So when doing USX, which is my natural instinctive picking technique, I have the bony part of my hand on the bridge, and that gives me a natural downward pickslant. On Troy’s primer in pickslanting for double escape, discussing the 0 degree slant, he says to wrap the pick around your index finger, so it gives it an upwards pickslant in order to do DBX and further to do DSX. However, aside from finding this unnatural and awkward feeling, when I do this I keep the same anchor point in my hand, but end up using a different picking motion. So instead of down-picking in motion of 10-3 o’clock, I change motion to 8-1 which is more of that flexion knocking motion. So when doing the wrap around, not only does it feel really weird to me, and I’m not sure if I really like it, the picking motion has also changes each time I switch.
The thing I query is that the only resource I can see which shows this wrap-around picking technique is Troy himself. I can’t actually see anyone else who does both upwards, downwards, or double escape doing it. For people who do double escape, to me it doesn’t look like they are wrapping their pick around, and the people who do two-way pickslanting don’t seem to wrap their pick around when they change from USX to DSX. What I notice, and everyone I’ve watched seems to do it a very similar way, is that when playing USX, the pick is in a relaxed grip, the bony part is on the bridge, and they can pick with a supinated forearm. Then when they go to change to upwards pickslanting, they rotate their forearm to pronation, so that the fleshy part under the thumb, is resting on the strings or on the bridge. In the primer Troy says not to do this, despite it being the motion that most people use.
In doing it this way you have a different reference point but you’re using the exact same motion to do upwards pickslanting as you are when you do downwards pickslanting. It’s still a 10-3 motion in the wrist, just rotated towards pronation. So what I don’t understand is why Troy’s saying to use a grip wrapping around the index finger, so part of the pick is on the fingernail of your index finger, to achieve upwards pickslanting, when the majority of people seem to do forearm rotation, which he says is bad.
Then if I look at people like Andy Wood, again, even if slightly supinated, when he’s doing double escape, it still seems almost as if it’s flat, not in significant supination. So the way I’ve found that feels natural to me, would be to imagine it as:
USX > arm is supinated,
DSX > arm is pronated,
and double escape > forearm is in the middle of those two.
So why does he say not to do this, when it’s what people do? Should I be practicing what comes naturally to me, or practice the wrap around grip until it stops feeling weird?