I’ve been playing guitar for 5 years. I’m still not sure about what kind of exact picking am I doing. Btw great site Troy!
1 Like
Wow you are very fast! 
You seem an upward pickslanter to me, since your downstrokes appear to go out of the plane of the strings.
You can easily test this: do you find it easier to change strings after downstrokes? Do you find it difficult when instead you try to change after upstrokes?
I would also work a bit on your left/right hand coordination: it seems that sometimes left and right hand are not in sync. But this is very impressive nevertheless!
1 Like
As @tommo said, quite impressing. Definitely UWPS, me thinks 
I’m not sure about the picking mechanic. Seems like a wrist-deviation/elbow blend to me. Just not sure about the degree. the elbow motion might also be be primarily due to string-tracking.
Any idea how many nps or bpm/16ths you can do?
Tom
2 Likes
I find change for both downstroke and upstroke the same. My coordination might be off in this video, I recorded it in morning before drinking my coffee 
. (also used wrong pick 
)
For Tom0711,
Here’s a old video of me testing my nps ( trying to compete with shawns shredding as you can hear his soloing in background ). I don’t wanna brag but some licks I can do fairly on Shawns speed.
1 Like
Interesting! When you get the chance, would you be able to record a lick where all the string changes happen after upstrokes? I’m curios to see how you make it happen from that hand position.
Again very impressive, you are super fast 
1 Like
Holy Sh*t
Maybe Troy should do an interview with you
Chapeau.
1 Like
Here’s an attempt of that. Its kinda hard for me when I have to think about it. My hand has a mind of its own for most of time.
2 Likes
Thanks for posting! As others have pointed out this a good example of a textbook “pronated” uwps technique where the forearm is actually turned so that @Tommo’s ruler test will show an increasing angle with the guitar body. I’ll let Tommo explain further.
In general I think you have great potential with this. I’d try to work on cleaning it up a little bit and becoming more conscious of what your hands are doing. I could be wrong, but in the the most recent clip, it appears you are picking four times on every string, even if you are only fretting three notes. This is something Rusty Cooley sometimes does so that he can get to the next string without the pick hitting the string you just played. Even though (again, I think) this is technically not what you are trying to do, it’s a type of mechanical intelligence because at some level your hands are are aware that the pick needs to get over the string.
What I would do is start slowing this down and practicing phrases which have only an even number of notes per string, and where the final note on each string is a downstroke. You want to make sure you are locking a single picked note to each fretted note and that all the string changes clear properly. Verifying with a camera phone in slow motion might be necessary because you have memorized what you are currently doing and may not be able to feel when it’s locked.
Again, great foundation here - you have all the speed you’ll ever need, and it’s just a matter of tightening things up.
3 Likes
You’re quite good! Could you tell me how many hours a day you practiced when you were making your fastest progress in picking speed? Welcome to the forum!
Haha it’s called Tommo’s ruler test now? Cool by me - I hope it’ll give me citations on google scholar 
The idea is to place a ruler on your forearm so that it touches both the ulna and the radius, just a couple of inches (~5cm) away from the wrist joint (correct?). Then get into your standard playing position on the guitar. You can ask someone to take a picture from behind, so you can see the angle between the ruler and the strings.
This is for example the… Tommo test done on my mode 1 or “primary DWPS” picking position: you can see that the ruler is going towards the guitar body, indicating “supination”:
1 Like
I would say 3 hours every day for 2 years. My biggest progress came from playing things extremely fast and sloppy and then cleaning it up.
2 Likes
Awesome speed. I’d agree with the others on the mechanics… UWPS… and am guessing you are using a lot of elbow in your pick-stroke, which is fine, and something many of us do at high speeds.
As Troy says, you already have the picking speed, so I would just work on cleaning up things. My favorite ‘clean-up’ technique is careful playing at the moderate speeds; like right around 145 bpm 16ths. That really allows you to analyze switches and improve syncing.