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.
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?
