Thanks to Troy’s insight and other people at this forum I have come slowly into my own approach to alternate picking recently and it seems to be extremely helpful for me.
Basically, I figured out that my most natural slant is UWPS. So I try to make that my default.
To give an example, if I’m using spiders starting on a down on every new string: I’ll play the first 3 notes with UWPS, then the last note as I hit it, I’ll change to DWPS. When I then go to the next string, I’ll repeat the process.
What this means in reality is, at faster speeds, it’s an insanely quick move from the last note of the string to the following string. Which means as I hit the last note of the string I am using DWPS, and when I hit the first note of the next string it’s back to UWPS. From what I understand, Michael Batio and Andy Wood use this same technique. Please correct me if I’m wrong?
Here’s are the main 2 questions :
- In reality, the motion to get from one string to the next with this approach, there is a little bit of a curved motion. Resulting in what I understand to be similar or exactly the same as cross picking. Am I wrong about this?
Please explain how the movement should look like moving from one string to the next using this approach that I use.
- Correct me if I’m wrong, but at the end of the day, the key to all this slanting stuff, forearm rotation, etc, is to have the pick escape the strings efficiently and not get caught or blocked. That’s really the name of the game and the number one rule here! is that correct to say?
Thanks so much for the help! This forum is amazing