Pick moving up while picking

Playing Technique
#1

I’ve been practicing learning wrist motion over forearm rotation for a few months now and am now maybe sometimes starting to get it -ish. But there’s a new problem that occurs when I get over quarter notes at 80bpm. My pick slides up and up until it disappears. All the resources and guidance online seems to refer to the pick spinning and rotating away, which I fixed years ago, but as long as I’m picking with my wrist, it isn’t long before it’s my thumb and finger picking, rather than the pick. Starting with USX the downpick feels solid, but the uppick maybe feels a little wobbly, I’m wondering whether the up is nocking it off balance and the down seats it further into the grip until I’m scale playing pinch harmonics rather than notes.

A tight grip does it. A loose grip does it. A minimal effort grip between the two pads does it. Curling the finger and having pad of thumb against side of finger does it (this is more of my natural grip). Edge picking doesn’t help, and I like a bit of attack anyway. Like I say it’s not rotating away, the pick stays straight. Just choking up between the fingers, and I don’t think I had this problem before trying to learn wrist motion.

Anyone experienced this issue before?

#2

This is likely from “garage spikes.” Experimenting with your pick point angle should resolve issue. See Primer for more details, but to explain briefly, neutral pick point is perpendicular to thumb (straight down from thumb): |||; positive pick point has point towards end of thumb: /// (if picking with RH); and negative pick point has point towards palm/wrist: \\ (if picking with RH).

Additionally, @Pepepicks66 has some good insights on how it was helpful for him. I definitely found his comments useful as I improve my picking, primarily because I overlooked this component. I would search for “pick point,” and see what you find.

1 Like
#3

This is very slow, so I think if you’re already having issues here, something major needs to be changed. This reads like you have a downward pickslant combined with a motion that isn’t USX - the slant and the escape have to match to get smooth attack. Messing with pick point can help a little sometimes, but I don’t think that’s the solution here since the pick point is already self-adjusting into unusable territory.

Posting video is the next step!

EDIT: I looked through your post history and watched the NEW USX Picking vid. But it isn’t really USX - if you listen to the string changes, there are errors every time.

Have you tried playing DSX patterns with the same motion?

#4

Here is a quick one. It’s not something I had issue with on my old motion, but that wasn’t good for my arm at speed. I think wrist based motion has the potential to go faster, but then this picking seems to be the thing holding me from going further at the moment.

The only way I can get DSX patterns with that motion is by sweeping through the strings on each change. I’m not really sure how you mean it’s not USX, because it seems to go in the strings on a down, and above the strings on an up. Unless I’m missing something.

If it helps, I noticed that as I move up and down across strings it seems to slip away faster than when just tremolo picking. Also I mean 16th notes not quaters.

#5

Ok, interesting - so this is a dart thrower wrist motion, creating USX, but the pickslant is too close to neutral, causing the pick point to go negative (towards the base of the thumb). So this is still a matter of escape and pickslant not matching. You can try experimenting with different pick grips, including trailing edge, to see if anything helps.

Have you gone through the table-tapping tests and all that? Are you really trying to get this particular motion to work, or is it your fastest test?

#6

Well there’s some good news. My old motion was purely forearm rotation, it made me inconsistent and need to ice bath my arm after a solo. I’ve been trying to get dart thrower since July.

I’m trying to get the motion to work rather than just for speed. For some reason I’m great at learning theoretical stuff, but really struggle with body control. The tap test was how I decided on the motion to try and learn. I’m technically learning both USX and DSX but DSX is coming on slower.

I’ll need to do some more reading tonight into pick point to really understand that, but from memory you’re saying the pick rotates slightly to the base of my hand then gets pushed up from there? Was there any point of the primer or YouTube channel which you would recommend me to go back and look into again?