Still double escaped pickstrokes?

Technique Critique
#1

Hi peeps! After a general hiatus (since the birth of my second child) I’m back on the picking quest. Many moons ago, I posted a critique video where @troy confirmed that I had managed to perform a double-escaped picking motion and advised to make it habitual instead/along side my 2WPS practice. Below is a short clip of me speeding up a repeating lick. My question is, do I maintain the double escape picking motion consistantly as I get faster or do I at some point move into a 2WPS one? The reason I ask is that I think I can see little blips that could be pickslanting. It tends to be when I am accenting.

My playing didn’t feel completely tight as I am nusing hand, arm and back issues. I also had to use a different pick to my usual as it didn’t show up too well in the video. Anyway, many thanks in advance for any feedback.

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Cross Picking Revisited, and time management/maximizing efforts
#2

I’m 99% sure you are doing 2WPS, but it’s still very nice 2wps none-the-less. You may very well be continuing to do a ‘curved’ shape pick trajectory, as Andy Wood & others do.

But one easy way to tell if you are doing 2x escaped or not at higher speeds, is to do a pattern that is next to impossible to do with 2wps. Something like a 7th arpegio, where your doing 1nps, 2nps, 1nps, 2nps, etc. And do it without any distortion or muting, just to make sure you aren’t swiping.

Also, try doing tremoloing with a fairly wide pick-stroke, and visually see if you can extend beyond the strings on either side at the higher speeds.

I’ll see if I can make a video shortly of high-speed double-escaping, but one thing I try to focus on is trying to do very wide, pronounced pick-strokes at the higher speeds.

#3

Hi! Great playing. Short answer: there’s no way you can really tell without closeup slow motion video and more importantly it doesn’t really matter. Remember “two way pickslanting” doesn’t mean “visible arm movements to change the pickslant”. It just means mixing and matching escape types, which can be done with no forearm movement at all. So whatever you are looking for when you say “blip” isn’t even happening when Andy Wood plays certain “two way pickslanting” lines, so there is no point in even looking for it:

That’s why these questions can get really academic. If the phrase requires a double escape movement then you’ll have no choice but to use it. If not then don’t sweat it. If the playing sounds good, it is good.

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#4

Thanks for the reply @hamsterman and @Troy
As I haven’t really done much by the way of practice is recent times, I haven’t devoted a great deal of time with different types of likes and arpeggios that @hamsterman describes, but it makes sense to try. I wouldn’t be surprised if its 2WPS, especially at the higher speeds - maybe my body is just spitting out previous practice.

What I do know is that I can create a curved movement at slowish speeds with ease, but whether I can translate that into something more habitual and useful remains subject to time and practice. Whatever I am doing in the above clip is for free, so at least that won’t go anywhere. I’ll get some more practice in and see what comes out!

That would be great to see!

Thanks again chaps!!

#5

Do you have a general timeline on when the new Pickslanting primer material will be out and will reflect all of these discoveries?

#6

We’ve got a series of updates outlined and we’re planning to roll them out in stages. For example most recently, we added this series of chapters on Pick Grip. We’re currently finishing up the next batch, all about picks and how they work.

Lots more in the works beyond that but no specific timeline since the exact structure of things inevitably changes as we go, but it’s a top priority and we’ll keep adding more material iteratively til we have the Primer as solid and comprehensive an “intro to picking” series as we can make it!

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#7

What @Brendan said. And to clarify, we’re revamping the way all this is presented, and trying to anticipate what the simplest way for a newbie to learn everything might be. So even in the stuff we’re finishing up on pick design and function, we’re working in key concepts that will pop up again later when we start looking at picking motions. We’re trying to think like a textbook — bite-sized chapters with some built in a redundancy and a reasonably snappy pacing to keep things watchable.

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