Pickslanting confusion

Playing Technique
#1

hi there
i’m kinda confused about something troy talks about here:

he says here that pickslanting is not something you DO deliberately, but it depends on the motion.
for instance: a pronated arm inevitably means upward pickslanting and DSX,
and obviously a supinated arm means downward pickslanting and USX.
but in the tutorials, when troy teaches the reverse dart throw (supinated arm) he interviews andy wood
which uses DSX (and not USX), and troy also suggests using DSX and not USX like the gypsy technique.
so what am i missing here?
and how can you use reverse dart throw with USX?
thanks

#2

Think of pick slanting as simply the direction the pick is leaning, rather than attaching it to a specific motion mechanic. With respect to doing RDT with USX, that’s what players like Joscho Stephen do. The motion he makes it primarily RDT, but because of his more extreme supination (and subsequent downward pick slant) his downstrokes hit higher strings, and his upstrokes escape. Andy wood who uses less supination, and a more neutral pick slant escapes on the down strokes but can easily alter this to create an upward escape if needed for certain licks.

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

#3

that’s what i thought, thanks.
and tbh, i still don’t understand why wood’s technique is classified as rdt… his
arm looks super flat to me, and maybe just a little supinated

#4

The arm is irrelevant, think of DT and RDT just of different ways of describing the way the wrist is moving efficiently.

Andy’s motion is flicking outwards more towards 2:00 on the clock face. It doesn’t matter the position of the arm if the wrist is still flicking in that same direction, no matter what you do it doesn’t become a 10:00 DT motion where the wrist is now flicking upwards in the other direction. The escapes may change but the motion is the same :slight_smile:

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#5

I can never speak for Troy, but you pick your motion—USX, DSX, or DBX—and then you’re “forced” to use a particular pickslant to have the pick symmetrically impact the string so upstrokes and downstrokes sound similar.