Question on hand placement with DWPS (Steve Morse, Troy Grady, John Petrucci)

Playing Technique
#21

You might be right about the change of the basic picking motion from wrist to forearm. I had also noticed that JP “attacks” the strings in a rather brutal way when he plays faster stuff.

Thanks for the video, I had never noticed that kind of change in the thumb position.

I noticed that I am actually struggling with picking on ONE string when I play the high e string and the b string, so I tried looking for videos that demonstrate how a string and the pick “interact”, and I found two that are helpful (see below). Which brings me to the question: is there content by CTC that actually shows how you pick a string in detail? I know this sounds crazy, but I have been focusing so hard on the string changes that I never really became aware of what it takes to play on ONE string.

1 Like
#22

https://youtube.com/shorts/qE0l-Y_j1lM

1 Like
#23

Thanks for the recommendations. What these videos deal with is the “muscular” aspect of the picking motion - what movements are involved at what phase of a stroke and they advice you not to use the same muscles for both the downstroke and the upstroke.

What I was trying to get at (and I think I wasn´t clear enough about this) is the difference between going “through” a string as opposed to letting the string dictate the movement of the pick.

This student of Anton Oparin here has a close-up of what I mean:

The videos from Troy above were helfpul in this regard too, because in some of the close-ups you can actually see how in the instant before crossing the string the pick gives in to the force and moves a little to the side.

I might actually do a video on my specific problem, which is as follows: sometimes when I play the high e oder b string, the pick will kind of “slide” over the strings as opposed to going “through” it, so that the pick does not end up at the same “height” that it had before encountering the stroke.

#25

I am coming back to this thread because I had a revelation about the “Petrucci cave”. Maybe it´s totally obvious for everyone else, but it wasn´t for me.

One of the problems I had was that the “cave” would not stay “open”, meaning that I would end up muting the higher strings even without intending to do so.

The reason this happened was because I´d deviate too much to the radial side and flex the wrist too much. If you want to play with the half-muted-half-open hand placement, you have to be very careful not to move the pick too much to the radial side. If you do, you end up muting the higher strings as well.

If you look at these images, you might understand what I am trying to get at.

Joscho Stephan Angle 2025-03-02 10_52_47-Greenshot-029514
Joscho Stephan Angle 2025-03-02 10_52_47-Greenshot-0295141920×1080 222 KB

John Petrucci Angle 2025-03-02 10_52_16-Greenshot-029513
John Petrucci Angle 2025-03-02 10_52_16-Greenshot-0295131920×1080 251 KB

The angle between the thumb and the plane of the strings with Joscho´s hand placement is much narrower than with JP´s. JP´s picking orientation almost forms a 90 degree angle to the plane of the strings. That way, he can manage to place the lower part of the palm on the lower strings while at the same time keeping a space open for the higher strings to ring.

If Joscho on the other hand dropped his hand onto the strings, he´d mute all of them since his hand is much more flexed and also more deviated to the radial side.

Another part that is tricky about this is that it´s much easier (at least for me) to play with USX if you flex more, like Zakk Wylde, Joscho Stephan and Marty Friedman do. But this cannot be incorporated when you play like JP, Anton Oparin and probably Jeff Loomis, where you play with some of the strings muted and some of the strings not muted.