Still trying to figure out what's going on with my picking mechanic - odd swooping motion (EDIT - crosspicking progress thread)

[Drew]

Ok, since I haven’t shared anything in a while and since I was talking about this a couple days ago, here’s another clip with something kind of odd in my playing that I’m trying to figure out if it’s a problem or not.

I at present have a mechanic that I guess I’d characterize as a not-terribly-efficient crosspicking approach - there’s a bit of an arc to by pickstroke, but it’s not huge. In the slow-mo you can see in certain points some swiping and rest strokes going on, which means at a minimum I’m not always entirely escaping the plane of the strings.

There’s this odd “cocking” motion, like I’m kind of winding up, that I’ve found myself doing, that I can feel at speed but it’s tough to really deconstruct, so I wanted to get a better look at it here. You can kind of see it in the video below - there was definitely some red light jitters going on, i promise I’m normally a hair smoother and cleaner than this, lol, but it’s a pretty good example of what I’m trying to figure out.

Pentatonic slop

To ME… It looks like I’m normally picking with an ver-so-slightly supinated arm and a bit of wrist deviation, but on those “cocking” motions, there’s clear forearm rotation pulling the pick back, whenever I’m about to do a downstroke onto the string one ABOVE (thinner, towards the treble side) the one I’m upstroking off. This is definitely not something I’m doing consciously.

This has the effect of moving my pick well over the plane of the stings and giving me plenty of room to get over the string I just picked and up to the next thinnest with my downstroke, and if we’ve learned anything from CtC it’s that big movements aren’t automatically a bad thing, and since my picking mechanic normally doesn’t involve wrist rotation, it’s not necessarily a mechanically inefficient movement either. But, by doing this am I solving a problem that there might be a better way to solve? I’ve found I CAN force myself not to do this, to a certain extent, but it takes conscious thought.

Anyway, any thoughts welcome. Sorry for the garbage pentatonic 3s, I just practice runs like this because they basically force you to escape in both directions, and to be perfectly honest, that stuff at the beginning, I didn’t even know I had started the video recording, but when I looked back at the footage afterwards I could see the rotation pretty clearly so I figured this was a good enough example to share.

[Troy]

something kind of odd in my playing that I’m trying to figure out if it’s a problem or not.

You’re describing this like it’s some kind of alien artifact that landed in your back yard, but it’s just two-way pickslanting with the forearm as we’ve always described it and taught it in Antigravity, the Pickslanting Primer, and so on. And as we were discussing in the other thread, the question is why do players do it and feel the need to do it, and that’s something we can continue to think about.

Is it a problem? No, I’ve played this way for a couple decades. Again, reference any Antigravity or Primer clip of your choosing. Here’s a good one for ascending inside string change forearm involvement:

https://troygrady.com/seminars/antigravity/clips/the-antigravity-lick/

However we also know that forearm isn’t strictly necessary, at least to the degree we maybe have thought. If you have an interest in developing wrist motion that doesn’t use forearm, then I would do it that way. i.e. I would work on your 902 (or similar) setup and getting those motions happening. In other words, I would not specifically try to “stop the forearm” from happening here, so much as I would try to “do the wrist version of the motion”. If that makes any sense.

Also, when you’re learning movements which might compete / interfere with movements you already know, it can be helpful to change something significant. That can make things feel like a blank slate, so that you don’t just lapse back into the movements you have already memorized. A different grip is a good way to do this, since it can immediately make things feel different. In your case, you can try an angle pad grip, or fingers extended, or both. Whatever gets you feeling like you’re learning something new and clean. If you like, you can always go back to this grip once you’ve got new motions happening.

[Drew]

You’re describing this like it’s some kind of alien artifact that landed in your back yard, but it’s just two-way pickslanting with the forearm as we’ve always described it and taught it in Antigravity, the Pickslanting Primer, and so on

I, um, will confess I haven’t yet watched Antigravity. I figured figuring out one-way pickslanting made sense before trying to tackle two-way. Guess I have some homework!

I’ll give a different grip a try too - can’t hurt, right?

[Troy]

I, um, will confess I haven’t yet watched Antigravity.

For shame!

Kidding, no, you’re fine. You have a good grasp of the things we discuss here so I wouldn’t rush out to try and rebuild the house. The grip thing I’m suggesting as a workaround if you’re trying to learn a new hand movement and you can’t stop sliding back into the old one. These kinds of “interference cleansers” work for me to get the brain thinking about new movements without baggage from the old.

And keep in mind also Antigravity is older and there were truckloads of things I didn’t know when we filmed that. So when I’m talking about the arm movements being necessary for certain things, we know now that they aren’t strictly. But indeed they work, and you will see them in playing like yours. So it’s cool to know that they exist.

I think your movements look fine and a little more awareness of them is always helpful. Then, moving forward, I would let whatever your musical goals are dictate what sort of mechanical changes, if any, you decide to make.

[Drew]

@Troy

For shame!

The shame! It burns! It burns!

Well, with the caveat that the explanations may be a little out of date, it probably makes sense for me to just keep practicing as normal without thinking much about mechanics but then at least watch through Antigravity so I have a point-in-time understanding of two-way vs single-escape vs crosspicking vs whatever else we collectively uncover next, and then try to think through what I’m seeing with a more complete understanding. Like, end of the day, there really isn’t any excuse for me to be able to identify something that seems irregular (if repeated consistently in certain scenarios) in my picking… but, not also recognize it as something already covered in Cracking the Code, and need to ask for advice here.

The biggest concern I have in my playing right now, to be perfectly honest, is precision - I wouldn’t mind being a hair faster, but being totally objective it’s not often I find myself wishing I could play faster to pull off a picked run. I just don’t feel like I really have the mechanical, clockwork-like precision I would like, and while certainly part of that is related to picking mechanics, honestly I feel even my trem-picking (something I really almost never do, while soloing but also while practicing - I’m 37, I missed the EVH thing and instead got tuned into shred by Satriani) isn’t particularly even. Maybe some time woodshedding on a single string is in order - variations of the Yngwie 6’s up and down a string, maybe.

The flip side is it’s also cycling season and I’m clawing my way back into riding shape post shoulder surgery, so that’s cutting into practice time. I have too many interests, lol.