Hi!
I’m currently watching through the pickslanting primer vids. After watching some of my playing, i guess, i’m stringhopping. I try to adapt the up- and downstroke escape technique, but i’m not 100% sure, if i’m doing it right, because my spatial imagination sucks hard 
I would greatly appreciate feedback, if i’m doing it right or wrong. Also, please excuse the bad video quality. Tried to set the recording settings of my Zoom q4n to 60 fps, but the picture looks horrible now.
thanks!
Thanks for posting! This looks awesome.
I think your first picking motion, the slower one, might be a double escape motion and not stringhopping. This is the kind of motion that Andy Wood and Molly Tuttle use. Here’s the explainer on that, with some nice closeup shots:
The Andy version and the Molly / David Grier version are the two most common varieties. The difference is that Molly and David anchor more on the thumb side, and the pinky side doesn’t touch the strings. In the closeup video you can see how this tilts the arm and hand a little. Andy anchors on both heels of the palm, thumb and pinky. You might be able to tell from your technique and from looking at the closeup shots which one looks more like the one you’re doing.
Either way, the point is that this is not stringhopping. The motion it creates does go up and down, but in a very shallow path. This is one of the reasons it’s efficient. So if that’s what you’re doing, there’s no need to change it. If you can do this a little faster with no tension, it’s a very useful picking motion and I’d keep it.
The motion at 21 seconds is definitely not stringhopping. It’s a very nice looking and sounding DSX wrist motion. That’s this one:
Honestly, it looks perfect to me, and the attack sounds nice and smooth too. With these two motions, I’d say you’re ready to go. You want to assemble a basket of phrases that you can play, that involve a lot of variety. Single string patterns to work on speed and hand synchronization, multi-string scale patterns are good for learning to switch strings because they tend to stay on each string for four or six notes before moving on, and they will work with a DSX motion like yours, which requires an even number of notes per string.
For the double escape motion, I’d encourage you to try some arpeggio lines like this:
…and some jazz type lines like this, if you’re into this type of stuff:
Reason being that these types of lines aren’t really pattern based, and have bits of one-, two-, and three-note-per string fingerings all mixed together.
Anyway, just some suggestions but this all looks great to me. Nice work.
wow, thats a deep explaination to my question. Thanks a lot, for spending so much time for a “picking-rookie” like me. The pick-motions shown in my short clip feels alright, but still is a little strange in regard of my old “just pick the strings straight up-and-down” motion (which is not shown in the clip). But i guess this is just because I started to use your suggested pick-technique only one, two days ago. I still have a lot of stuff to watch from your pickslanting primer playlist, so i’m really thrilled what comes next - of course parallel to the things you just recommended me.
At last, i want to use the opportunity to thank you again for everything you and your team are doing for the guitar community. If your “cracking the code” video series on youtube doesn’t exist, i would have never be that motivated, as i am know. I stopped dreaming and took the guitar finally in my hand for real. If i just keep on practising hard, i will reach my goal someday - playing like eddie does 