One-page explainer on playing scales with alternate picking — overview of what we know!

Playing Technique
#14

Great playing, as always!

I intentionally left out any approaches involving even numbered fretting, economy, legato, hybrid etc. There are of course a world of ways to play scales. But the point here was to address the way that playing 3nps fingerings with alternate picking is seen as almost “mandatory” even though paradoxically lots of great players don’t or can’t do it. And more broadly, how one goes about learning complex physical skills for which the correct motions are non-obvious, even to the player doing them.

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#15

Ok, I misunderstood. I guess that ascending scale from the first vid could fall into this category, it still uses 3nps fingerings (halfstep-whole step/whole step-whole step/whole step-halfstep) just with a position shift. Are these ways supposed to be stationary and move only in vertical plane?

#16

@adamprzezdziecki From the way I understood it, once you position shift for that 4th note, you’re breaking away from “true” 3 notes per string (I’m assuming the intent is to stay in the same position as much as possible).

I knew a guy that used to do those high up on the neck (scales with 4 notes per string) because the narrower fret spacing allowed him to stay in the same position, but that’s totally dependent on your finger flexibility / length and obviously only works way up there.

#17

Not a problem, always happy to look at examples of your awesome playing. Your 2:00 wrist motion is among the best examples of that I think we’ve seen on here.

Sorry for the confusion here. What I was getting at in the post is the “problem” of mixing downstroke string changes and upstroke string changes inside of an alternate picked phrase. That’s what Justin was asking about, since he likes to teach scale shapes to beginners so they can learn the fretboard. I wasn’t really thinking about anything beyond that, as far as what fingerings someone would use. However, yes, Justin mainly teaches single-position fingerings, presumbly for simplicity of memorization.

But mainly I was just thinking about the complexity of the mechanical solutions that we have seen in filming experts doing this supposedly beginner-level task. Which of course is not beginner-level at all but a rather sophisticated technical challenge with equally sophisticated solutions. Exactly how one learns to do something like this, especially when the player themselves might not be conscious of the motions they’re learning, is one of the big questions in instrument technique learning.

#18

Wow I’m always in awe of your great playing. Your attack is so amazing! It has such a satisfactory confidence to it.

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#19

A post was split to a new topic: Gabrielthorn 3nps scale playing

#20

Every time a frustrated adult guitar player burns a picture of their old guitar teacher, a cracking the code membership is born

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#21

Wait, isn’t Andy Wood’s natural position pronated? I mean, based on the videos in that link you posted it looks slightly pronated, although pretty close to neutral, but maybe my sense of “neutral” is off. If that’s not pronated, then what is? If he pronated his wrist much further, the lower strings would get in the way of his thumb, particular if he’s playing on the B or high e strings. Are you only able to pronate when playing the lower strings ala Brendon Small’s elbow technique?

Also, wouldn’t a supinated position be more ideal for upstroke escape?

Anyway, it of course makes sense that using a shallower pickslant alleviates this problem, I was just hoping there was something I had missed.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure a helper motion is even compatible with my technique since I use wrist flexion on the downstroke and wrist extension on the upstroke to get the upstroke escape happening. I can’t even turn it off now, which kind of sucks since I can’t do DSX at all anymore, even though it was my main technique for years.

#22

I think the textbook wrist-based pronated DSX is Molly Tuttle’s pronated form, leaning the thumb side of the heel of the hand against the bridge.

#23

Andy makes the 2:00 wrist motion as his default. This wrist motion will escape from any arm position except the most supinated ones. Both he and Al switch between having both palm heels anchored, to having only the pinky heel anchored. The 2:00 wrist motion will escape from either of those positions.

Andy is never really pronated, where the pinky heel is lifted off the strings with an air gap beneath it like Molly Tuttle. But again, it doesn’t really matter what the arm position is. If you’re making a 2:00 wrist motion it will escape with any of these arm positions, except a Van Halen style arm position.

If you want to get both escapes from the same arm position, with minimal forearm wiggle, you need at least some supination of the arm relative to the strings so that the upstroke will escape (3:00 motion) and the downstroke will escape (2:00 motion). So you can’t use a Molly style arm position for that if these are your wrist motions. You would need to use Molly’s wrist motions which are 3:00 and 4:00.

#24

Let me add also that this type of super-technical description that I’m giving you here is useful for us to know how things work, and it helps us come up with simple and more practical ways to teach these techniques. But nobody, myself included, is sitting around going really slowly and thinking “ok, now 2:00 motion! and now, transition to 3:00!” I can’t even feel these things when playing. I’m just trying to play smoothly and somewhat speedily to avoid stringhopping at first, and then working from there. The whole process we outlined in the other thread.

#25

Ok yeah I just looked up footage of her playing and it’s definitely pronated more than I expected. The way she collapses her thumb into her palm is so alien to me, but I have weirdly pointy thumb joints so I guess that’s why I didn’t think it was possible.

#26

And she is an extreme example. I’m not sure where anatomists or CTC would draw the line between “neutral” and “pronated”, but I’m sure it’s not as extreme as Tuttle’s setup. @Troy probably describes these things in CTC terms in the Primer, but I’m not caught up.

#27

I just describe pronated as any situation where the bones are tilted compared to the plane of the strings. In practical terms this just means there has to be an air gap under the pinky heel. I don’t know if Molly is an extreme example of that, or if most people are just used to looking at players who are not actually pronated, like Al Di Meola, and thinking they are. So Molly maybe looks extreme compared to that.

Either way I think we may have confused people about the arm thing. It doesn’t control the wrist motion being made. The Wood / Di Meola “2:00” wrist motion can be made at any arm position. We’ve seen examples here on the forum of players doing that with a pronated arm, which is common on the low strings when players anchor on the body temporarily. But they don’t necessarily change the picking motion when they do that, which is why the escape appears even more vertical in that position. i.e. It’s the same motion, just with the arm turned.

The further along we get, the less we rely on technical descriptions as we figure out more practical tricks for teaching, like table tests. I’m not sure anyone should really be fussing with their arm position beyond learning a few simple anchor points and then just trying to play smoothly.

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#28

I am filled with adrenaline reading this.
As a chronic stringhopper for thirteen years, the ‘just do what comes naturally’ advice was utterly infuriating. It led me to believe that there was some sort of fundamental, physiological problem with my picking hand.

The most common refrain in alternate picking ‘lessons’ was always:

‘When you think about it, it’s actually easy to alternate pick on a single string. The problem is SWITCHING STRINGS. Here are some exercises. Start with the metronome at 70bpm. In six months you’ll be shredding.’

Even prestigious publications like Guitar Techniques from the UK would sagely prescribe this path.

#29

Hey @Troy, I’m curious about this, my understanding was that at this point in time we may not have any record /proof of anybody using pure-double escape for all strokes at faster than ‘medium fast speeds’ (relative to your distinction, I get the general tempos you’re probably referring to) BUT we also don’t have any reason to think it couldn’t work.

I know it’s a bit moot as for 3NPS scales it’s also not necessary, but is this a “it will most likely not work” kind of thing, or a "we haven’t seen it work yet so it’s more sensible to exclude it as a good strategy for ‘faster than medium fast’ " kind of thing, or something else?

#30

Sorry bad choice of words. “Double escape” isn’t a technique just a way of describing what a motion looks like. Any curved motion could be “double escape” if oriented properly to the strings, and as we know EVH style forearm technique creates a curved pickstroke well beyond 200bpm.

I just meant, as you point out, that it’s a moot point for scale playing because it’s not necessary to use only that type of motion all the time so nobody does it as the only motion. However yes if you film fast scale playing amd scale patterns in the 200bpm range you will see double escape pickstrokes in there. On patterns like fours there have to be transitions between escapes somehow and when this happens you will very often see a double escape pickstroke.

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#31

This is really great - but for me I found there were additional factors: string gauge and pick were a large factor on speed and accuracy.

#32

I’ve been fighting this battle for decades. I came to guitar from piano and assumed I should know all the scales, arpeggios, modes, chord extensions, etc, that I know on keyboards. Drilled myself like crazy on the same. Maxed out around 4 notes per beat @ 100. Then I came to Cracking the Code, and eventually stumbled onto this thread.

Now, here’s what I did after reading the original post, and … don’t do what I did.

I went for a pure DPS motion, and skipping the string strike every 6 notes - just doing a hammer on.

I think this messed up my form worse than it was when I was violently doing string hopping constantly. I’ve been doing this for maybe 6 months now but … as I picked up tempo it’s felt very lopsided, like a man with one peg-leg trying to sprint. I’m topping out around 4 notes per beat @ 92.

So now I’m going to go back to pure alternating, and option #6 in the OP, with the hope that sufficient time in practice will eventually lead to me picking up one of the other options unconsciously.

Looking forward to any feedback.

#33

My best advice is not to fish around on the forum or experiment through total trial and error. I’d really stick with the Primer sequence. It’s included in your membership and it’s the best advice we have!

On that note, I’m not seeing a user account with your username ‘don1’. Are you able to access the site? If not, definitely send us a note in support and we’ll look into it asap.

Otherwise, the first steps of Primer sequence are roughly this:

  1. Test your joint motions and record the numerical values

  2. Take the best performing motion and follow the tutorials for it in the Primer to play a single note on a single string, i.e. tremolo

  3. If the tremolo is much slower than the results on your motion test, this indicates an issue with the technique. This can’t usually be solved with “exercises”, you have to fix the technique itself until the speeds are closer

  4. Once 3 is sorted, establish hand sync on repeating single-string patterns until you can play them fast with one pickstroke per note and solid time

  5. Once 4 is sorted, learn which escape your joint motion has and try some string-switching phrases that match this escape.

etc.

If you run into trouble with any of these steps, make a TC on the platform with some clips of what is happening and we will look at it right away!