Apparently I’ve been crosspicking for a long time without knowing it. I’ve always played open arpeggiated lines with the down-down-up approach.
The crosspicking lessons I’ve found also show crosspicked lines being played pure alternate picking. When I try to do this my speed goes down to about half in order to play the lines cleanly. Is there a need to learn to crosspick with a pure alternate picking approach?
You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, but I will say that if you’re aiming for a more aggressive, robotic sound for your patterns, alternate picking in its purest form will likely do more for you than a more directional/economic approach. That said, there are people who manage to get those sounds regardless of the technique.
At the end of the day, if you can play the music you want, stick with what works best. If you find yourself compromising on writing or playing patterns because of your technique, something might have to change. No need to change otherwise IMO.
hey @Dissonant_Timbres you say you always play open arpeggiated lines with the ‘down-down-up’ approach, but doesn’t it vary with what the passage is?
What I mean is that I’ve always taken the directional/economic approach.
The OG crosspicker in terms of introducing roll patterns to bluegrass guitar was George Shuffler, and he played this way. I’m told Clarence White, another bluegrass hero, was also a DDU player, but I don’t have any footage of this.
One functional difference between that method and pure alternate, for roll playing, is that the first downstroke usually rest strokes. This cuts off the sound of the middle string of the roll. You can hear the difference if you A/B this with pure alternate.
Another difference is that you can’t string skip this method between the first two strings, since they are swept. To break those apart, you’re just doing repeated downstrokes on different strings, a la Eric Johnson’s “bounce” technique. Which is mechanically the most un-economical thing you can do.
Even then, I would say there is not a huge “economy” benefit to sweeping two strings of a three string roll. The pickstroke that plays the middle note and then the high note is still going to have to go airborne in fully escaped alternate picking style, so you’re going to have to learn that movement, whether you like it or not.
Ultimately, if this works and sounds good for what you are shooting for, no harm in using it!
hey @Troy and @Dissonant_Timbres you might enjoy this transcription I did of Tony Rice where I believe I was able to get a lot of his pick strokes notated:
lot of DDU
at 114 we’re not in the stratosphere or anything, but these rhythmic groupings are quite wonky and he makes them sound extremely pretty.
No thesis or point other than demo’ing an interesting approach to the subject.
Cool! Will take a look when I get a moment.
I used to think Tony didn’t have a pure alternate crosspicking technique for this reason, but he actually does. He just uses it for other types of lines, like scale playing and mixed scalar and arpeggio lines. In other words, crosspicking in the mechanical sense “fully escaped pickstroke”, whether arpeggiated or otherwise. There appears to be a finger component to how he produces the curved motion but I haven’t really looked at it in detail.
For a nerdy treat, watch the 3rd and 4th notes of measure 6 at 25% speed, check out that thumb bend!
Do you know of any good footage of Clarence White? I really love his work with The Byrds.