Newbie questions about Pickslanting for an improviser

Playing Technique
#1

Hello everyone,

I’m new to this forum and have a few questions about Pickslanting. I’ve been playing for decades, but my picking has never been that good. After doing more research and learning about Troy’s Pickslanting ideas, I’ve landed here.

My Pickslanting questions come from my being a completely improvisational player. I don’t play licks and never have planned solos. I just enjoy improvising.

SO, with that being said, can Pickslanting become so second nature that you can switch back and forth between Upward and Downward slanting without knowing how many notes you plan to play on each string? Do you slant your pick/wrist when you hit the last note on the string? I understand how a 2 note per string line lends itself to slanting a certain way for the duration of the lick, but what if that number is changing?

Thanks for reading and I hope this makes sense and aren’t dumb questions.

#2

But you would still have to have some system in place that you are using that are following the chords, or at best the root tonic of the key at play. So it has some constraints, how are you currently tackling it? Maybe take some video of your playing, and analyze what you are doing first before adding anything technical to the mix so you have a better footing of where you might want to step. This website offers many different facets of picking depending on our own natural picking tendencies. I just recently learned the rest stroke, and while it fit my natural usx tendencies, it was a pretty painstaking task. Reason being is I believe my actual motion was more straight lined, but most Gypsy Jazz stuff is rotation, supination and pronation of the hand which I had to train in. About 1 to 2 months of not much rhythm really being portrayed before I finally felt what was going on to start speeding things up. This is why I advise you to figure out what you are doing first, before jumping or adding anything new to the mix.

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#3

Thanks. Yes, I’ve been trying to analyze how I have been trying to achieve faster picking (not very successfully mind you) to hopefully help figure out where my issue is.

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#4

Hey, I see you’re a new member! Welcome!

Check this out, it was one of the biggest “mind blown” reads I’ve had on Troy’s platform

I don’t think anyone would accuse JM of “not really improvising”. But on some level, he’s deploying pre-rehearsed patterns/licks. Digging deeper (mainly through reading other posts on here) I learned that very few of the world renowned improvisors are “just going for it”. I was never good at improvising and this is part of the reason why. I thought about it in terms of “here’s all the notes available to me based on the key/chord, now have at it”.

The best improvisors have a huge bucket or vocabulary of musical phrases that they can deploy at will. And this is the improvisational aspect of it. Which phrase they deploy is to some extent on the fly, but they already know how to play the phrase. Even if they don’t “understand” pickslanting/escape motion, their nervous system does. That’s why McLaughlin improvises with near exclusive DSX phrases, yet it’s still “fresh” and doesn’t convey a sense of something that’s pre-rehearsed.

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#5

This is incredibly helpful and I’m checking this out right now. Thank you!

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#6

I come from an improvisational background and have thought through this question, as well as raised it here. The issue with getting an answer is that most people associate “improvisation” with Jazz, Blues, etc. So, in most cases, people will expect that you’ll have lines or licks that you draw from, and approach it from that angle: “use USX, add a hammer-on / pull-off”, etc. I don’t come from a style of improvisation that approaches music like that. Hell, there aren’t even any chords in my charts, nor is there a ‘form’ to be improvised over, and it’s not “Free Jazz”. So for me, the only answer is that I need to be able to do double-escape.

Good luck!

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#7

That makes sense. I’ll have to look into ‘double-escape’ and see if Troy has videos on that. Thanks so much.

#8

He has lots of them. Just beware it can be a big rabbit hole. The path to success usually recommended is to ensure you have a good either USX or DSX motion. That will give you a strong base and a reference point. There’s this misconception that double escape (DBX) is physically harder or more challenging. Not to say there aren’t some concerns, like accuracy and string tracking. But the motion itself should feel pretty free and smooth, just like a fluid “single escape” motion should.

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#9

This was a pretty eye opening thing for me too, as someone who’s always seen himself as a pure improviser too. (tangent - there’s also no reason I couldn’t have worked this out for myself, just looking at my own improvised playing, had i put the thought into it, and there’s probably a whole LOT to unpack there).

No solo is ever really PURELY improvised. It’s never TOTALLY unpredictable from note to note. There’s always an assortment of “stock” phrase and lick building blocks that a player is using, part of both their genre’s vocabulary, and their own personal vocabulary. Even if there’s a lick where the player may not always play it exactly the same way twice, there’s the core framework of the lick, and muscle memory is definitely there. This is especially true of the faster stuff.

So, while looking at improvising as “if I want to be able to improvise freely, I need a picking technique that can effortlessly play anything” can certainly seem tempting, that’s only one possible answer, and it’s probably the unnecessarily hard one. The other answer is, “if my picking technique functions in this particular manner, then I should build a personal vocabulary of licks and runs that i can play quickly and can improvise around that work well for my picking technique.” One of the things I’ve learned here is that I pick with escaped downstrokes, so I’ve made a point of working more fast picked runs into my playing that flow naturally with single-escaped downstrokes, and now I tend to work things like variations of the Gilbert 6’s pattern into my playing, maybe linking the motif together in different ways and moving it around the neck, but using that basic framework a lot for faster picked runs, because 1) it sounds cool, and 2) I can do it pretty efficiently.

I think this concept taken to the Nth degree is Yngwie - he swears he improvises most of his solos, in the studio AND live, and he has an extremely regimented picking approach where he can reliably be depended on grouping runs in certain ways to align for his picking hand, or using economy picking in certain ways, or mixing in pulloffs in certain ways… but that doesn’t stop him at all from improvising.

Think of it maybe as like a creative limitation; sometimes imposing certain limits on a process for whatever arbitrary reasons can force creativity n other ways.

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#10

Hard agree. Almost all of the best things I’ve written have come about as the result of imposing constraints on myself.

“Today I’m going to write something in 5/4.”
“Today I’m going to write a rhythm riff that’s entirely 1 note per string.”
“Today I’m going to write something in the style of Anata.”

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#11

Thanks, I’m a big fan of limiting myself sometimes, especially when practicing guitar. I’ve worked some in Wayne Krantz’ Improviser’s OS, which is totally about limiting your playing for the sake of better learning the instrument. It’s a weird method, but has helped me immensely and I’ve barely scratched the surface.

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#12

Heh, I didn’t realize that was a widely accepted creative technique, so much as something that I’d found worked for ME. :rofl:

One other thing I’ll add - I’ve also never “composed” solos, because every time I try, the natural flow and looseness and organicness of my improvised playing goes right out the window, and everything sounds rigid and formulaic and pre-arranged. Realizing that there’s already a degree of pre-arrangement baked into my improv playing was actually kind of an opened door to “writing” solos - I’ve had a lot of luck sitting down and just improvising a solo until I get something cool, then going back and honing in on the cool arts and improvising around them until I get something that;s really working for mer, then moving on and when it stops going in a direction I’m that excited about, improvising alternatives there until I get something cool, etc etc etc, and sort of comping together gradually-less-improvised ideas tyhat started as off the cuff improvs, and are still all lines that i could have, and at one point in the priocess did, inmprovise, but are sort of like an improv “greatest hits” where I’m building a solo out of the best ideas that happened along the way. Then, once I have this idealized, “what I could have improvised if I was just firing on all cylendars and bringing my A+ game for 32 measures in a row” solo, that’s already basically halfg memorized from the process of figuring otu what I was trying to do, go back and learn THAT. What’s left is a solo that still sounds like my improvised playing and still has the organic flow I like, doesn’t sound pre-thought-out or arranged, but that I can play repeatedly over and and over again, and to boot since it’s all based on ideas that I’ve built lines around that I know I can play well, plays to my strengths, as well. It’s become a really exc iting creative process for me, and while I still intend on finishing the project I’m working on in relatively few final takes and with as little punching in as i can, and with real amps, it’s made me switch over to DI tracks and VST “amps” while writing for the flexibility to not just comp together a solo like this while I’m writing it, but also go back and punch in one different note in the melody line if a day or two later I’m listening and it doesn’t sound quite right, or punch in a new pre-chorus or make big changes to the arrangement like that, wthout having slightly differenty rhythm guitar tones along the whole process.

The future is pretty fucking great, really.

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#13

Actually, imposing limitations and maybe more accurately a sort of framework for what you are going to play/practice is such a great way to break out of creative ruts and work on developing your “own” voice.

I think that we get caught in a rut because whatever picking escape we do might not be compatible with a note arrangement, and thus begins the endless practice loop cycle!

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