Muscles involved in lessons? Crosspicking

Playing Technique
#1

Hey, Troy,

I watched all your crosspicking videos. Thank you very much for your hints. I have also watched many other videos of you. What I am missing - but maybe I didn’t notice that because I don’t speak English as my mother tongue - is how the muscles of the whole arm musculature are involved. For example the wrist stroke. You are addressing the ulnar here, for example. But what about the biceps. With the violin, for example, you can perform the vibrato with the muscles of the upper arm, forearm, (wrist) or finger, or a combination of these, each with a different weight. In this way, even the smallest finger movements, for example with the biceps, are controlled by the vibrato (“Going for the big muscle”). This is in addition to the joints and arm areas and quite helpful to know. Is this part of your PS-Primer? Very helpful I find your descriptions like “door knocking” or “waving”.

Pardon my English. I hope I have expressed myself halfway comprehensible.

Many greetings

Lars

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#2

Hi! Thanks for posting. There is not one way to “do” crosspicking — you can use wrist motion, combinations of forearm and wrist, combinations of fingers and wrist, and so on. Each approach uses different muscles and feels a little different. So in the Pickslanting Primer, we try to provide as many practical hints as possible: what arm position to use, what grip to use, which joint or joints should move or not move, and what it’s supposed to feel like. I’m not super concerned with which muscles specifically are being used. Instead, our instructions try to be more general, based on position and feel. We don’t have all the instructions for all the motions yet, but we’re adding new stuff all the time.

As a general note, we don’t use the term “crosspicking” any more to describe picking motion because it was confusing to people. That’s our fault, and apologes for that. When we want to talk about a type of picking motion where the pickstroke appears curved, we now call it “double escape”. And we also try to be clear which joint motion we’re talking about, because, again, finger motion, wrist motion, forearm motion, elbow motion — they’re all different.

But when we’re talking about arpeggio phrases played in bluegrass, we still say “crosspicking” because that’s the term they use in that musical style. Sorry for the confusion!

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