I started lessons with a guitar teacher after playing casually and teaching myself things for 2 years. One thing that I had seldom practiced during that time was rhythm, I had almost no sense of time whatsoever so a big part of the lessons I’ve had have been to gradually build up my sense of time. I’m trying to progress in the direction of being able to sight read music and my teacher has said that a picking/strumming style similar to Johnny Smith where the hand moves perpetually like a metronome is the way to go if I wan’t to be able to sightread. He’s prescribed a strumming/picking habit of always downstroking a downbeat and upstroking an upbeat.
I understand the usefulness of this when playing chords as it makes your rhythm more solid and makes sticking to the beat easier since syncopation can be done by simply missing a stroke but hes recommended I do it with single note picking as well. I’m not sure if its simply to build up my sense of time with single notes or if I’ll be picking like this forever but it has been incredibly difficult to maintain a metronome motion of the hand when picking single notes and be accurate.
I play with a floating hand and rest my forearm typically on the top of my telecaster, every time I try to maintain this constant hand motion I hit incorrect strings and overshoot or undershoot many times. I just want to know from people who have learnt to sightread if this kind of hand motion is just training wheels for timing and rhythm or if its a standard motion to use while sight reading. It feels like an enormous amount of extra movement to have. It’s been made all the more confusing by the fact that when I’m reading music I can hear in my head what the rhythm sounds like as I’m going along. I’m only reading rhythm lines at the moment written over ascending and descending scales.
I’m happy to knuckle down for a few weeks at a 35bpm tempo and perfect the metronome picking and the ability to miss strokes while picking single notes but I just don’t have any idea if its a valuable pursuit. I’m currently in school holidays and my teacher wont be doing lessons for a couple of months till the semester restarts.
What technique are you using? Many of the techniques like 2WPS do not “play nicely” with your teacher’s dream, but double-escape seems like the most likely candidate…
I also believe that only double-escaped works for sight reading as 2WPS often requires careful scheduling (for high speed) to work given all of the constraints, e.g., I will make TAB under the sheet music and determine what goes where for my usual 2WPS.
Double escape I presume is like a bluegrass crosspick? I basically rely on my picking direction to assist with anchoring my timing. I downpick a down beat and up-pick the upbeat and try and pick without stopping my hands rotation. My moving hand basically becomes a metronome and as I read the sheet music I simply apply or remove it from the strings while keeping constant motion but from the way I see it now I have some decisions as to how to apply this rationale. I have studied the technique of some bluegrass players and they all seem to anchor in some way in order to achieve a double escape picking technique. I’ve read everywhere that its bad practice to anchor your picking hand so I’ve forced myself to become accustomed to floating. Now when I try to anchor it feels very strange and uncomfortable.(to clarify the anchoring I’ve seen has not been planting, its simply allowing a pinky to glide across the scratch plate to give a reference for distance)
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I downpick all the crotchets (1/4notes) and all the quavers (1/8) notes and reserve upstrokes for the e and a semiquavers (1/16). In this way I only need to have a strong sense of the downbeat and upbeat and can add the e or the a by simply following a downstroke with an upstroke. This will naturally lead to economy picking down the line as the songs I am sightreading become more melodically complicated. The advantage from what I can see is there is no gear shift when transitioning form various subdivisions of of a beat however I will loose alot of the efficiency gained from alternate picking quavers.
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I could alternate pick both quavers and semiquavers. This option would preserve the speed and ease of string skipping with quavers and semiquavers however it raises two issues. The first is the gear shift that occurs on semiquavers. Since my hand is in perpetual motion its effective tempo doubles when transitioning from playing quavers to semiquavers. I am relying on the motion of my hand to cement my tempo and timing and it is constantly shifting back and forth. The other issue it raises is that the & beat when played as a quaver is an upstroke however when played as a semiquaver it is a downstroke. This throws off my sense of timing and rhythm tremendously. I have been using this method so far and while I have made progress it has been difficult to translate it to improvisation. I am struggling have a strong enough sense of meter to constantly shift gears. Continuing this method will result in strict alternate picking with miss strokes.
I appreciate the feedback or having my rationale picked apart as I need a fresh perspective on how to get over this hump. Sorry for such long winded responses as well. 
I don’t think sheet music needs to be scheduled to apply pickslanting, I’d wager its easier to pickslant when playing sheet music rather than tab because in sheet music you read intervals that very visibly dictate rhythm and pitch direction (ascending/descending) while with tab you have to infer rhythm and use co-ordinates for notes rather than ascending or descending from a root pitch intuitively with sheet.
Cross-picking is a true general 1nps technique, it really alternates in general. But the single-escaped techniques are much less general and can require work-arounds (sweeping, etc.) when they encounter a 1nps situation. The reason scheduling is required is that one can get painted into a corner with single-escaped techniques.
If extreme speed is not required perhaps double-escaped technique would be ideal for your needs.
You mean Johnny Smith the downward pickslanter? I transcribed some Johnny licks recently and his shreddier bop stuff was all even numbers of notes per string, switching on upstrokes. It’s pretty obvious in hand closeups:
This is what we would call an “upstroke escape” motion, where upstrokes go up in the air, and downstrokes go into the strings and get trapped. With a closer camera angle we’d see that the pick has a downward pickslant, but that’s sort of secondary. The path of the pick’s motion is what you want to look at here. As @kgk is pointing out, when you use an upstroke escape motion, the lines you play need to be arranged so that the upstroke is the last note on the string in order for this to work.
That being said, there is no rule that you have to always use this motion. And many great players, when you film them, you discover that they have learned to switch picking motions, on the fly, as the phrase requires. There is no thought or expense in doing this. It’s just what they’ve learned to do. I suspect that if you go and film great guitar sightreaders, and if we had more video of Johnny, for example, we would see this mix and match approach to motion. In other words, the player learns that a certain type of phrase simply works with a certain type of motion, and when they see it on the staff, that’s how they play it. No reason not to.
In your case, you’re asking a more generalized question about what kind of picking motion you should use. And the answer to me is always, start with whichever one is fast and smooth right now. Learning to be smooth, fluid, and accurate is the most important first step you can take, regardless of which motion that is. You can always learn more motions over time.
If the first motion you’re good at is a single escape motion, whether that’s upstroke escape or downstroke escape, you will need to pair that with phrases with the right types of string changes. But try not to think of there being anything limiting about this. Again, it’s just one motion of several you may eventually learn. This type of approach is present in all styles we’ve filmed, even bluegrass, where they tend to stick with the “downstroke on downbeats” approach you’re describing. In the case of grassers, many of the signature phrases are specifically designed with all downstroke string changes, to pair with the motion. Crazy but true. Downstroke escape motion, with occasional short detours into upstroke escape, appears to be the most common picking approach in bluegrass. Here’s David Grier as a totally textbook example of that:
Is there soundslice for that one? I feel like breaking myself on the rocks a few times.
We haven’t transcribed this one yet, although I just hit slow in the YT player and learned a little bit of it. We’re super backlogged but working to get Brendon Small out the door currently. We’ll get there, sorry for the delay.
No apology necessary.