Metheny -- not quite 2-way nor crosspicking

Playing Technique
#1

I’ve been checking out Pat Metheny’s technique through the lens of CtC, and am noticing some recurring mechanical tropes in his playing. 1st of all, he has a thumb-heel anchor (kind of like Andy Wood) and a beautiful 2 O’clock motion on down strokes, and for the time-being according to what I can see he is an UWPSer, to the extent he relies on pickslanting. He seems to reliably escape on down strokes, for example. But the exceptions are interesting…

He will commonly use outside string changes when playing back and forth from one string to the next, which kind of looks like crosspicking (he’ll escape on a downstroke going to a higher string, then escape on an upstroke when going to a lower string and vice versa). And he does a lot of this. But the crosspicking rotations are for these licks, and then he’ll jump back to UWPS orientation as his default. So I don’t think it would be accurate to call him a crosspicker, and certainly not a two-way slanter. Also, very interestingly, as tempos start to heat up, he often (and I never realized HOW MUCH till now) will hammer one note on a string unprepared. For example

methenymechanicthing

This makes sense to me, as it gets tough to rotate one-note-per-string at faster tempos, especially if you’re set to UWPSing. Also worth noting, those upstrokes pop out in Pat’s playing with wrist flexion kind of like DWPSers would…

So, other than sharing these observations and unleashing them to the hive for your collective thoughts, I have a specific question: what should we call a player who lives in a certain pickslanting orientation, who will use elements of crosspicking or two-way slanting without ever fully immersing themselves into the logical elaboration of those techniques? For me, PM would be an idiosyncratic UWPSer, a person whose playing and picking comes from the UWPS orientation, but who has discovered some aesthetic and mechanical tools that break out of this system for very specific licks and devices.

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#2

I know we’re responsible for all this confusion, so I apologize for that! But it’s important not to get hung up on the terminology. There is usefulness in giving names to whole approaches / styles, maybe for the purpose of categorizing different players into boxes of other players who are similar. But where it goes off the rails is when people who are trying to learn think “two way pickslanting” is a different kind of movement than “crosspicking”.

What you’re describing here sounds like a classic case where simply explaining the motions the player is using is the clearest way to go - especially if what someone wants to learn is how to play the phrase the way the player is doing it.

I know you’re doing that here, so this is not quibble with what you are describing. It’s more about the terms and trying to iron out how we explain these things to people who have no doubt been confused by our often unclear descriptions of things when we started to where we are now.

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#3

So, in jazz we guitarists often assume, or have assumed for years, that musical vocabulary is first and foremost based upon left-hand fretboard visualization (take Charlie Christian for example), secondly upon transcribing horn players and pianists (so therefore independent of guitaristic bias, or so we think), and almost never based upon right-hand picking mechanics.

You’ll often hear a player like Pat or Sco claim their use of hammers/legato/etc. is aesthetic, to get horn phrasing, which seems to me only partially true when you see how their use of legato also solves right-hand mechanical problems. CtC exposed to me how integrated the great jazz guitarist’s vocabulary (all that of great guitar players in general) is to their right-hand mechanic.
I totally agree with you regarding movement, and your point is noted and appreciated. I guess where I am still hung up is orientation, how a player’s right hand anchors and is in effect biased to prefer certain string escapes (off of downs or ups or whatever), and how this is related to left-hand fingering (two-notes per string, or even notes-per string, or using a slur when odd-numbers per string, for example). Pat seems clearly loaded to be a UWPSer, but breaks out of that orientation for very specific licks which use a consistent picking mechanic. But the orientation we would associate with UWPSing, it seems to me, is “home.” I think I need help parsing that aspect of this still. Am I off track to look for a player’s “home” right-hand orientation?

#4

You know what’s funny? I have read many interviews with PM (I’m a big fan) and he has said he doesn’t think his technique is that good. He even mentioned that he would like to get lessons from Gambale on picking.

From listening to PM he doesn’t seem to have a problem with picking and there are some lines he can play with strict alternate picking at 150bpm +.

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#5

I’d love to see video of him strict alternating! His playing is so sassy lol, with slurs and hammers and so on that I can’t seem to find any of that.

#6

methenylicks

Some more licks for anyone interested :metal:

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#7

There is this great clinic by John which you can check out right on YT where he goes through all the melodic minor modes. It’s super approachable / gettable. I never listened to him before I saw this and was a total convert after. Anyway, there is a moment early on where he specifically addresses picking technique and basically says that he uses legato because he could never figure out alternate picking, but he thinks it sounds good/unique as a result. So at least in this case, he may have made the ‘horn’ comments at other points, and you’re right lots of jazz players have made those types of comments, including Stern in our interview. But I think just as often players will tell you, actually like Jimmy Bruno does in our interview, that they could never get alternate picking and that’s why the use the style they use.

Here’s the clinic. [ Edit: ] Ha, the whole thing is in Russian. The full thing used to be up there in English, you can probably find it somewhere. Here’s an English clip of it:

Biased in what sense? We’re learning that a lot, lot of players are supinated, and a supinated approach gives you easy access to both upstroke and downstroke escapes. That’s how wrist-based crosspicking techniques work. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re lightly supinated (Stern, Andy Wood), medium (Albert Lee), or very (Steve Morse). For any arm position, there is always a downstroke escape and an upstroke escape you can use.

Pronated approaches like Grier and Tuttle are the same. However I don’t think we’ve seen a pronated player who uses upstroke escapes all the time, aka “pronated downward pickslanter”. Of course as soon as I hit “reply” I’ll think of one and have to go back and edit this. But for now it seems like the supinated players are more likely to be either, whereas pronated players are more likely to be uwps players or crosspickers. And keep in mind that players who might appear pronated, like John McLaughlin, really aren’t, and I was wrong about that. John is just a lightly supinatd player, and his downstrokes look a lot like Andy’s or Stern’s.

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#8

Oh man, I love that Sco vid! I remember getting a bootleg of it many years ago, pre-youtube era, and lost my mind. So good.

So maybe a sloppy, hand-written transcription of one of my favorite players, Martijn Van Iterson, will illustrate what I’m trying to articulate. What I’m trying to suggest is that perhaps great players are dialed in or biased towards certain string escapes. We could call up-escapers DWPSers and down-escapers UWPSers. Regardless of motion or mechanic (clockshape, supinated, etc.), which as you’ve deconstructed profoundly, you could examine a players improvisations and see _mostly_DWPSing, with occasionally forays into crosspicking and UWPS to solve problems or for certain licks.

In Martijn’s playing, at first glance, sure, he seems to be a supinated two-way pick slanter by my best guess. We see him rotate out of down strokes to hit a new string on an up like you’d see in the Gilbert sixes or whatever. But the thing is, he really doesn’t do that often. For the most part, his playing uses escapes associated with DWPS. He doesn’t sweep up, but does sweep down. I know you mention something to this effect in your two-way slanting seminar, that two-way slanters have a default setting, right?

martijnvanitersonsolodarnthatdream

Wherever I’ve circled the transcription is when he rotates out of DWPS to start a string w/ an upstroke before promptly returning to DWPS. https://youtu.be/714KzRbcybk?t=3m43s

Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time to interact and challenge my understanding as I grasp towards a unified sense of how to build vocabulary using these different mechanics and systems. Again, thanks so much for your great work!

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#9

Absolutely! No doubt about that. If that’s what you were getting at, then 100%. This was the original “this person is a uwps player” observation.

This brings us to the next logical question: Why does someone like John McLaughlin, as a famous example, use mostly downstroke escapes (i.e. “UWPS”) when his arm position actually permits both types? And further, when he goes in for the occasional upstroke escape, why does he use forearm to get it, when that’s not necessary either?

One way this can happen is if you use the wrong wrist motion. Notice in something like the 902, both the 9 and 2 are almost flat to the strings. They are as flat as you can get while still escaping. That’s why crosspicking works with 902 and not with 901 or 9012. The 901 and 9012 paths aren’t stringhopping, but to try and do those motions quickly wouldn’t work because you’re making almost a right angle in the air. I think this is what a lot of players do here in Technique Critique, when they have “stringhopping” problem. It might not be stringhopping, but it’s not efficient enough to be done smoothly and quickly either.

But now imagine what happens if you have the same arm position McLaughlin does, and you only use downstroke escapes, and you use a 1 o’clock movement. Everything will actually be fine so long as you play “uwps” licks. But the moment you go for an upstroke escape, you’re in trouble, because 1209 / 9012 is too angular to do it quickly.

So what do you do to fix that? You rotate the forearm. Your upstroke escape has now become forearm because there was no flat, efficient way to do it with wrist.

So in other words, if someone like McLaughlin is making a 1 o’clock movement instead of a 2 o’clock movement, then that’s why he biases. Because he’s not going flat enough to do a 9 o’clock escape, so he tends to avoid them. And when he does do them, he needs forearm to get them, which feels mechanically expensive and again, there is a tendency to avoid, by feel, that type of expense.

That’s just a hypothesis, but I think this is why some players feel the need to use forearm rotation for some escapes whereas others do not. i.e. Because they are using the wrong wrist movement for their arm position.

Alternative hypothesis #1: McLaughlin is doing a 2 o’clock motion for downstroke escapes, but he is too pronated / parallel so 9 o’clock doesn’t escape and requires forearm.

Alternate hypothesis #2: McLaughlin is doing 2 o’clock for downstroke escapes, and he has enough supination to cause 9 o’clock escapes, but he just never figured out that movement. He figured out 2 o’clock, it worked really well, he wrote lines with it, and didn’t get far enough to figure out 9 o’clock. Doesn’t explain why he uses forearm for upstroke escapes though. Maybe it’s just easier to figure out then 2 and 9 together? Why would that be?

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#10

Interesting observation, and - not that I’m in ANY way in McLachlan’s league - that’s actually something that I’ve noticed in my own playing once I started slowing down, that there are a couple string changes I find myself sort of “cocking” my arm while making certain string changes in a run, which I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that either 1) they’re changes where I’m not quite escaping enough due to an unoptimal combination of movements, or 2) I probably am, but it’s a mechanical tick I developed before I was escaping far enough, and I’m still doing it largely based on muscle memory. I’ve got some time this weekend, I think, I’ll have to pull out the camera and do some diagnosis.

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#11

What about this seminario video?

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#12

For sure. If you watch Antigravity, this was the original “two-way pickslanting” observation. In other words, when I first noticed this type of rapid arm movement, it was what I thought two-way pickslanting was. Over time we’ve come to realize that the “two-way” aspect of “two-way pickslanting” is more broadly the concept of alternating motion paths - sometimes downstroke escape, sometimes upstroke escape. And sometimes all three in a sequence, as a kind of connector movement. That’s the “down, up, rotate” concept. The more recent insight was realizing this can even be managed with mostly wrist movement, which is why players like Paul Gilbert seem to have little to no arm involvement most of the time.

In your case, yes, we don’t know if occasional forearm movement became learned and that’s why you feel the need to use it. But it’s also possible that your wrist movement is not always as flat as it needs to be. If you use a Mike Stern or Andy Wood style arm position, which is supinated but only just barely, then your flat wrist movement will be 902. Any escapes more vertical than this will probably require arm involvement.

If you’re more supinated, like Albert or Steve, then your flat wrist movement will be 801 or 7012. Different clockface pathways, same degree of flatness. You just have to make sure to choose the flattest wrist escape movements for your arm position.

So in your case, see if you get can that flat movement happening on both downstrokes and upstrokes, and that may lessen the feeling that you need to move your arm to get certain string changes. If not, it may just be learned. This is probably fine if the motion is small, but the more agressive it becomes, the more it can make it difficult to play smoothly when it comes on, sort of like turbo lag in a car.

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#13

I THINK I’m closer to the Andy Woods camp - my picking feels most natural when my arm feels very nearly parallel with the front of the guitar, although it does remain slightly supinated (and, honestly, probably more so than I’m making it sound, and it’s just that what feels like “nearly parallel” to me is just sort of the position I’ve gotten accustomed to).

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#14

Yay, I love this thread, so much to chew on! I don’t have any replies or thoughts at this immediate moment, just a lot to digest. Thank you, @Troy, for the thoughtful and in-depth responses. Gonna dive in. Best regards, everyone!

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#15

I’ve listened to a fair bit of Metheny, and I’d be interested if there was much in his playing that met all (not some) of this criteria:

  1. Picking every note with no break in rhythm/duration for >12 notes or so
  2. Speeds that are past the typical string hopping territory (roughly…16ths at 120?)
  3. String change scenario for the fingering he is using where 1 way slanting isn’t possible

I don’t think there’s a ton of stuff in his vocabulary like that. So even if there are some wonky string changes I think it’s often in a short burst with breaks of slurred notes, or it’s at a slower tempo. Because the thing about say thelicks in this post from @blueshinstuschen is that there is always a slur coming up which cuts the picking work down so much that even not-so-great strategies can work fine. Like to have to ‘crosspick’ just for a pair of notes but then follow it with slur is a lot easier, anyway I think you guys get what I’m driving at.

Just food for thought with Metheny.

For me, since my crosspicking sucks so much (for now) and my two way slanting is not super hot, when I play uptempo jazz improv stuff I think I do a lot of the same mechanical things that metheny does, using slurs to escape, more picking than sco maybe but not a ton of consecutive strokes across strings and such.

Just for what it’s worth…

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