Hey y’all, I’m Todd from Louisiana. Just wanted to introduce myself and ask for some advice on DWPS. I seem to have trouble controlling pick depth while doing it. I hope that makes sense lol.
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Depth didn’t look bad, what makes you think that it’s an issue?
Another feller from Loosiana!
Edit: I’m from Loosiana too
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I’m not 100% sure but I feel like I’m getting more resistance than I should be.
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Wrote this as a response in a different thread:
I think that by implementing accent notes, you’ll start to develop control over the attack of the unaccented ones, which might inherently start making you control your depth. Sorry if this sounds confusing!
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Hi Todd - thanks for signing up!
Is this as fast as you can go with this technique? Because this doesn’t look like “dwps”, or what we now call USX motion. Notice how the pick doesn’t move in a straight line into and out of the strings. It only lifts above the strings at the top of the motion. When you do the downstroke, once you hit the string, the pick flattens out and moves parallel to the strings. That kind of motion path you sometimes see with forearm motion, but not wrist / elbow motion as you’re doing it here.
Short story, I don’t think you’re doing this right. The right motion will be fast and move rapidly from above the strings to below it and back again.
If you haven’t done so, I highly recommend watching through the new “Testing Your Motions” sequence to get a handle on a motion that works:
Once you’ve done this, you’ll either have a motion this is working, or you’ll be experiencing something specific that’s preventing that from happening, and we’ll be better able to advise on what to do next.
Keep us posted!
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Hi Troy, I have gone through the test your motions section and I was able to achieve basically the same results as in the videos but when I go to apply it to actually playing it just doesn’t seem to happen for me.
That’s fine, and to be expected on your first day with a new tool. What kind of motion did you come up with, and what does it look like? Let’s take a look at that one.
Edit: Or are you saying you couldn’t do a tremolo that’s fast using any motion? Did you try the tremolo test too?
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Awesome, light years better! This is what you’re looking for. It looks like downstroke escape wrist motion, similar to the Al Di Meola motion in the table top tests.
You may notice there are various points where it sort of gets confused and almost stops. Toward the end of the clip around the 20 second mark, for example, you’ll see some confusion, where the hand almost can’t remember what motion it’s trying to make. This is normal. I don’t know if you watched the case study with Kim’s tremolo, but this is exactly what hers looked like as well. She had pockets of correctness and smoothness, with moments of this confusion in between.
The goal is to get these pockets of correctness to become longer over time, with less confusion moments. An easy / fun way to get into this would be death-metal style tremolo alongside a backing track or song that you like. Just make up a simple lead part that fits the song where you basically fret one note that fits the chord, maybe change it when the chord or verse changes, whatever is easy for the left hand. All on a single string. Play some rhythm parts in between, for variety, and so you get a break.
I would try and do that on and off for a week or so and see if you can get the motion to be smoother and maybe even a little faster.
Let us know how you make out!
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Thanks so much for the help! I’ll definitely try all of this and keep y’all updated!