thanks for the shout out!
If you’re talking about literal pick depth like the new Floyd Rose guitar is designed to correct, there actually is a product out there you can attach to any standard guitar to get the same effect. It’s called a RunBar and it predates the Floyd Rose guitar by years. I ordered one and experimented with it for a while. Johnny Hiland endorsed them for a while so you can see some videos of him using it and it’s a cool concept.
If you are actually talking about having too much “wind up” for lack of a better term off the top of my head, Troy Grady has demonstrated that some elite level players such as Eric Johnson and Steve Morse sometimes actually use a HUGE amount of “wind up” and still are able to play at high speeds without it being an issue. Obviously with DWPS this is really just seen before the downstroke because the maximum distance the pick can travel afterwards is fairly limited because it will make contact with the next string in the typical “rest stroke” sense.
yeah i was referring to literal pick depth haha
Well you may want to check out the RunBar- it doesn’t require any permanent changes to your guitar and they have different versions depending on if you are going to put it on a strat or les Paul or arch top or whatever. The inventor of it has some videos online and some tutorials on how to get the most out of it, including using an ink pen or the back of a cigarette lighter to demonstrate certain picking techniques. Interesting stuff!
Not sure what you mean by this — do you mean after you hit the string the pick keeps going? Why is that a problem? If you watch any of my rest stroke playing, then you’ve seen how my pick goes way past the string I’m playing, and well below the string height, causing a large portion of it to rest against the next string. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. This is one of the reasons I find the Floyd Rose Speed Guide to be so disruptive. It really interferes with what I feel a comfortable range of rest stroke motion should feel like. I’ve told Floyd this, so this is no secret. He’s a wonderful guy and also a great player. I just think this particular adaptation, as well as other similar ideas like the RunBarr sometimes get in the way of fluid motion.
In short, unless you can point to something specific, I’m not sure this is a problem. If @Tommo says your playing looks good, then it’s good!
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So then would you agree with the idea that when performing rest strokes at higher tempos, the player should add more pick depth? This seems to work for me. When rest stroking at moderate tempos, it feels like I have the option of using either minimal or maximal pick depth. When I speed up, if feels like if I keep the pick depth minimal, the distance the pick travels must also be minimal. Whereas, if I speed up and maintain the rest strokes, I have to add pick depth. What do you think of this assessment:
What do you mean by pick depth? The amount of pick that hits the string? Because just looking at our Pickslanting Primer footage, I don’t do that. The fast scale examples all use very little pick on the string, even though a lot of pick is generally exposed in my grip in those clips.
If you mean whether you perform a rest stroke at all, that’s optional. Gypsy players do it because they want to hit the string hard enough to create a snappy sound. But this isn’t always true either — Joscho Stephan has a very light touch when he wants to.
Also keep in mind that when you see styles where rest strokes happen a lot, they’re usually single escape styles like Gypsy picking. Even players like Andy Wood will occasionally rest stroke on upstrokes when he’s playing single escape phrases, like the Paul Gilbert “sixes” pattern, which is a DSX phrase (i.e. trapped upstrokes that sometimes rest). But when Andy plays mixed escape lines with 1-, 2-, and 3nps you don’t see rest strokes as much. Just here and there if he happens to hit a particular note a little harder.
So there is no rule about doing rest strokes and you don’t really have to do them at all if you don’t want to. Personally I don’t think about it.
Thought I’d give my 2 cents. Still trying to understand exactly what you mean.
Let’s consider a downstroke with DWPS. Are you saying that, after the downstroke, the pick is buried too far below the strings, such that coming out of there for 2WPS is inefficient?
If that’s the case, how about less pick slant? Or, if you really don’t have much pick slant, how about less wrist flexion?
Also, have you tried a pick that is less pointy? For example, a Jazz I or II?
can always practice picking on the fret board. Gives nice tone too.
Though as said, pick depth is rarely an issue, infact being able to dig in to the strings is really useful. I would recommend instead of even thinking of pick depth, think of holding the pick as loosely and lightly as you can. Once you get a feel of a really relaxed pick grip the sticking issue of pick depth goes away.
I’m a little confused about this.
It seems to me that is entirely possible to me to have zero air gap between my fingers and the strings I’m not playing. Maintaining light contact with the side of the thumb on the lower strings, or with the fingers on the high strings provides string dampening which tracks with the picking movement. I don’t notice any scraping.
Like here, the side of Marshall’s thumb is often touching against the string below the strings he’s playing. I don’t notice scraping.
I’m assuming “pick depth” means how far below the plane of the strings the tip of the pick is at the point of the pick stroke. The thing the stylus pick was designed to help minimize. The variable that determines arc radius in the Steve Morse golf club and flamingos calculation. You often call it the amount of pick on the string.
To me, when I do this, it feel like my contact with the surrounding strings gives me a damping mechanic which tracks automatically with string changes and which provides a tactile depth gauge.
I’m talking about the string you are playing. There has to be a gap there otherwise the string would make no sound. So I’m not sure why it would matter if the gap is super small versus some larger amount. Whatever amount, you have to create it by some aspect of your form that you memorize by feel. Why does it matter that skin of the fingers is super duper close to the string? It’s clear that this is not necessary just by the wide variety of players out there who don’t do that.
Ok, I get your meaning.
It’s certainly not necessary, but I do feel that having contact on the adjacent strings, coupled with a small amount of pick showing from the grip is certainly a viable means of achieving the goal. Certainly something that can be tried if a person feel they haven’t developed control over their depth yet.
The problem I have with the old “choke up” advice we all got in the '80s is that it’s totally illogical. People usually suggest this as a way of reducing the amount of pick that goes below the string. But it doesn’t do that at all. That amount is relatively consistent across the players we’ve filmed, big exposure or little. The video makes this very clear. All choking up does is reduce the amount of pick above the string, bringing the skin of the fingers closer to the strings and making it more likely they will interfere.
In the last Martin Miller interview, he was using so little exposure in a few examples that every time he played a note on the D string, the side of his thumb actually played a note on the A string. It was like Scotty Anderson’s double stop technique. I forget if I cut out those examples or left them in. But I was like, where the hell is that note coming from?
So yes you can use this as a muting technique, but there is definitely increased risk of unwanted contact too. If you’re playing one of those “quiet” styles like fusion where all the strings are muted and locked down, you may get away with it. If you’re playing bluegrass, you’re going to need more airspace so multiple strings can ring.
Everything has its place.
This would seem to me to be more of an indicator that the “choke up” isn’t necessary as a means to controlling depth, rather than indicating that it’s categorically not a means of controlling depth. Maybe I’m wrong here?
This has me wondering about something: The pick could be seen as a lever to the hand. Less exposure would mean a shorter lever, hence possibly reducing the feeling of the hand being turned by the strings, or the feeling of the pick trying to move in the grip.
After a quick look at the YouTube video, I can see how this would happen with his crosspicking form.
Absolutely, I’ve definitely had some issues with unwanted contact from the picking hand. My primary crosspicking form doesn’t have this contact because it’s not so close to the strings, and my default picking method has the adjacent lower string damped by both the bottom or side of the palm as well as that thumb contact (in addition to fretting hand dampening), so there’s safeguard against that unwanted ringing.
I really only have this problem now with my trailing edge grip where when I’m picking over the bridge pickup, and I’m learning to protect against it by lifting the form slightly.
I’m pretty much coming from that exact perspective.
I can see that. When I play an acoustic guitar I play fingerstyle pretty much exclusively. If I were to use a pick I’d be using my crosspicking form.
Totally. Everything is a compromise.
I can definitely understand the frustration with the idea of “less pick” being a universal solution to all picking problems.
Fair.
But how do you feel about using more pick on the string for accents and maybe even more aggressive rhythm playing? Paul Gilbert specifically talks about this in Intense Rock 2. Watch from 5:05 to 11:30. At around 8:00 he literally talks about “using more of the pick” to hit the strings and “lowering the pick into the strings.”
Also, it makes sense that rest stroking can be optional, but I would like to think there are some lines where it would be more desirable to rest stroke. For instance, in Malmsteen or Gambale lines where there is a mix of sweeping and alternate picking. Since the swept notes are rest strokes by default, I would argue that it would be in the players best interest to rest stroke the alternate picked notes. I feel like using rest strokes in lines with a mix of alternate picking and sweep picking creates a more rhythmic and tonally consistent sound.
For sure, I use rest strokes when sweeping to maintain timing. I’ve talked about that fairly extensively in our lessons, like the Primer forearm sequence, for example:
I don’t really think the rest stroke has anything to do with the sound, since it only happens after the note has been played. For example, a common situation where you might encounter a rest stroke is when you hit a note really hard with a trapped pickstroke. In such a case you’re almost guaranteed to rest stroke. When you do this, you will hear that tonal difference, but this is because you hit it hard, not because of the rest stroke per se. You can get the same snappy sound even on the high E string where there is no string to rest on.
On the flip side, just because you rest stroke doesn’t mean it has to sound loud and snappy. I can sweep very delicately and still rest stroke. This is just me letting the pick contact the next string on purpose. The note sounds totally different from a hard Gypsy downstroke. But it rests all the same.
So in general I would try not to overthink the rest stroke thing. When you’re just alternate picking, I doubt you can consciously control when this happens all the time anyway. If you’re hitting notes really hard all the time, you’ll probably rest stroke. If you don’t like that sound, or if your playing feels unsmooth because you’re putting too much force into it, back off a little and see if things feel smoother. Eventually you want to have control over your dynamics and smoothness so that you are the one who chooses which notes are loud and which are soft.
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Also, keep in mind that what Paul is talking about is not the same as a rest stroke. The amount of pick that contacts the string you are playing is not the same as the amount of pick that comes to rest against the next string. This is very clear under the camera. When you look at my playing close up, you can see that the amount of pick that hits the string can be small, and the amount that rests against the next string can be large. This only makes sense. The pick is following a diagonal path into the strings, so it’s going to be lower by the time it reaches the next string.
Of course, to get an accented note, you can change the amount of pick on the string you are playing. But again, that’s not a rest stroke. Also, keep in mind that using more pick is not the only way to get a louder attack. You can grip harder, so there is less flop. If you typically use grip flop, as I often do, then gripping more tightly will prevent that and make a louder note. And you can also use more of an escape stroke, to reduce the angle of attack. Meaning, you pick away from the guitar, so the pick gets less grip. That’s what Mike Stern does in this example where he plays the same blues phrase twice, once loud and once soft:
Lots of ways to do this, it’s a cool question.
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This interests me. I’ve always had a pretty firm grip on my pick. My (quite possibly flawed logic) was that the pick would always be exactly where I wanted it to be and not throw me off at the higher speeds. If it flopped at all, it could be just ever so slightly in the wrong spot and not hit the string at the precise instant I wanted it to. Hand sync issues and unevenness followed. I also grew up on John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline and strove for tiny movements, heh. Also, a lot of the rock playing I’ve done over the years was in a metal context. The producer my band used, take after take, would holler at us ‘Play it like a man!!!’. He’d refuse to keep takes where we picked less than nearly breaking our strings lol. Cool story, he also recorded/produced Andy Wood’s band Down From Up back when Andy was just a local guy. I had the opportunity to meet him in person in 2005. Super nice guy, and even back then he was killing it! I got to see his band one evening after we were finished tracking during a session. Man he was amazing live! But I digress…
A couple months ago during some tremolo practice I suddenly stopped using so much pick on the string and I felt this smoothness I’d never experienced. This easing up on the pick depth has been a big help to me recently, since I’m only ~6 months into overhauling my playing after finding CtC. In reading other posts and watching your playing more closely @Troy, I’ve indeed noticed your pick flops more than mine does. I notice, when I can ‘get it’, that a slightly looser hold gives me a similar smoothness to the shallower pick depth. Or at least that’s how it feels to me. I’m definitely using much bigger movements now that I know it’s ok to do that lol! So I don’t get the ‘out of sync’ issue I’d faced back in the day when I loosened up a little on the grip
Sorry for all the fluff here. My big question is pick grip and tone. I love your tone. It always sounds so aggressive and full. Any comments on how you achieve this with a loose grip and shallow pick depth? Maybe it’s just dogma I’ve bought into that I associate more pick on the string and a tighter grip with the aggressive sound.
I’m not sure any of this stuff really has much of an effect on “tone”, per se. Tone is pick choice, edge picking, pickups, amp, that kind of thing. I don’t know which tone(s) you’re referring to but odds are good that if you were in the room that day and used my pick and guitar with roughly the same edge picking, through the same rig, you’d have pretty much exaclty the same “tone”.
Edit: I say this also because in the edge picking feature we tested the effect of how hard you pick and the tone is the same whether you pick softly or loudly:
Ergo, whatever pick and edge picking you use, I think you’re getting the same “tone” more or less regardless of how hard you play. If by tone we mean frequency response. Which is how I use the term.
Thanks, I get what you’re saying. And yeah, frequency response is what I mean. Probably a combination of my classical training [where tone is largely created by the hands, with a huge portion of that being in the way the strings are contacted by the fingernails/flesh and varying pressure too. 2 players can sound drastically different if they play the same instrument in that realm] and reading interviews (legends???) in Guitar World where techs would tell stories of guys on tour together playing through each other’s rigs at sound check or what not. They’d claim that Eddie Van Halen (or whoever) would still sound like themselves when playing through different people’s rigs. Or the inverse, where a tech could play the star’s rig at sound check and sound nothing like the star. Totally circumstantial and not scientific, I know 
Just what I was brought up thinking. So I equate tone with an individual more than gear, at least partially. It’s probably nonsense and I’m probably conflating a bunch of things.
Thanks for the response!