Possible explanation for use of finger joint motion in Yngwie-style

Playing Technique
#22

Fair enough.

I may have understood your intention, based on the original post in your earlier topic.

I didn’t think you held either position.

For whatever reason, there are people who strongly believe that thumb/finger movement as a primary picking mechanic carries some uniquely special advantage over other joint motions (though they never explicitly state what that special advantage actually is). Some will even tell you that it’s an essential component of picking technique.

Recently a Pebber Brown video came up in my YouTube recommendations, where he was discussing “scalpel” and “sarod” picking.

After a backhanded compliment towards @Troy and a (ridiculous) criticism of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Pebber goes on to say that without finger/thumb movement, you’re limited to “adjacent scale-tone soloing.” He ascribes thumb/finger movements to players who really do not (or did not) ever use it to support his argument.

I don’t want to single out Pebber here, there’s an enormous amount of misinformation out there, he was hardly the worst offender and likely mislead himself. Despite having said in interviews that his picking technique was inspired by sarod players, John McLaughlin’s technique isn’t anything like a sarod player or an oud player. Typically, neither sarod nor oud technique makes use of the thumb/finger movement that Pebber describes. Both sarod and oud are typically USX wrist/foream mechanics from a flexed wrist position, most similar to gypsy technique.

It’s difficult to have any meaningful conversation about the role of thumb/finger movement in picking technique without getting derailed by this type of misinformation. Whether we call it “circle” picking or “scalpel” picking or whatever else, we’re going to have to free ourselves from this type of misinformation if we hope to develop a genuine understanding of thumb/finger mechanics.

Worse still, in some discussions thumb/finger movement almost becomes “the God of the gaps,” an almost supernatural unseen force that accounts for everything we don’t yet fully understand without explanation. I don’t want to leave those gaps.

This has become a particular bugbear of mine in the last twenty years of posting on guitar forums, and my rant here is probably an overreaction.

It’s worth mentioning too that the volcano 6-note pattern is an efficient digital cycle, as I’ve defined it previously on the forum.

That’s totally understandable. Also (and not saying you implied it), “it’ll never work” is not a fair summary of my current position, and it was most certainly not my first resort.

I’m not any kind of authority on drumming technique, but my father is an excellent drummer and I’ve been watching him play my entire life. It’s really something to see this double-stroke mechanic and Moeller trips/quads being executed.

I think the natural compatibility between the movements is very interesting. From an American grip, the first hit is like the dart-thrower downstroke. The fingers naturally open during ulnar flexion to relieve the stretch on the extensors (like when dribbling a basketball), and the fast flexion of the fingers naturally assist the return to radial extension. The dart-thrower muscles (flexor carpi ulnaris and extensor carpis radialis and brevis) also have secondary function in elbow flexion. All of the joint movements seem to work synergistically in a manner determined by the functions of the muscles involved.

I often include a hybrid picked note with the middle finger after an upstroke when playing with the Shawn Lane style dart-thrower movement. This feels very comfortable and easy to do. I think there’s some similarly with the wrist/elbow plus finger action of the double-stroke.

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#23

Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I feel sort of fortunate in that I had pretty much ignored picking mechanics prior to finding Troy’s work–it was the first time I had seen anything like that which felt “scientific” instead of dogmatic. The guitar world is SO full of misinformation.

I’m a pretty mediocre drummer, but there’s a sort of similar parallel to that complementary-motion system in my sport fencing, which is similarly tough to teach: a “disengage” is a blade action where, essentially, you “duck” your own sword below your opponent’s parry en route to scoring. Part of what makes it tricky to show beginners is that, visually, your sword goes down, then up as you extend–but the “down” component is done with a very small fingers+wrist motion (aided by gravity) and the “up” component comes from the elbow and shoulder.

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#24

I think I once heard about Omura using a combination of wrist and finger in a sophisticated sequence: for sixteenths: down with wrist, up with finger, down with finger, up with wrist. For sextuplets, correspondingly more finger movements.

This combination gets “harder” and trickier with an odd grouping of notes, but may be learnable - I don’t know. I’m also not sure if Omura really pulls this off in the heat of the moment, how he came up with this combination, and if the combination is supposed to help with stamina or if he’s all about accents, with the one and four being emphasized by the wrist in sixteenth notes.
I will try it out and report back : )

PS: Maybe it helps with stamina, because there are always different muscle groups being used and giving each other rests.

On that note, I also have a comment about finger mechanics in general: I’m just trying it out, but I have a vague guess as to why I think they call it circle picking. When you make “circles” or rather ovals, as if you were drawing a circle on the string and the pick was the stylus, muscles are used differently than if you just went back and forth. If I just do a back and forth motion, I go exhausted very quickly. If I “draw” circles that are so tight that they are more like a very thin oval, it feels more relaxed (and it looks like back and forth). So, similar to Omura’s technique, these “ovals” use different muscles or muscle groups. At least, that’s how it feels to me. But neither do I have the technique nor the observational skills to analyze muscle stresses.
I hope to upload a video on this soon.

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#25

I agree it’ll never work is a bad attitude. But… You’re not doing three pickstrokes with one movement.
The finger movements in picking are about angling the pick and shortening the pick stroke. Or lengthening it as Tom mentioned.

The main issue is your fingers are attached to your hands, think again about what I said about your drawing never breaking 90 degrees.

#26

I’ve experimented with something like this! I had wondered previously whether altering joints for pairs of notes on a single string could provide any sort of fatigue-relief advantage, by adding in a “rest period” for each group of muscles half the time. I’ve got a motion that feels like that–which is to say, it feels like I spend less energy on sustained notes–albeit, as Tom guessed, at the price of a more difficult coordination curve.* My Magnet is at the guitar shop I teach at, but when I go in to teach later today, I’ll try to take a video by way of explanation.

*edit: I picked up my guitar and tried the motion a few times, which led me to another thought, or suspicion: I think the speed limit of this type of thing is likely limited to the speed of whichever is the slower motion pair. I can play sixteenth notes at a decent clip and with even less perceived energy use using the technique, but they seem limited to the speed of the slower, fingers-only pair of notes, which for me is substantially slower than my default wrist motion. So, if that’s the case, that would be a pretty hard limit on the utility of this idea for single-string playing.

I also think your guess re: the “circle picking” moniker is close to mine–I sort of suspect that the finger motion component is what gives it that circular (feeling) pathway.

#27

Help me out a bit here. Why would it matter that the line I drew never broke 90 degrees, as you put it?

I could have used less wrist arc in the demonstration, which would have led to sharper curves of the line; I’m pretty sure I could use the same movements to draw curves that exceed 90 degrees of deflection, as you say. But what difference would that make in picking? All the pick needs to do is cross the string.

#28

Because that’s what would indicate a true reversal of the pickstroke. Your hand is falling in one direction and you’re attempting to move your fingers away from that direction for an extra mini pickstroke.

If you look at the joint I pointed out in the video, it indicates your wrist is acually doing the extra work, not your fingers. You can see that area of your hand moving back n forth.

Your whole hand is moving back and forth to pull this off, and the fingers are shortening the stroke. Thats why it seems fast.

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#29

Okay, thanks! Based on your previous responses, I had my doubts that you were replying or engaging in good faith. I think I can do a demonstration that would give evidence to the contrary–or, at least, show that the “mini” pickstroke, however small, is at least sufficient to pass through the string one additional time. I’ll try to get something posted to show that later today.

As for your perception that you’re seeing multiple wrist motions–I think what you’re seeing, on the thumb side of my hand, is the pull-back from the fingers. Take a look at the opposite side of my hand, the pinkie side. That part, the fifth (pinkie) metacarpal bone, is where we should see three distinct motions if I’m moving my wrist back and forth. I didn’t do a good job of getting that side of my hand in frame in the original video, so it’s hard to see, but if you watch the pinkie finger itself, you can sort of see that it’s not moving in two different directions. Again, I’ll try to film a clearer video–you can see that interplay a little better in the pencil video. The thumb does indeed go forward-back-forward, but the pinkie side of the hand only goes in one direction.

*edit: also, please do give me some small leniency in demonstration–this isn’t something I’ve drilled and practiced. I’m only trying to show a principle.

#30

Look at the veins on your hand for reference too. There is a clear back n forth.
And apologies if I came across wrong before, I had a few drinks then and politeness goes out the window and type much more direct.

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#31

I’ve looked at Ohmura’s technique over the years, and included it in our most recent Primer update on index-thumb motion. As of now, my official position is that I have no evidence that any of these techniques, when going fast, are actually doing anything circular. I mean, it’s possible! But it just doesn’t seem likely.

Another data point, Cesario Filho has a Magnet and has been posting tons of closeup shots of his playing. A student of his who backed the project sent theirs to him, and he’s been using it a bunch so many thanks to him! I’m really not seeing anything circular here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CoSKt6oAFEw

Slow motion in this clip, and again, not seeing anything circular in terms of the motion path:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CqJln7zLFg7/?hl=en

You can poke around on his page, tons of great playing examples, maybe you’ll spot something.

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#32

The Ohmura passage of my answer referred less to the circular than to his movement sequence with wrist and finger in alternation. There I was concerned with the fact that so different muscle groups alternate and allow each other breaks. However, I don’t know if Ohmura really does this when he’s on stage playing fast passages. Anyway, it was the analysis/explanation from himself as well as from another guitarist on YouTube dedicated to Ohmura’s technique.

I brought up the subject of circular, though, because I think I observed that when hitting the strings in “circles” or (very, very thin) ovals, different muscle groups are also active (but that has nothing directly to do with Ohmura). This in contrast to the “simple” straight line of back and forth, which is more tiring for me. Similar to when people try to practice forearm rotation as if they were turning a key around in a lock, but don’t get any faster (maybe!).

Could it be, then, that the “oval” represents the basic movement, the rough and bumpy, when you first try striking in this way, but the whole thing becomes more fluid and subtle as the motor system learns the movement?

In any case, I can’t see an oval in the Cesario Filho videos either. However, I don’t know what muscle movements are going on there exactly, nor do I have the skills to recognize that, let alone analyze it.

#33

As a small cultural-historical side note: Why could it be called Circular Picking if there is nothing circular?

Of course: under the camera and with slow motion, you might see that the circular was a conceit. And from Cracking the Code we know that the self-assessment and self-description of high-level guitarists can be different from what they actually do.

But where does this come from, that the circular is taken as reality? If the guitarists who supposedly strum circularly have no other clue than their playing in real time, then they will probably derive it from their slow attempts, which we also know by now do not reflect the reality of fast movements, which can hardly be perceived without a camera and slow motion to bind it back to the muscular feeling.

It could be a kind of mimesis, interpretation and oral/written tradition that puts the circular, perceived in the slow attempt, at the beginning of the explanation and teaching. Historically speaking: where and when did this begin? When was the birth of the perception of the circular :smiley: Is there a workshop in an old magazine? A certain instructional video? A book? An interview with someone who plays and teaches this way?

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#34

I think I first heard the idea from an Eric Johnson video.

Regardless of how the actual motion might fit into our current understanding, I agree it’s sort of interesting to investigate where the name “circle picking” came from.

Going down an internet rabbithole, someone has posted excerpts about “circle picking” from a Roy Buchanan interview on forums in recent years. One of those posts included a dead link to an archived article at guitarplayer.com (http://archive.guitarplayer.com/archive/artists/buchanan76.shtml)

I was able to find a hit for that link in the internet wayback machine. The content originated from the October 1976 issue of Guitar Player. Maybe there are older references, but that’s the oldest I’ve seen.

https://web.archive.org/web/20011223134546/http://archive.guitarplayer.com/archive/artists/buchanan76.shtml

Full text is at the wayback link above, but here are a few choice bits (including the bit about “circle picking”):

I’ve never really considered myself a fast guitar player. A lot of it comes from hammering-on. I fake a lot.

Another way to get speed is with circle picking. Larry Coryell uses it, and so does John McLaughlin. It’s an old jazz technique, really. There’s a guy in Washington, D.C. named Frank Mullin who teaches it, and he says it takes two or three years to develop.

To circle pick, all you do is start by playing with your pick at an angle. (For example, if the face of your guitar were like a clock with the string connected between the 12 and the six, the plectrum would be angled so as to form a line between the two and the eight.) You hit the string with one edge of the pick, but then you’ll find you’re in position to come back on the up-stroke with the opposite edge. You alternate the pick, then, with a rotating motion in either a counterclockwise or clockwise circle. The pick, while not changing its angle in relation to the string, is circling that area of the string. It’s not done with the wrist, but with the fingers holding the pick. When first learning, you start with a large circle, just to get the feeling. After a while, you’ll get so it’s not even an obvious circle. It becomes a feeling. You can get two or three notes going so fast it’s like a quiver. The reason it’s faster is because your picking motion – as a circle – is not interrupted for a change in direction. You’re not stopping abruptly to change direction as you would in a straight up-and-down motion. The circle also gives the notes a flowing quality.

You can use this style of picking for one or a number of strings for lead. You can also use a large circle on an entire chord to get a flowing background rhythm. [Listen to “Thank You, Lord” on Roy Buchanan, Second Album for an example of circle rhythm.]

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#35

Because you’re shortening the pick stroke and angling the pick for smoother escape. Makes it easier to pick.

The circle comes about because the wrist is going in one direction lets say up and down, and the fingers are pulling the pick horizontally left and right. That creates a circular path visually. But what that is doing is angling the pick and shortening the stroke.

Thats also the reason why this triple pick stroke with one wrist movement won’t really work, your fingers pull things towards your palm, they don’t lift things vertically.

It works for drumming as Troy demonstrated, but you don’t hold a pick like a drum stick, the axis of movement are different.

How to start applying DBX outside of rolls?