@Troy @Hanky_Pooh @Jakku Thanks for all the great comments! What a great Christmas gift! I’ll be glad to post my regular style, but just for info, I have struggled for many years to get past 220 to 240 BPM swinging 1/8th with my regular crosspicking style. That’s why this is so exciting for me, even though right now, I feel like a beginner and am having to learn a whole new vocabulary! I think one thing that helps me in the DWPS style position is the planting of my hand on the body of the guitar. It gives me balance to go faster. Plus, I have some cool sweeping ideas I use in a similar way to the Jimmy Bruno stuff to share as well. I am working on getting a two camera setup for better clarity. I’ll get on some more videos this week! Also, any ideas about how to hold the right hand for DWPS on an arch top style guitar would be great!
The rest stroke of a sweep is the perfect trainer for pickslant trajectory rather than picking parallel with a slanted pick, as @Troy differentiated in his post. You just have to pull out at the same angle you went in but the opposite direction (same slant).
Well, actually rest stroke doesn’t help with pickslanting. In fact, focusing on rest stroke helps with just making reststroke. When I do large motions I have 2 reststrokes: one after downstroke and one after upstroke, which means my pick trajectory is parallel to body. Moreover - sweeping helps to train that straight parallel to body trajectory (if you’re doing sweeping fast enough).
I disagree. Ascending sweeping is a downward pick slant movement. Descending sweeping is an upward pickslant movement. Rest strokes are the original “pick slant” even before there was a pick.
Seems like you’re confusing two different conceptions. It doesn’t matter how pick is slanted itself (which direction it’s pointing). It’s not a pickslanting. As @Troy mentioned above what is matter is a trajectory - whether it goes from/to guitar body or it’s parallel to body.
So, ascending sweep movement usually done with picks tip looking a bit up, and you may think that this is ‘downward pickslanting’. It’s not.
Then you start to move your pick and - in order to make this fast and clean - you use trajectory across all that strings. Which is parallel to guitar body. Which is ‘zero pickslanting’.
Although, sweeping is really easier for those who use pickslanting in normal playing, because they already have necessary pick angle.
Well aware of said trajectory. If you you trace the path a pick lays out from the point it leaves one string, inward towards the rest stroke position on the next, and then back up through an upstroke of the string just picked (not the rest string), that is the classic pick goes in, pick goes back out downward pickslant move. I’m not talking about an arpeggio here, just for clarification. I’m talking about exiting one string and using the adjacent string as a resting or bounce point for the pick to trace out the same slanted line of motion, as Troy has suggested in the past.
This is an interesting and important discussion! And it underscores the ultimate need for a CTC glossary (which we know Troy and the gang are going to create at some point).
To my mind, DWPS can refer to two things: the resting downward slanted orientation of the pick itself (e.g., Albert Lee), or the angled pick path/trajectory that goes beneath the plane of the strings on downstrokes and away from the plane of the strings on upstrokes (e.g., Yngwie, EJ, etc.). For the former, you can switch strings after downstrokes, as when Albert crosspicks using the combined motion mechanics to achieve the orthogonal path of the pick. For the latter, the whole Yngwie five-rule DWPS system becomes possible and the angled pick path can be specifically practiced using the rest stroke technique.
I’m not seeing things. I do rest strokes when play with large motions (on acoustic guitar usually) and it has nothing to do with pickslant. Here’s the example (I used my electric guitar because my webcam is mounted on it):
as you can see I may do reststrokes on upstrokes or on downstrokes - it doesn’t really matter. I use from zero pickslanting to upward pickslanting. On speed passages I use UPWS only (although I try to learn DWPS).
As for sweeping. You just can’t do it without moving your pick parallel to guitar body. Unless you try to do some kind of Eric Johnson slow bounce technique.
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I guess this kind of misunderstanding appears after Ctc )) I think that Troy believed that picking motion is more or less symmetrical in terms of trajectory - which means that knowing angle of a pick gives you knowing of it’s trajectory. And I think it’s true for majority of guitar players. However, after his series about pickslanting there’re a lot of guys appeared, who want to learn another way of slanting which is not common for them. But learn new pick grip is easy, it’s much harder to relearn old mechanical habits. Consequently we now have guys who use some pickslanting while moving wrong (I’am a living example - trying to learn DWPS, but doing the same UPWS movement even with my pick slanted down).
I think the reason people are relating rest stroke to dwps is that the rest stroke is a way to take a “string hopping” movement and force it to become more of a linear dwps movement. That is, it is a way to get someone who starts their pickstroke above the plane of the strings to end their pickstroke below the plane of the strings.
Agree. And for the same reason it doesn’t work for people who start downstroke below that plane (like regular upward pickslanter)
And “downstroke” is an important distinction I didn’t make above: I assumed with my DWPS bias that “starting a pickstroke above the plane of the strings” necessarily implied downstroke, but that is only true in the DWPS case. In theory, maybe there are people who could be helped by doing “upstroke” rest strokes, though offhand I can’t think of an example of a high profile UWPS player who does a “rest stroke” on upstrokes.
Actually I do both reststrokes (after upstroke and after downstroke) when playing acoustic. It doesn’t help with slanting however. Seems like these things are quite unrelated.
“Rest stroke” necessarily implies “below the plane of the strings”, though “below the plane of the strings” does not necessarily imply “rest stroke”. So while rest stroke is not necessary for pickslanting, rest strokes always have consequences related to pickslanting. Sometimes it is useful to use those consequences as a teaching aid.
The reason why people keep bringing up rest strokes in regard to pickslanting is because @Kean started doing this and discovered that it helped him get rid of stringhopping. Some players have spent so many years making little bouncy movements with the pick, without even realizing it, that focusing on the pick/string contact that happens during a rest stroke can sometimes way to help them learn to stop doing this and make a more linear (from the “Magnet” perspective) type of picking motion.
You don’t have a stringhopping problem so this is not relevant to you. You use a uwps setup, which is easily changeable to dwps if you want.
In fact, we will be doing a live broadcast soon for subscribers covering… picking motion! We’ll cover the basic arm / hand setups to achieve all the most common picking motions, including elbow, forearm, and wrist, in both uwps and dwps form where appropriate.
This is probably the number one issue we’ve learned everyone is facing, and this type of overview should move us further along to addressing it. Eventually, condensed versions of this material will make it into the Pickslanting Primer, cats and dogs will get along, and everyone will be happy forever and ever.
I believe that it helps to some people. But it’s not a magic bullet, and it’s definetely not a ’ perfect trainer for pickslant trajectory’ as it was stated above. Just one piece of a puzzle. It could help, it could not.
ehmmm… actually I do )) That’s why I try to learn DWPS. My UPWS is subtle and it doesn’t help with string changing. Well… not always. My new webcam helped me to see that I occasionally use ‘swiping’, however my picking is inconsistent, unreliable and I don’t feel it right.
I believe it would be marvelous. Things you do, guys, are just incredible.
Ok then maybe there are levels of stringhopping! The most fundamental case is where someone cannot play on a single string without a bouncing motion. You, sir, can pick at almost 240 beats per minute on a single string so you have nothing to worry about.
You just haven’t figured out how to make that motion on an angle which means you’re already at step two. For your uwps form, what you need is a little more wrist extension. If you’re using a wrist deviation type movement, it’s the slight extension bend that causes the downstroke to escape the strings. It doesn’t need to be much, just a small amount. You may have to flatten your forearm a little against the guitar body to achieve this.
Some of this is already covered in the Primer but again, we can do a much better job.
Oh… oh, I see! I thought ‘stringhoping’ refers to that excessive movement when switching to another string. Ok, now I’ve got it.
I’d surely try this! Thanks!
Just to add to this discussion. I think having a curved picking motion is a great asset, even for DWPS. It really makes the picking more reliable and easier to switch strings… and it even adds to the sound… because it gives you a bit more power when you strike the string. Eric Johnson talks about this as well.
That being said… if you want to do a true cross-picking style… the pick motion needs to have no slant. That is not as easy as it sounds… and takes a bit of time to remove any natural slant that you might have.
Picking movements are almost always curved, because most movements of the arm and hand cause the part that’s moving to trace an arc. So this “more power” aspect, I’m not seeing how that would be the case.
An elbow picking movement that simply moves back and forth is still curved. It’s just curved in a plane parallel to the strings, so it traces an arc when viewed from audience perspective, but appears to follow a straight line when viewed down the strings in our usual filming style.
Eric Johnson’s picking movement is this kind of “string view” straight line movement. It is not a curved movement perpendicular to the strings, despite what he may or may not say about it.
Eric’s famous “bounce” technique, that movement is definitely “perpendicularly curved”. But it’s also stringhopping and can’t be done fast. This is not the movement Eric uses for his fluid / fast playing, again, even if he thinks he does.
Not a knock on Eric. He’s one of the few really famous players to address the topic of how picking motion is supposed to work, and he got parts of this story right even if he didn’t get all the way there. But looking back we can see he was onto something.
Boy, this is where guitar mechanics gets really nerdy. When I say curved, I’m talking about curved perpinducular to the strings, just like with your Steve Morse video with the flamingos and the golf swing illustration.
In order to get that specific type of curve, in a sharp enough parabola, so that it can help clear the strings of a subtle pickslant (or even completely clear the strings on its own for cross-picking)… it requires multiple picking mechanics working together to give you the additive effect of a curve. Also similar to Martin Miller’s mechanic… .which uses wrist in combination with the finger motion, or country cross-pickers.
This additive effect of mechanics gives you a lot more strength when you hit the string. A similar concept goes with golfers, or pitchers. I can vouch for this personally… as I started to add more and more mechanics to my picking motion… I had to switch from a thin pick, to a much harder pick. I now use the giant triangle stubby mostly used for bass, which I can barely move using my older techniques.
So currently, I use every mechanic combined (all the ones you showed in your video), with the exception of the elbow, which I used for tracking. But at high speeds (190bpm+), I do use a tad of elbow.
The wonderful thing about this technique, is that it looks and feels the same at 80 bpm as it does at 180 bpm. My tremelo feels similar to my one-note-per-string alt-picking.
But back to Eric Johnson. I realize Eric does that bounce at slower speeds when he trys to break out of his DWPS… which I agree is inefficient because its more of a ‘peck’ than a curve. But what I was talking about was when he talks about creating his trademark picking sound when he decided to use his fingers along with his wrist (at high speeds) That helped give him the additive effect of the two movements, which he says gave him better ‘contact with the string’… which is why he sounds the way he does. It’s a great sound… I’ve been obsessing over it for a the last couple years. Its ironic… that his DWPS technique ultimately led to me switching to cross-picking. Who woulda thought?