Rest stroke practice

Technique Critique
#1

Greetings everyone, I am a newbie here, though have already watched every video and clip probably twice over. Slowly “incubating” the ideas both in UWPS/DWPS and TWPS. I have always wondered why I could blast out some really fast alternate picking but never had much control of it, I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was accurate as far as hitting the strings @ the appropriate tempo/subdivisions but for any more than a quick burst of a scale run, I basically had zero stamina, and the event had to be prepared for like using the star uppercut on Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, lol. I found it especially difficult to play palm muted JP style riffs as I could never quite tame the bouncing/kickback feeling against my elbow. I knew there was something I was doing wrong but everybody I had talked to about this just told me I was doing fine and not to worry so much about it…how frustrating. I now understand that my motions are essentially a continuous form of crosspicking, at best, and while I have reduced the “string hopping” motions to a minimum, my technique has always felt insecure, which is an awful feeling. I mean sure, I can do a lot of impressive techniques but with the right hand it is only by brute forcing my way through it, which feels terrible. Make no mistake, I have put in lots of time with this, been going at this off and on for 10 years, for the first 3 years I did strict 3hrs a day rain or shine, got almost nowhere.

Having watched the videos I realized that slanting doesn’t really do anything or me, and to reiterate my earlier point, the only way that seems possible is if I am clearing the plane of strings by slightly swooping in and out, which is crosspicking. I can’t seem to think of a way to practice using more of a flat picking motion other than doing rest strokes to bury the pick into the string plane with DWPS, though i have no idea how to do this with, let alone using UWPS. Any rest stroke videos or exercises you all would recommend?

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#2

Update, tried out rest strokes today, good lord, what a difference that is, I used to have to kind of “swing” at the strings for any kind of punch/attack. Also, the feeling of doing this is more “push/pull” rather than “up/down”, lastly, there is no acceleration deceleration component with this method, no having to put on the “neural brakes” or “wind up” for the pickstroke. I would have never thought to pick this way, ever. Hope I am on to something here, also, I “feel” as though I can do this with UWPS. The only thing I am worried about now is if I am doing this right, as practice is something I can do from the moment I get home from work all the way until bed, I have issues with “moderation” when it comes to guitar/music, don’t want to overdo it, or establish another set of bad habits.

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#3

It would be great if you could record yourself and post it here so that the rest of us could see what exactly is going on. Personally, rest strokes really helped me a lot. You can still practice them with UWPS, just rest on the thicker string. And with TWPS, you can do rest strokes depending on what direction the pickslant is at any moment.

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#4

If you wish to not go the DWPS route, which as a lifelong alternate picker I can certainly empathize with, I would think that aside from the mechanics of advanced cross picking, that would leave two way pick slanting. The rest strokes need not be buried per se, but I’ve also found the rest strokes to be grounding, not a hindrance. The switch for me was from a wrist pronation/supination to a forearm rotation. The larger arc of the rotation approximates a flatter pick stroke than the shallow ones used in cross picking (or at least it seems that way to me). Getting the relaxed rest stroke (planting?) opened up the door to seeing more practical uses of “sweep” picking as well. Not sure if any of this information helpful, but I’ve found the TWPS (two-way pick slanting) videos here helpful, as well as some videos by Rick Graham (coming from the classical background) and Chris Brooks (focusing on the yngwie mechanic). Cheers, D

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#5

FWIW I have an old video that references my previous technique, this technique always felt very “bouncy”. Seems “fast-ish”, even though this is a lot more riff playing and legato, rather than scale runs, honestly though I am actually more concerned about my picking during rhythm playing anyways, as my technique feels like I am out of control even though it doesn’t look that way in the video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/r2oTTM8au4gFVYYy2

I will find/take additional video that will hopefully help, this has been botherng me for 10 years, Troy’s exploration of the mechanics of picking has been a godsend, any help you all can offer would of course be greatly appreciated.

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#6

I absolutey agree that gypsy style forearm rotation (pronation and supination of the forearm, with the wrist in a flexed position) results in a flatter pick trajectory than techniques where the path of the pick is a smaller rotation. The flatter arc is a product of moving to tip of the pick further from the axis of rotation. It’s like the difference between a 5 inch wheel and a 1 inch wheel. The other trick is that depending on exactly how you hold the pick, you can actually have the pick pointed pretty much parallel to the axis, rather than sticking out from the axis radially, which results in an even flatter trajectory for the tip of the pick.

This results a more forgiving “margin of error” for hitting the string. It’s a little like the difference between kicking a soccer ball straight at a post, versus curving the ball by putting spin on it, and hoping the path of the curve will intercept the post. But in the picking case, the two different types of “curve” misses have different consequences: missing “above” the string means you’ll miss the string entirely, and maybe hit the next string instead; missing “below” the string means you’ll hit the string with a deeper stroke (more of the pick) than you wanted, resulting in a stroke with much more resistance than intended. The gypsy approach is more akin to the reliable straight-line kick,

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#7

Great playing! Thanks for posting. This looks and sounds awesome to me. Until you show us a clip of something you want to fix, I actually wouldn’t recommend changing anything. Is there some specific phrase you’re trying to play that’s not working? If so, post that and we’ll take a look.

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#8

I finally got this to play with sound. Totally dig what sounds to me like a Nuno influence. :metal:

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#9

Thanks so much everyone, and of course thanks for picking out the Nuno influence Frylock. I started out learning Satch songs, then found Nuno, then finally, Petrucci. I can do a lot of things well but picking is easily my weakest link, I will follow up with a video of my picking, though admittedly, I probably do it well enough to “get by” in most situations these days, it’s more control and consistency that I am after, though of course a little more speed might be nice too :slight_smile:

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#10

Progress so far. Threw in some tremolo picking in the beginning as this is the only position that I can make this happen at, picking from the wrist just doesn’t even come close to this speed, and is far more tense a movement. Wondering if I should be working on developing tremolo like this from the wrist? Is that even possible? Anyway, doing these rest strokes and attempting to do the forearm rotation picking within patterns doesn’t even feel like alternate picking, or what i thought alternate picking was, which to me was always a side to side motion (relative to the string plane), where as this feels like pushing down and pulling out, I need to get a close up of this as it feels like my pick must be almost parallel to the plane of the strings, feels like an extreme angle, then again maybe that’s what pickslanting feels like when you have never done it? Every now and again I switch to UPWS, which feels great sometimes and other times not, which is to be expected. Learning to listen to my body for cues, when something doesn’t feel right or it feels like there is an impediment to the picking motion, I usually find that the opposing pickslant is required. Hoping if I am perceptive and aware of this continually I will develop an intuitive 2WPS method. I am actually at about the same speed for both DWPS and UWPS, so I consider that a win.

The thing that really gets me, and I think I spotted the reason why in this video, is that my lower speed picking is still inconsistent, looks like I go right back to a stringhopping movement when playing slowly, it’s VERY uncomfortable. Things like the “Everbody wants to rule the World” intro from Tears for Fears scares me a bit, sure I can do it, but for how many cycles consistently? Sadly, I have practiced it to a metronome, never really felt like I was getting anywhere it’s probably more challenging than any lead I have ever created or learned. I know I need better videos than this, I will be back with more, but any insight as to what I am doing right or wrong would be helpful :slight_smile:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_vwuq6_l7-0bzJTM0RyckxvUzQ/view?usp=drivesdk

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#11

Major epiphany after I wrote this, I think I can do crosspicking using DWPS with a lift off after the downstroke, I tried it and seemed to work really well, it also got me out of “pressing” against the guitar, doing those rest stroke exercises kind trained that into me, but it was necessary to get a feel for the movement. I can feel the difference between the rotational movement even more and I now kind of see how this all works. If I let my hand “choose” I can see the 2WPS thing happening on it’s own, it’s kind of strange actually. I think the key, which seems somewhat obvious, is to absorb all of the ideas here, ruminate on them, make sure you really are understanding the mechanical cocnepts and then play/practice while being mindful of them, play them until you no longer have to think about the movement, relax, and your body will interpolate, or jump the gaps needed to make it happen. I still feel like one note per string arpeggios is a whole different world though, I can do it fast with my old method of picking but there is way too much tension there, going to go over more the of the Martin Miller/Albert Lee videos again, so yeah, I still have ground to cover, but I feel like things are really coming together, which is FAR from where I have ever been with picking…and hey, I have a show to play on Saturday, feeling much better about everything right now :slight_smile: The funny thing is realizing how much of a fight relearning a foundational technique is, it’s very much “You against you” (i.e Rocky Balboa logic, lol) as there is really a psychological reluctance to retraining yourself to use a different technique

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#12

I don’t have much to say, except that this looks pretty good to me, and I’d be interested in any insight you develop about crosspicking with this technique. I’ve experimented with a DWPS technique that looks similar to this, but for me it ends up having so much downward slant that any attempt at crosspicking or 2WPS comes more from the Martin Miller school of extending the index finger MCP joint (though it feels more like a “thumb squeeze”) to “lift” the pick clear of the string, which is something I don’t have a knack for doing at high speed (at least not yet).

Only other comment is that from a feedback-giving point of view, the legato licks mixed in make it a little more difficult to evaluate the picking, since the viewer needs to sort out what’s intended to be picked and what isn’t. Sounds cool though. :smiley:

#13

Sorry yeah, legato is still my “go to” technique…my “what else should I do” after a picking run, lol, I will try to keep it strictly picking from now on. Watching that video again feels like a lifetime ago, I really had some thing just “click” today. I stopped doing the “push” I mentioned while doing the rest strokes and everything kind of fell into place, little to no tension, I mean, honestly I feel more tension playing rhythm compared to doing scale runs/solos, it’s quite amazing. After convincing myself to let go of the push from doing rest strokes i decided to try a small lift off the face of the guitar, I played the passages that typically trip me up, which are basicaly arpeggiated chords, not sweeping but something you might hear in folk playing, attacking the downstroke the same way I had practiced with the rest strokes, I did a very small lift off right after the downstroke, I asked my gf what it looked like because it just “felt” right, she said it looked like the straight line I showed her on the DWPS video, but said it just curves up after I hit the string, in short I really think I am making huge leaps here. As far as the UWPS/2WPS stuff, I basically inverted the same patterns and played them with UWPS, got the movement going in reverse, after enough experimentation, I discovered that if I hold the pick somewhat loosely while doing UWPS, as I string track, my pick will kind of automatically fall to DWPS as needed, alternating back is still a little odd, feels a little forced, but again, if I kind of let my hand “decide”, I will find that it “wants” to go back to UWPS at certain times, which i have somewhat learned to trust.

It’s funny, going back to what you said about using the thumb, I have definitely done this while switching slants, this goes back to experimenting with holding the pick a little more loose than normal, in some cases it almost feels like the string changing can sort of force my pick towards one slant or the other, if I kind of “let go” of the pick, just a bit, the string change event will kind of push or pull the thumb which causes a quick change from one slant to the other. I am still trying to work that out, I have yet to trust that method, I am at this point still reveling in the benefits of pickslanting, I have been basically brute forcing a “straight across the strings” method for 12 years, which I just learned is basically ALL stringhopping that I managed to smash down flat enough to be just barely usable. I really don’t know what to say, i would have NEVER done this without Troy’s exhaustive exploration. I stumbled on DWPS last year but it felt SO strange that I almost abandoned it, I mean, I had it stuck in my head from videos like Rock Discipline and countless interviews with famous guitarists that there are no shortcuts, it’s all about putting in the time, I can’t even tell you how many hours I wasted doing the wrong technique, these are hours I could have been using for actually creating music. Well, it’s almost midnight and I have my day job early in the morning, feel like I may be able to do a better job articulating this tomorrow, I am just so excited about this i had to reply :slight_smile:

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#14

Thanks for sharing!

Reading this made me very happy on your behalf!

Now we just need more clips of jaw-dropping alternate picking and your thoughts on what practice was effective and what was not :slight_smile:

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#15

Thanks for the support! I had got to the point, with my previous picking method, that I was kind of afraid to play in front of people, a sentiment echoed by Troy in the earlier videos. Sure, speed is great to develop but having a technique that is consistent is FAR more valuable.I will keep working off and on with picking, there is always something out there to learn but I am looking forward to picking NOT being the main focus of my practicing. One thing I am fairly certain about, at least to me, is that there doesn’t seem to be any way to pick ONLY from the wrist, I think the forarm rotation component is critical, even if it is just a small component of the movement, there is just WAY too much tension to make wrist deviation exclusive picking fast and accurate, which is really what got me trapped more than a decade ago, hearing “only from the wrist”, and only “straight up and down”, was a recipe for stringhopping, as it automatically put me above the strings (having to lift up and drop your hand to change strings), no matter how I brute forced it it felt awful, even when it sounded good.

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#16

Forearm rotation is not a requirement for using wrist-oriented motions, and it is relatively straightforward to make the wrist move without it. We’ve seen this recently in the Andy Wood interview, and we’ll see it again in the upcoming Molly Tuttle interview. However if you feel “activity” in your arm when making fast wrist movements, what you might be feeling is something we have discussed in other threads here. And this is the possibility that tension at the elbow joint may be involved in fast wrist playing. We’ve talked about John Taylor’s prodigious forearm flex when he uses wrist deviation movement. There are forearm muscles like the brachioradialis that can move the elbow joint without rotating it, and that’s what we see in John’s case.

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#18

If you’re interested in improvisation, it really should be. The players we’ve interviewed with the most extensive improvisational vocabularies spent the majority of their practice time playing tunes and learning to solo, not doing mechanical practice. To the extent that you can merge those two disciplines, the musical dividends are serious.

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#21

Wrist deviation exclusive methods are confounding, I have always felt a lot of tension in my elbow trying to isolate the wrist movement. In fact, even attempting to do the movement just holding a pick with no guitar present, my arm wants to rotate to speed things up. Definitely shakes my confidence knowing that Andy Wood gets there with wrist only as he might be the best picker I have ever heard. Well, what can I say I spent 10 years in that camp, couldn’t tremolo pick at all that way, and playing fast runs was more of a controlled spasm, rather than a sustainable technique, I have to go with what works, and with what I can do safely. I will definitely check the Andy Wood videos again, as I can’t even figure how you could really pickslant using wrist only, there has to be a vertical component to get out of the string plane, which would require all crosspicking? Seems like that would work for almost everything but probably the super fast straight line John Petrucci/Gilbert stuff, then again, it’s Andy, he could probably do JP speed with crosspicking.

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#22

He rotates momentarily to facilitate the string change.

I use only wrist-deviation to pick these days and I switch momentarily to dwps to clear the string too. This means that I have a single pick-stroke that uses a rotational mechanic.

What I can’t do, is lock into dwps and use wrist-deviation only to play something like the EJ descending pentatonic sixes pattern (@Troy do we have any video footage of someone doing this to look at?). When I look at it, it should be possible, but I keep hitting the strings. I also can’t manage the switch between uwps and dwps at speed when doing 2 nps patterns like this, so when I play them I end up changing motion mechanics. I’m guessing that’s because I haven’t been practicing twps for long enough, and with time the movements would be more efficient and require less time.

I’m not sure how Andy Wood would play such lines, but he can crosspick at like 170 bpm so I’m guessing he would just do that, and it would be plenty fast.

There’s also a difference in tone when changing between the rotational mechanic and wrist deviation, because the pick attack / angle is different. These thoughts are leading me to believe I should be investing more practice time in the rotational mechanic, because it somehow seems more flexible.

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#23

It is certainly possible to do dwps with only wrist movement, and you can check out the Albert Lee interview for one example of what this looks like. If you’re having trouble figuring out how to do this, try playing with your fingers curled in, not loose or anchoring —less inteference with the guitar body that way, and no need for the arm to rotate to get more range of motion out of the pickstroke.

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