Play fast without upstrokes on string changes with parallel pick?

Playing Technique
#1

I know many guitarists who play pretty fast (Not breakneck but around and over 200bpm) without using any of the techniques shown in CTC. I am one of those players. I have played with a simple up down repeating style my entire 10 years of playing. I never could play fast licks WITH long lines and scales however, but I could do short bursts very quickly. I have friends however, which are able to play really fast and long scales across 5 strings without using any special technique. At least thats what they say and I could be wrong since I haven’t looked closely since watching this series.

I play with the pick parallel and flat against the strings when I am string skipping and basically when I do everything else. It feels the most natural to me and is by far the easiest way to do string skipping that I have found. The problem is that I continue this when doing scales and alternate picking. I do hold my pick the proper way but dont really angle it at all. I would prefer to keep picking this way if at all possible. Is this realistic or a smart approach to speed picking?

Is it even possible to pick like this with speed or are they using a technique without realizing it? Is it possible to play very fast without utilizing the techniques in CTC? I have been practicing these techniques the past few days and they feel incredibly akward and make me slower! Also, I cannot get the tone I want without a parallel pick. I only angle it when trying to make a slight scraping and harmonic sound on the low E string. This parallel picking seems almost essential to my tone and playstyle that heavily utilizes string skipping. Is there an easy way to string skip with CTC techniques? It seems to me it’s only good for super speed shred stuff and not much else. Is this an incorrect assertion?

Another big problem I have with the downward pick slanting is the fact that my style of music utilizes a TON of string skipping. I play riffs that jump between single notes that are 3 and 4 and 5 strings apart, and tone is a huge factor as well. Is it realistic for me to be able to change my grip and slant so quickly on the fly while doing these huge string skips? I play djenty sounding guitar and you cannot make that aggressive attacky sound while holding your pick in such rigid or specialized ways. The playing is very organic and dynamic although the end product is supposed to sound almost robotic in nature in terms of tone.

Here is an example of a song that I wrote and the style I utilize:

And also this riff at 1:09 in this song:

Can someone shed some light? Also you will notice how sloppy my playing is at the end of “Ordinary World”.

I feel I am stuck with my style and put in a box when it comes to breaking out into breakneck speed riffing.

I also am extremely confused by CTC in regards to alternate picking. I see so many examples of the best way to do it yet they are so contradictory. I guess they all work in their own way and I have to discover what works for me?

Will I have to throw away my current technique and relearn guitar all over again to get to the next level of speed and endurance? I am willing to.

Also one more question for the experts. When I am playing above the 12th fret (Where streches are longer) I often use my ring finger to fret the 2nd note in 3 note per string scales when each note is a full step apart (At least 2 frets apart). My friend told me this is incorrect and I should use my middle finger. It’s a habit I have re-inforced for 10 years and is automatic now. It does feel better in many cases to use my middle finger, but how can I unlearn this habit? Is it possible to unlearn something I’ve done for a decade? Is it even worth it? Also when is it best to transition away from using the pinky finger for 3 note per string scales with 2 full steps between the notes? I see expert shredders almost NEVER use their pinky anywhere on the fretboard and I am extremely perplexed by this.

#2

Dude, that’s exactly it right there. Troy didn’t invent this stuff. He unearthed tendencies in some of the world’s best pickers who probably have little to no idea, and grouped them into concepts that the common man can demystify. If the people you know have unhindered string changing ability at high speeds, chances are they’ve naturally acquired one of the aspects that CTC is about.

It sounds like you might be fresh to the CTC stuff, so don’t be alarmed if DWPS is not YOUR solution. That is one strategy employed by some players. There’s also 2WPS in the Antigravity seminar, cross picking in the Albert Lee and Martin Miller interviews and all kinds of stuff for you to delve into.

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#3

Yup! Now, I am NOT SAYING I’m included in the “best pickers” category, but I used to think I had a straight on parallel to the string style of playing. Then, @Troy did a 20-30 minute video analyzing and explaining what I’m doing. Apparently I use cross-picking and 2 way pick slanting, but I primarily play with an upward slant.

I had no clue I did all this stuff. Now that I know more about myself and how I move, I’m able to approach things with greater awareness which has lead to more accuracy in my playing.

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#4

PoSsibly you are right but one of them is not able to play at all when starting on upstrokes. This would lead me to believe they aren’t doing anything too advanced.

#5

Thanks for stopping by. There really is no such thing as “advanced” - there’s just picking. It’s complicated. Every day, average people do things they don’t fully understand and can’t control. It’s the whole reason Cracking the Code exists.

It sounds like you have some familiarity with what downward pickslanting can look like, and you’ve learned to recognize the appearance of it. Before Cracking the Code, nobody thought pickslanting “looked” like anything. It was only when we pointed it out that everyone looked down at their hands and did a facepalm. If your friends don’t appear to be using any technique in particular, it’s most likely that you/they aren’t aware of how their technique works. We’ve covered lots of things, like swiping, upward pickslanting and crosspicking, that very often don’t “look” like anything — until you learn how they work or what they sound like, at which point you realize they’re everywhere.

In your case, if you play metal and like doing string-skipping arpeggio type patterns like in Wintersun’s “Winter Madness”, then the Teemu Mantysaari interview is a great place for this. Yes, there’s a method involved there. There’s always a way that something works. To your question, absolutely, Teemu has multiple techniques and switches between them on the fly multiple times per song. He has spent years studying pickslanting techniques and is great at many of them. He’s also rapidly becoming great at one-note-per-string alternate picked arpeggio playing / crosspicking, which again is one of those things that you’d look at and not really recognize as being a technique until you understand how those wrist movements work.

If your friends would like to post some smartphone slow-motion footage of their fast non-pickslanting technique we’d love to see it. Odds are good that it’s already something we’ve looked at. But you never know - we’re seeing new things every day on the forum, and that’s always exciting.

As for you though, if you want to get good at picking, you put in the homework, learn the movements that will work for the lines you will want to play, as Teemu and many others have done. Getting hung up on what you currently do, or what you think your technique should look like, is only going to hold you back.

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#6

Thanks for the feedback. I can tremelo pick like nobodies business and I can sweep pick very proficiently as well (A little rusty lately). My problem is keeping that momentum while moving across strings and alternate picking. I have tried several of the techniques outlined and they make sense from a mechanical and physical stand point. Is it just shear practice that I need to put in now? Because it seems like if I just stop thinking about the techniques and just “try” to alternate pick really fast I can totally land it sometimes, but not all the time, but its when I use my normal picking technique which alternates upstrokes and downstrokes when switching strings. I understand its not efficient from a physical point of view, but do you think it could work for me? It seems like I have hit a wall, and trying these other techniques seem to limit my potential speed. What I mean is that if I use my normal technique I can actually reach the speeds and accuracy I want, but it doesn’t work every time. When I start doing economy picking I seem to reach a max speed and feel like it’s physically impossible for me to get any faster. It’s extremely discouraging. I would just like to see evidence of great pickers who can do alternate picking where the string changes happen on up or down strokes. It feels really natural to me because I use so much string skipping that it doesn’t feel like it slows me down at all. I don’t know what to focus on, but I want to believe that if I just push myself and go with my gut that I can get better.

#7

It sounds like what you’re describing involves what Troy calls “two-way pickslanting” (the term is more general than the exact case referred to above, but that’s included under its umbrella). This is covered in the seminar “Antigravity”, and is used by such players as Michael Angelo Batio, Vinnie Moore and Al Di Meola:

https://troygrady.com/seminars/antigravity/

#8

Of course you can play lines that switch strings after upstrokes or downstrokes. This is what Batio, Gilbert, Moore, and many others have done. The technique that many of these players use is what we call two-way pickslanting, where the pickslant changes to accomodate the string change. Have you watched any of our features on that subject?

Another technique that allows this is crosspicking. It’s a specifically contoured curved picking motion used by players Steve Morse and Martin Miller which allows them to play any number of notes per string. It is somewhat rare in rock, and almost none of the legends we grew up with, aside from Steve, do it regularly. It is more common in bluegrass where players specifically attempt to learn arpeggio alternate picking. You can watch any number of our features on this subject. As I mentioned, Teemu is learning this currently and making great progress with it.

Finally, swiping can also achieve this. In a swiped approach, you actually hit the strings as you move across them, but they’re muted and the sound of the contact may not be noticeable. Lots of players do this, without being aware of it. Whether you think this sounds acceptably ‘clean’ enough will have a lot to do with how much of this you use, and how picky you are about cleanliness.

Bottom line, there is always a technique involved. Whether you want to put in the time to learn those techniques is up to you. If shutting off your mind and using pure trial and error works for you, and you end up discovering one or more of these techniques on your own without having to be consciously aware of them, that’s absolutely fine. It’s all about results.

But if you have only dabbled with these techniques, and haven’t had good enough instruction to show you how to do them without lapsing back to whatever you’re doing currently, that’s really no excuse. You can easily blow a few decades doing that. Ask me how I know!