Picking mechanics on other instruments

Playing Technique
#1

I know that Pebber Brown likes to talk a lot about John McLaughlin and the influence of Persian and Indian instruments, particularly the oud and the sarod.

I was doing some googling about instruments that use quills instead of modern-style plectrums, and came across the oud video below. What struck me was how much the mechanics of this player resemble Django-style guitar, with the difference that this arm position looks like the resulting geometry might be more crosspicking or 2wps friendly than the arm position we associate with Django/gypsy playing. I’m not sure there’s any really face-melting alternate picking here, but I think the picking approach would accomodate it:

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#2

Great idea for a thread!

The Aoud, Oud, or whatever it is called depending on the culture is a very important instrument in my country’s traditional music. When I started playing the guitar many years ago, and hit the troubles of alternate picking, it always made me wonder how a lot of musicians can achieve this technique on the Aoud which is a double stringed fret-less instrument played with the quills. I think that, similar to the guitar, a lot of players have mastered this technique intuitively without focusing too much on how the mechanics actually work.

Here is an example of some amazing alternate picking on the Aoud. The are some nice close up shots of the picking hand. The whole piece is worth listening to if you ask me…

I’d like to mention also that high speed down picking is very common for Aoud players. Which means that they would make excellent metal rhythm players :smiley:

By the way, I went to high school with two of these guys. Too bad I didn’t grow like them musically :smile:

Anyway, it would be nice if we get the chance to learn how players can achieve high speed alternate picking on this instrument. It looks to me that DWPS is the main orientation for most of them.

Hope you like the video!

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#3

Awesome video, thanks for posting!

I agree there’s a ton of DWPS here, but I’m also seeing instances where even though the pick itself is oriented with what looks like a downward slant, the path of its movement is actually following a UWPS path (or maybe someone can make an argument that this is more of a string-hopping movement?). One good look at this is at 4:18, for just a couple of seconds before he launches into some ferocious DWPS playing.

That whole band is pretty amazing. I haven’t listened to much violin playing that has this type of traditionally middle-eastern flavor, and it sounded really cool.

#4

Session dude and now Bon Jovi guitarist Phil X talks about playing the bouzouki growing up, and how the work to develop his picking on bouzouki helped his guitar playing.

Here’s a clinic clip where he talks about the bouzouki, and demonstrates some bouzouki licks on the guitar (Phil looks to me to be a 2-way pickslanter):

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