs. double escape. I can kinda guess what you’ll say, but… isn’t DBX foundational in the sense that you should make progress with that first, and only then advance to single escape? After all, single’s harder. (Maybe single’s no more difficult than double as a motion, but the licks you play with single seem to be more challenging.)

Troy, honestly, in four years of playing I don’t recall ever having done this! Tommo’s etudes scare me, but I know that’s because I’ve been avoiding those kind of runs, since until now I couldn’t hope to pull them off.

And yeah, I thought it was uneven; thanks for confirming that. So I’ll start tweaking now, like you suggested.

But back to my question, I would be interested in what people think about DBX vs. USX or DSX as a starting point for building core technique…

#40

Not at all! :slight_smile:

We find that most people have their first “speed breakthroughs” with single escape motions. So I would recommend to at least try to see what happens when you use this new motion to play actual USX lines. You don’t have to spend hours a day doing this, just try here and there when you sit down with the guitar and feel like noodlin’ a bit :smiley:

Of course, at the same time you can continue to explore other motions including DBX.

PS: to attract someone’s attention you can use the “@username” command, just type “@” and you’ll see a list of users that are participating in the thread, like so:

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For quoting text just highlight the bit of text you want to reply to and you’ll see this - press quote and it’ll insert the proper commands in your text editor, you can then move the quoted text wherever you prefer:

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