So what clockface movement was McLaughlin using on his Upward Pick Slanting?

Yes but try not to overthink the numbers. It’s not a measurement, so I can’t tell you exactly what angle JM and ADM are moving the pick relative to their arm position, i.e. whether it’s 2:00 or 1:30 or 1:45. The clock is just there to illustrate the general concept that both players are not moving straight across the face, but at a slight angle. That’s one of the reasons this is useful. To look at them, you wouldn’t really get this concept - at least, I didn’t. But it is obvious when you place your arm against the guitar body that the hand can’t be traveling straight across, or it would hit the body. Sticking your hand straight out in front of you and visualizing against the clock makes it very clear, without having to become an anatomy expert, why this is true.

Again, I apologize because I think the term crosspicking is confusing and you could just replace it with “continuous use of the double escape pickstroke”. Do John and Al do the double escape? Yes definitely. There are moments in scale playing which require this and we discuss both players in Antigravity. If you mean continuous double escape motions, repeatedly, I believe there is a thread discussing Birds of Fire which is a Mahavishnu tune that has alternate picked arpeggios. So that would have to be double escape motion. Do these guys do it for scale playing like Molly Tuttle, Olli Soikkeli, Carl Miner, Martin Miller, etc., I haven’t seen that.

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I don’t think calling it crosspicking is confusing. It really makes the reference to the application in real live music.

The problem is that we have used the term “crosspicking” to mean at least three different things: bluegrass arpeggios, a type of pickstroke that is curved, and a picking “style” where someone makes curved pickstrokes exclusively. And that doesn’t even include all the meanings that other people have used who are not me.

To clarify moving forward, we’ll try and keep the “crosspicking” term specific to bluegrass as it has been traditionally. The pickstroke we’ll call “double escape”, because it’s clear. The picking style, that I don’t know. Continuous double escape is clear. Not super catchy, but clear!

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