Pickslanting Primer question (Primary Pickslant)

[Frylock]

I think this has been discussed before, but I’ve lost track of where it was discussed.

Looking at 2:36 of the clip below:

https://troygrady.com/primer/two-way-pickslanting/michael-angelo-batio/chapter-7-beyond-the-octave/

@Troy is demonstrating the application of 2wps to a 3-note-per-string descending scale.

We see a few chunks slowed down, with narration and annotation:

Down-Up-Rotate
Up-Down-Rotate

But when I look at the actual movement in the video, I would swear I’m seeing:
Down-Up-Rotate
Rotate-Down-Up

I think this could relate to some discussion that came up in an older thread about the timing of rotation in 2wps. In additional to anything that might help me unscramble my confusion about what I think I’m observing above, could someone who remembers the other thread I’m referring to reply with the thread link?

[Troy]

This one:

Pickslant change sequence question

Hi guys, I have a very similar right hand position as Troy, so naturally a downward pick slanter. I started practicing the slant changes one week ago and would be happy to have your opinion on one topic: Let’s say I am practicing a descending 6 notes pattern with 3 notes per string, for instance: e-----15-13-12--------------- b------------------15-13-12– According to Troy, I should practice the following motion (starting with DWPS and downstroke): Down - Up - Down(rotate to UWPS) - Up - Do…

And yes, this appears to occur both ways in my own playing. There are times when it’s down-up-rotate, up-down-roate. And others when it looks more like “down-up-rotate, rotate down up”. In the thread I’ve noted a couple examples of these differing appearances.

The approach where the two rotations occur back to back is the classic “primary pickslant” approach, where you have one orientation most of the time, punctuated by these combination “switch / switch back” movements. It’s what we see in Andy Wood’s case and Batio’s case, and probably other players we’ve interviewed. It may be that this is the more common approach out in the wild, and that I’m the anomaly here since I learned these movements in a test tube, a variety of different ways.

Practically speaking, what matters is that we recognize that they exist, and they both appear to work. This way when you’re looking at your own playing you can recognize what’s going on without being super confused.

[Frylock]

Excellent. Thanks! I’m totally bookmarking that other thread.

[tommo]

Cool! Could we interpret two rotations in a row as a brief crosspicking moment? Or is there something fundamentally different going on? I am asking this because sometimes I feel I can nail the double rotation quite well in a fast-ish TWPS scenario, while my actual crosspicking is not that good (i.e. I can’t string together many double rotations at high tempos).

[Troy]

You can interpret any curved picking motion at a right angle to the strings, even one rotation, which is one pickstroke, as a crosspicking movement. But then it becomes more of a language question. What do you mean by “crosspicking”?

In general it probably makes the most sense to think of the terms “pickslanting” and “crosspicking” as the names for whole string-switching strategies. In one case, your strategy is to maintain a straight-line picking movement that occasionally re-orients itself using a curved movement, or series of them. In the other strategy, you have a movement which is curved all the time so you don’t have to reorient.

Will some players appear to do a mishmash of both, like Andy Wood? Yes. How do you describe what Andy does, it is pickslanting or is it crosspicking? Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter. These are all just hand movements. We know how they work, we can see them, and we can see how he and other players combine those movements into phrases. That’s all that really matters - the terminology just helps us understand those movements when we are first learning.