Why not just use two way pick slanting to play typical cross picking lines? What advantage is there in learning a new technique when 2 way pick slanting will allow you to play the same notes and is faster? None of the bluegrass players I’ve seen can play as fast as the most advanced proponents of 2 way pick slanting play.
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I think it is about the non sweeped one note per string stuff. I personally don’t like the feeling when going from one slant to the other on every note if there is a longer run containing those frequent shifts. Though I can’t play crosspicking that fast than 2WPS, it feels less athletic, more relaxed and is my primary technique.
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Why not do it? Guys like Jimmy Herring and Steve Morse can blaze through one note per string patterns using crosspicking. It’s uust another tool in the arsenal.
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The goal of pickslanting is having an efficient way of escaping the plane of the strings.
Crosspicking in its best form (see Miller) does this as well.
In terms of speed, I don’t know what the upper limits of crosspicking are compared to 2way-slanting.
I know that with some picking systems there is a trade off between speed and sound/tone.
Crosspicking always sounds good, economy picking/slurred picking for example (Yngwie, EVH) does not translate well to an acoustic guitar for example.
What I noticed about 2way pickslanting is that usually you consciously have to think about what you are doing in terms of notes per string, while with crosspicking everything goes much more automatically.
Still, I’m not crosspicking exclusively. For certain patterns I will sweep, swipe or slant, depending on how something is easier to play.
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It’s about the material. 2WPS is pretty tricky for one note per string runs.
When you see Batio blazing through scales at 2x the speed of the fast bluegrass crosspickers you have to note that Batio’s material is often 2, 3, or 4 notes per string, which means there’s much less string changing to have to deal with. The one note per string stuff is by nature going to be harder and slower.
An interesting thing to think about is, if doing 2WPS for 1-note-per-string runs, where would the slant change?
Example, you play the low E string with a downstroke and UWPS, then you’re in great shape to hit the A string, but once you strike that A string with an upstroke and the maintained UWPS, you’re stuck under the plane of the strings between the A and E. That is unless you change slants mid ‘air’ or doing that upstroke. Then it seems to me at that point we’re basically getting into the crosspicking movement anyway, aren’t we?
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I guess we would end up in some kind of ‘slant-hopping’ 
It worked for me in passages, when there is just one note on an different string than the rest of the phrase, like the beginning measures of the crossroads Paganini section @Troy played. For the later V7 Arpeggio over three strings I could make it work too, but felt like (slant-)hopping. (I then rearranged it so the third and fifth are on one string). Same hopping feeling with the diminished arps at the end.
With Crosspicking, I can more concentrate on rhythm, note choice and phrasing than to think about what slant and what pickstroke. Though 1WPS and 2WPS are no real problem. But I can’t get X-picking past 130 bpm with more complex stuff like the Paganini section with pure alternate picking. Legato buyes me time here and there. How to get more picking speed?
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At some level this all breaks down into terminology because in the first two crosspicking clips I posted the movement I’m using is essentially the same movement I use for two way pickslanting - I’m just doing it on every note. So there is no difference in speed really. It’s just a different strategy, ie are you making that movement all the time or just occasionally.
In the case of the third jazz clip, and with players like Molly Tuttle, the movement is actually different. So it may be easier to imagine that it’s a different technique but in truth, again, it’s the strategy that is different, ie fully escaped pickstrokes all the time rather than just occasionally.
The best example of this is Andy Wood. He uses both kinds of movements - the arm turning one and the wrist one - in the same phrases. Yet they both generate fully escaped pickstrokes. At the same speed. So is he crosspicking or two way? Call it what you will but a movement is a movement. How you combine them is the style or strategy. That’s how I see it.
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You know, that reminds me - I’d posted this in the “who should CtC interview next” thread because Jimmy Herring has one of the oddest picking movements I’ve ever seen, yet it clearly works well for him - he’s not the fastest guy I’ve ever heard, but he’s exceptionally fluid. He has this odd rotational thing going on, like his arm is sort of rotating around a pivot right around the plane of the strings:
I still haven’t made it as far as crosspicking in the Masters in Mechanics stuff (I’ve decided there’s probably a strong argument to work through it in order, and make sure I’ve got a strong grasp on one-way before I get into two way or crosspicking), so I don’t (yet, I hope!) have the ability to just look at this and intuitively know what’s going on…
…but your description of Wood’s technique makes me wonder if Jimmy Herring’s natural picking mechanic is some form of crosspicking…?
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Jimmy is also a super nice guy I hear from those who have met him and it seems if it is properly presented to him that he would most definitely be interesting in doing an interview.
What Jimmy does looks pretty similar to what I do when I’m using forearm and wrist blended crosspicking movements, aka the ‘two way pickslanting movement’, just on every note. We’ve reached out to him and they said to try again this year. So we’ll see but that’s what I think he’s doing.
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Thanks Troy! End of last year he was touring with McLaughlin (which was a pretty damned mindblowing show), so hopefully with that behind him he’s got some time on his hands to sit down with you guys!
“End of last year he was touring with McLaughlin…”
Sadly, I heard that this was to be McLaughlin’s last tour - his retirement tour. I have seen John McLaughlin five times including once with The Mahavishnu Orchestra in the mid-late 80s in a lineup with included a brilliant bassist by the name of Jonas Helleborg. A couple years later I was fortunate enough to see John McLaughlin perform at Blues Alley in Washington D.C. John only played acoustic guitar at this show but he was performing as part of a duo that night. It was John McLaughlin with Jonas Hellborg on electric bass!
The two of them absolutely tore the house down in what was my favorite of the five times I saw John play. They were playing jazz standards and each one of them had a very long, extended solo in which the guitar would play maybe 16 or 24 bars, then the bass would solo for the same amount of time, then they’d go back to more guitar soloing, then more bass soloing, and it was just a tremendous display of absolutely prodigious technique!
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I was able to catch the Seattle date on John’s retirement tour and it was fantastic. I’m a huge Mahavishnu fan but I think I may have enjoyed the set he did with his band the 4th Dimension even more. And Jimmy Herring waas excellent too. Fantastic tone.
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