Picking Technique - What am I doing?

Technique Critique
#1

Hello everyone - towards the beginning of this year, largely inspired by Cracking the Code, I decided to conduct a complete rebuild of my picking technique after years of hitting a wall with my old approach. I’m pretty pleased with my progress so far although there’s still some work to do. I have some issues with left and right hand synchronisation sometimes and am working on my timing to improve this.

In an attempt to develop a sort of universal technique that could be applied to any line (it never quite works that way, I know, but it was worth a try) I ended up with what I think is quite an odd technique. Rather than dragging the pick through the string and plucking it as I did before, I now visualise stroking either side of the string with every pick stroke and letting the shape of the pick do the work. At slow speeds gives my wrist a “brush stroke” type motion.

I realise this seems very close to the dreaded string-hopping trap but I’ve never really found an issue with movement between strings. In any case, It’s an improvement on what I had before where switching strings was the bane of my existence.

I really like the timbral quality this new approach gives. When combined with heavy muting, it offers a very aggresive Gilbert-esque sound whilst keeping the picking hand relaxed and free of tension. In the clean part of the video, you can hear that my picking’s generally pretty light.

I’m basically interested in seeing how my technique would be described in Cracking the Code nomenclature. I think it’s a double escape / cross-picking approach as my pick angle stays pretty neutral. However, as I mentioned before there’s elements of string-hopping in there due to the stroking motion. As far as I can tell. I create this string-hopping curved motion by flicking my wrist away from the guitar on the downstroke and rotating my forearm upwards slightly on the upstroke. This motion becomes pretty miniscule at high speed although it’s more obvious on the descending inside picking runs in the video below.

So yes, any analysis and advice on areas to improve is much appreciated. Apologies for the quality of the video. For some reason I couldn’t get the sound to render on the slow-mo section at the end.

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#2

Hey this is all sounding pretty great! Also, interesting pick grip.

We can definitely rule out string hopping due to the high speeds that you are reaching. String hopping is when you re-use the same muscle (or set of muscles) for both the upstroke and downstroke, so that the motion is not truly alternating (but more like repeated downstrokes, from an efficiency standpoint). I don’t think this is happening in the examples you are playing.

As you also suggest, I am not sure that L and R hands are 100% synchronised in all the lines you are playing, but it’s hard to tell with this type of sound (phone capturing the amp from a distance in a small room). The overall effect is still great, and very cool licks :slight_smile:

What are you currently working on? Are there some licks that you would like to play but are currently not working?

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#3

Hi Tommo - thanks for the kind words and useful analysis.

As for things I’m working on - there’s quite a few. Most of them are Paul Gilbert related.

The verse section of Scarified has been a bugbear of mine for many years now. I think it’s finally coming together but it’s still not quite at the level of consistency I would like. I might post a video of my current progress later on.

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#4

New camera setup for this one - I think this is an honest representation of where I am with the Scarified verse. There’s a few false starts and strings ringing out. The speed fluctuates as well as I trip over myself. I think most of the issues are with the left hand (video is mirrored - I forgot to flip it). I’m finding it difficult to fret the notes I want to cleanly in the time available and this can lead to missed notes or throw off everything else.

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#5

Camera setup is great :slight_smile:

This sounds pretty good to be honest, I would guess that it may just get better with time - unless you find that some passages are never working.

How long jave you been studying this?

PS am I seeing/remembering correctly that this pick grip and hand setup is similar to @Frylock’s?

#6

Grip is definitely similar in some ways, especially the way the thumb is bent. But my typical arm setup is a little more supinated, and I tend to have either ring finger, pinky, or both contacting the pickguard near the bridge pickup. Among other things, my setup makes it harder to do some of the badass descending sweeps like the first video. :smiley: I accept the tradeoff because I really like the way the finger contact with the body helps me regulate the elevation of my hand relative to the plane of the strings.

#7

I prefer not to think about it too long but I’ve probably been working on Scarified in bits and pieces for around a decade. However, when I started, my technique was nowhere near ready for something that difficult. I think it’s only getting there now. It’s a classic case of impatience as a young guitarist.

@Frylock, Do you have any examples of your picking technique? I’ve been doing some searching and haven’t been able to find anything. I would be interested to see the comparison as I don’t see many other players using the same thumb grip as myself.

#8

I keep meaning to put some stuff up, and keep not getting around to it. Good news is once the Magnet kickstarter delivers, I’ll have one less excuse. :wink:

I’ll try and put something together in the next few days. Just be warned the production values will probably suck.

#9

I now realised my question was too vague :slight_smile:

What I meant is - how long have been working on these licks with your “new” technique? Asking because I have the impression that there is nothing “wrong” in what you are doing, you are just making a few mistakes here and there and they may become fewer as your muscle memory on these licks improves.

If however you find that there are some specific passages that are never working, then we could take a look at these more specifically.

#10

I’ve been working on it pretty much since I switched to my new technique so getting on for a year now. I feel like the motions are fairly ingrained into my muscle memory. It could be that I just don’t practice it up to speed enough. I tend to play it slightly slower than I posted above as it’s cleaner and more comfortable. When I try to play it with the track, I tend to get a bit overwhelmed and fall off.

Maybe it stems from not adopting the “start with speed” approach?

It’s good to know that there’s no obvious issues with my technique for this section though.

#11

Uhm, if you see no visible improvement over a year then it will be beneficial to change something - especially because your previous video shows that you are an advanced player with plenty speed. It could be as simple as doing more fast practice as you suggest, or it could be that we have to look at some specific motions that you could try to do differently.

I’d try the fast route first, and see if you can establish whether there are specific passages that are giving you trouble for the left and/or right hand.

Let us know how that goes :slight_smile:

#12

I put a short video up in its own thread:

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#13

Thanks, I had a quick look over in that thread. As I said, it’s always interesting to see other players’ techniques. I personally can’t see the similarities between our techniques that @tommo was referring to. From what I can tell, you have a very Friedman-esque / MAB-like flexed form with anchored fingers. You use very small wrist-based picking motions along with tactical use of the arm to switch strings.

My approach is to always keep the wrist on the bridge and to make motions as much as possible from that point of contact. It’s a fairly standard trigger grip approach for the most part. The only thing I do unusually is that I cradle the pick in my index finger rather than resting it on top of the knuckle as most seem to. I tend to pin the pick in place with the tip of my thumb rather than a flat thumb. For some reason this feels more comfortable to me but I don’t think it makes a huge difference. Sometimes my thumb slips ending up flat but it causes no real issues.

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#14

True, looks very different now that we can look at them side by side :slight_smile:

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#15

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good description.

I think the main thing @Tommo and I latched onto was the bend in the thumb. And to be fair to @Tommo, he was going off my textual descriptions and maybe a couple of still photos I posted a while back. :smiley:

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#16

@Craig_Meakin,

Little update as I know you wanted a bit more analysis of your technique.

Had a chat with Troy yesterday about your videos and our conclusion is similar to what you probably already know: you are mainly a wrist player with occasional “forearm assist” that is only activated in specific string changes.

If it feels and sounds good for what you are trying to play, there is really nothing to change.

If you find that some patterns are giving you trouble for the right hand, for example if you feel that your forearm is doing too much work rotating and adjusting for the various string changes, then you can try this:

Try to not move the arm at all :slight_smile:

That is, see if you can get all the string changes just via wrist motions. As a first attempt you don’t really need to change anything about your current setup: place your arm/hand in your current “default” position, and just make a mental note to keep the arm fixed. Play something that requires various string changes (and that your left hand knows well), and see if your right hand just finds the motions by itself.

As usual, you can do this with the “start with speed” approach to make sure you avoid inefficient motions.

Let us know how that goes :slight_smile:

#17

First of all thanks to yourself and @Troy for taking the time to discuss my picking

I did try the strictly wrist, no forearm approach to begin with but I didn’t like the fact that it creates an inconsistent picking angle from the lower to higher stings. A lot of my playing involves repeating phrases in octaves so I like to have as consistent a feel across the strings as possible so I don’t have to think too hard when doing this.

To borrow an engineering term - I used an inverse kinematic approach to come up with my picking motion ie. I focused specificially on the motions I wanted the pick to make and let my wrist and arm figure out where they needed to be to achieve this. As a result, I find the motions feel quite natural to me.

I’ve been practicing the Scarified verse a lot with the track and I think it’s coming along pretty nicely. There are still some inconsistencies that I need to iron out. Most of the issues seem to be with the left hand and jumping between the arpeggiated phrases.

Here is the latest video - apologies for the wierd breathing

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#18

Hey Craig. Great playing here. As @tommo poitns out, this looks mainly like wrist motion. An interesting question though is which wrist motion.

We suspect most players have a default primary joint motion that they use when they don’t have any other competing “inverse kinematic” requirements. Meaning, as a way of simplifying the complexity of the thousands of motion possibilities, they settle on one type of joint motion as a starting point until they have a reason not to.

But given that the wrist can actually move in different directions, just saying “wrist” is not really enough by itself. Which specific wrist motion, i.e. direction of joint motion, is another question we can ask. The Al DiMeola wrist motion, for example, is not strictly a side-to-side wrist motion, but a slightly diagonal one. It’s a super common joint motion in picking technique, and the same wrist motion used by John McLaughlin, Andy Wood, Andy James, and many other great players.

Next time you sit down to a guitar, just play a single note on a single string at a medium rate of speed or better and see what the joint motion looks like. I’m guessing it will be wrist motion, but it may not strictly be the “side to side” motion of wrist deviation. If you get a chance to film that, that would be instructive to take a look at. If not no worries though, and thanks for posting these!

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#19

Hi Troy, I took a short video of me picking each string at a medium speed.

From what I can tell, there’s a mix of “horizontal” and “vertical” wrist travel in my picking motion that creats a slightly swooping curved path. I don’t know if this is accurate and if there’s maybe a simpler mechanic that I’m missing.

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#20

Thanks for doing that! Yes, this is double escape (i.e. semicircular) motion. It’s common to see this at medium speeds, and less common at faster ones. The motion can be done quickly, which is how things like bluegrass roll patterns are played with alternate picking, where you have only one note on each string. But most players, even if they can do this motion, tend to revert to the more strictly diagonal motions if they’re not actually playing a phrase that requires it.

So that’s another thing you can try. If you fret a single note on, say, the G string, is there a speed at which this motion starts to look less semicircular and more diagonal?

If so, that’s something you would want to know because faster phrases might specifically require starting on a certain pickstroke based on which diagonal motion you’re using. Even-numbered phrases like the pentatonic scale are good examples of this. Most very fast pentatonic players have a distinct preference for whether they start on upstroke or downstroke, based on whether their motion is downstroke escape or upstroke escape — escape being the pickstroke that goes above the string height, i.e. permitting clean string changes.