I’ve been back and forth on this twoway pickslanting for 6 weeks. Sometimes I feel like I’m making progress, but the truth is I’ve stagnated at a moderate speed. Developing speed doesn’t happen at a moderate pace, though.
Then I’m like, just keep chunking it. But chunking won’t work for twoway pickslanting because if you hope to go in a direction the alternating sequence must happen. And I need to develop that shift of the thumb as I’m anchored and descending, which is kind of weird for me because I have small hands.
So… What do you have to do? Get stupid simple:
Don’t even fret, just get the picking down across the strings and make haste, as that’s the only way to develop the shred mechanic. At least that’s what I am going to try for the next week or so and see if it works.
If you guys think you’re tired of hearing me complain about trying to master twoway pickslanting, you should consider how tired my wife is of hearing me butcher descending scales attempting to twoway pickslant!
I’d be interested in in hearing your results. I’ve been hammering away at ascending sixes doubled up so it’s all outside picking using that very method (picking hand only while just deadening the strings with my fretting hand) and I have to say it hasn’t transferred over well at all to the fully played line. I can “play” it very fast with just the picking hand, but as soon as I introduce the fretted notes it all falls apart and it’s back to square one. I even tried periods of just the fretted notes (no picking) to even up the time spent on both components.
I’m wondering if the learning process isn’t simply a matter of taking the picking “neural pattern” and combining it with the fretting “neural pattern”. In other words, the “both at the same time” pattern is a completely different thing to the brain, rather than simply combining the two. Of course, these things might be so individualized that what’s not working for me might work for you.
I’m not ready to post any videos yet. Maybe in a couple months.
The trick to playing fast, ironically, is to play fast. But that means that at some level, whatever you’re trying to play has to line up with what you’ve already developed in order to have that momentum behind it. Since everyone is different, some mechanics may suit one player more than another mechanic.
If one player says, “Here just chunk this,” but that chunk doesn’t suit your mechanics, how much time are you going to spend woodshedding it until you’re generating enough speed to get into that shred mechanic and out of the plodding mechanic?
That’s not to say that some things can’t be simply woodshedded to proficiency, it’s just to say that some mechanics may be so far outside your current mechanical bounds that it may be worth trying a different approach.
In the end, if you can’t muster a measure of speed with the motion, you’re going to be stuck in low gear forever with it.
I kind of feel like I’m working my way out of a maze pursuing descending speed, but having taken some long paths that ended in a dead end.
Another path I think I’ve found: Descending with upward pickslanting.
I came across this today. If I run up 4 strings, I can seem to come back down with a good measure of speed upward pickslanting, though there seems to be a hint of twoway pickslanting to it, it leans more to uwps. It’s rough, but it’s quick and that may be my key to unlocking descending 3nps scales.
Have you put the time into chunking it with both hands and just doing it on 2 strings again and again? This does work, but again, like I said about personal mechanics, it may or may not be the solution.
I think chunking it and spending some time doing that will tell the tale. If you can begin to generate speed, it may be the solution. Then just extrapolate it over the rest of the scale, rinse, repeat.
Just my 2cts. I use the method of separating the right and left hand patterns (so does Teemu).
What I found is that even if it doesn’t immediately translate to being able to blaze through the pattern two-handed, it DOES help with the following things:
A. it shows your problem area. If you are able to pick the pattern singlehandedly at a much higher speed than two handed, it means that your right hand technique is fine basically. I found that often my LEFT hand is the limiting factor in strength, speed and synchronization.
A clear example is tremolo picking, where picking 16ths on a single note (say the open high E) is much easier compared to playing a pattern at the same speed using 4 fingers, even if it is on the same string.
B. it helps you focus on one thing at a time, so that you can improve faster and more effectively
C. it boosts your confidence knowing that you actually CAN do it, and that the bottle neck is probably not the right hand but the synchronization of the two hands
D. Last but not least, if it’s good enough for Teemu, it’s good enough for me. He separates the left and right hand and I think we can all agree that he his technique is more than adequate.
I love that we as a community have begun “chunking” things to exploit our natural psychology. I will point out though, that chunking is not exclusive to particular applications in CtC. Chunking happens.
[edit: “chunking” absolutely applies to TWPS and everything else we do!]
I disagree, chunking does work for 2 way. Not all chunks need be the same size. So take a 2 way lick, it will have a down chunk, and the chunk with the up in it. Practice both, then put the two chunks together to make one larger chunk. Also I tend to isolate the smallest possible chunk that contains the change from one direction to the other.
Have you guys tried cross training? I’ve learned that hyoerfocusing on one problem at a time is not as productive as it would seem. You will learn things while practicing other techniques that will help in unseen ways. So practice your cross picking also, practice playing with finger and thumb components, try doing a few minutes on a super thick training pick, give it some time. Some of us have been at it for 20 plus years. Maybe that just shows that I don’t know how to practice well though but things seem to be coming together just in the last month or so from all the new ideas here.
I would encourage you to post up some video as soon as possible. I think most of us want to help.
Ok, but then I would have to chunk the third part, which would be the transition down to the third string. That’s part of the problem of chunking twps for me. If I start with dwps, switch to uwps, I would then need to practice the transition back to dwps for the third string, as well if I want to master descending scales while twps. The original two string chunk wouldn’t be enough to extrapolate it efficiently.
I may or may not post a video. I’ve been all over the place with twps the last few weeks, but it isn’t the only thing I’m practicing, it’s just the one thing that hasn’t really developed like I’d like.
I spend time every day practicing economy picking, chunking various licks, soloing to backing tracks, and songwriting.
Well, now that you are clearer on chunking as something that is more than just chunks on a guitar string, I’m not sure sure that what you are describing is necessarily a problem. I’d recommend writing the problem out for yourself, mapping the points where you change pick orientation and searching for logical grouping points. And I recommend thinking about it away from the guitar. Cheers, Daniel
I think I see what your saying but consider this. If you’re a primary down guy, when you do an up move you need not stay with up for more than the fraction of a second you need to get over that string, then go immediately back to your primary down. When I chunk for my up practice I do one small chunk to isolate the motion. Then I do a larger chunk to put it in context with a longer mostly down chunk. Not sure if that’s what you meant. Anyway if you spell out in a video very slowly and show the forum what specific motions are giving you grief you will probably have a whole bunch of help, some of which will likely be useless (myself included ;))
Chunking works for everything. Every motor activity you can perform as a human. It just means “a sequence of movements that have become stored as one motor program”. In other words, something that is completely memorized to the point where you are no longer aware of the individual actions. This can happen even to relatively long sequences of notes, like entire sections of pieces.
The way you’ll know this is happening is if you have something so memorized that you can no longer just start it randomly at any note or measure. If you can only start or stop playback by rewinding to some landmark point where you memorized it from, then it’s already chunked.
This is a subject we’ve covered with Pietro Mazzoni. It may mean more to you and be more interesting now that you have experience tooling around with this. Lots of topics are covered here, including the interleaved / random practice concept of not focusing on only one problem at a time.
