Rest stroke practice

Watched the Andy Wood excerpts, deviation seems to makes sense using UWPS, my wrist looks similar when doing UWPS. I guess I just have a hard time believing there is any way to pick without some forearm rotation, even if you can’t see it, as that was a huge breakthrough for me, the thing that allowed me to successfully tremolo pick well. Though of course, there are many different mechanics that work well for other players, the Vinnie Moore method being another perplexing method that achieves the same goal

For what it’s worth, most of my attempts at “wrist” oriented picking have at least a small forearm rotation component. The only ones that haven’t for me are those that have a classic Vinnie Moore elbow component (I think there’s an argument to be made that this creeps very subtley into Andy Wood’s technique at higher speeds), and another that has almost a shoulder component. I’m fascinated by Paul Gilbert, who seems to have a wrist thing going with very little, if any, brachioradialis-driven elbow movement. I’ve been experimenting with trying to get a wrist-oriented technique to go fast and with decent attack without any obvious brachioradialis tension. The closest I get has a very delicate wrist movement, with a weaker attack than classic forearm rotation, but also has some kind of forearm movement. It may be that I’m just “relocating” the brachioradialis tension to somewhere else, but this technique feels more controlled even though it doesn’t have the same aggressive pick attack like a Vinnie Moore elbow technique does. Might have to post a video of my own. But the overall hand and wrist posture looks pretty similar to what you posted in your latest video.

^ Spot on to my observations and attempts at “wrist only” picking, even my UWPS atrempts that look “wrist only” have a very tiny rotational push that feels as though it’s directed almost right near the tip of the pick, then pushes a little up and away from the string plane, it feels distinctly different then straight “ceiling to floor”, wrist-only, then again it could just be the way I am qualifying the movements, which admittedly I need to get better at (still new to this). I have been trying to generate wrist only movements as an experiment, no matter what I do, in order to get that movement going either my elbow tenses up, or my hand wants to start rotating, I just can’t seem to do it, then again I am not Andy Wood, lol

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It sounds like you’re describing wrist flexion and extension. The central insight to wrist movement, which @Frylock has alluded to in several posts, is that your wrist moves in two dimensions. The side-to-side dimension is wrist deviation. At a right angle to that is wrist flexion and extension - that’s the movement you use to knock on a door.

The big secret here is that most of the time, you’re actually using both. If you move in any other direction other than precisely side to side, or precisely up and down, you’re doing both movements simultaneously, i.e. to create a diagonal path.

We have an upcoming interview with researchers from the Hospital for Special Surgery here in New York, who specifically studied this phenomenon, which is called “coupling”. They studied many common instances of this in everyday movements, one of the most common of which they call the “dart thrower” movement. You can probably picture exactly what this looks like. In guitar circles, we’d call that the “Vinnie Moore” posture, where the wrist is radially deviated and extended.

I sent the researchers some footage of Albert Lee’s crosspicking technique and in the interview they mentioned that it was “reverse dart thrower”, which indeed it is: ulnar deviation and wrist extension. This is the movement you’re referring to when you descibe downward pickslanting and “lifting off” afterward. That’s what Albert Lee does, it’s what Sierra Hull does, and many downward pickslanting crosspickers. And it is done exclusively with wrist movement, no forearm required, as you can see in the Albert Lee interview.

Anyway, short story, it’s not crazy for you to feel that not all wrist movements are created equal, because they are actually lots of different movements under one umbrella. However, I am not aware of any of them that specifically require forearm rotation, other than what the rest of your arm/hand setup on the guitar might cause to happen. There’s nothing wrong with that at all - forearm rotation is great, and you’ll see little bits of it all the time. I just want us to be correct about things which are commonplace, and things which are somehow mandated or required by the mechanics of your arm, which is not (as far as I know) the case when it comes to forearm movement.

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Bro so far i think ur the smoothest picker I have seen on here! When you were doing those runs were yiu using dwps and uwps economy picking …?thanks.

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