Technique problems

hey, @Troy! Love your pickslanting primar! How can i uploud vids on forum?

Most people will post a link to an unlisted YouTube video!

Yep - what @sguitar said!

Видео “PICKSLANTING VID”

Please, have a look.

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@nick636 if you paste the url onto a fresh line it will embed the video here in this forum

Yes, as @Tom_h pointed out the Youtube links need to be on their own line for embedding, and then you’ll get the player controls right on the screen. I edited your post to fix that. Thanks Tom.

In general this looks fine, but is this about as fast as you can play comfortably or can you play faster if you don’t worry about making pickslanting movements?

I ask because we’ve seen a few examples on the forum so far where players tried to learn two-way pickslanting movements before learning to do the picking movement smoothly, and the result seems to be more awkward.

In general, when learning new hand movements, I try to practice medium fast first, to get the feel for how the movement works when it is done in the most natural way possible. Once I feel like I’m starting to do it correctly, then I start to slow it down and focus on accuracy. I know this sounds a little backwards, but I can tell you from experience that it is very hard to play slowly in a natural way if you have not actually learned to the movement correctly. It’s like trying to dance very slowly - you probably need to be an expert to do that and make it look realistic.

So… I would try and make your picking movement fast and fluid first before trying to do the two-way movments. Also, it looks like you’re using finger movement in addition to wrist and forearm movement. Nothing wrong with that, but it is a more complicated combination and adds more variables which you have to figure out how to control.

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Thanks for feedback.
Speaking about finger movements, I have struggled with it a long time.
I was learning how to play a guitar almost a year by myself and I wasn’t focusing on my right hand movements. And after a year I finally got to a teacher and he told me, that I’m using finger movement to play and it would be a trouble to play fast. So I was trying to fix that since then.
And it seems I still have that problem.
Have you any suggestions on controlling fingers and playing only with wrist? @Troy

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What do you guys think about my UWPS?

thanks in advance

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Hey! FYI just moved this latest post into this existing topic, since I think it’s helpful to see it in context with your previous shared videos / questions. Are there specific questions you have about this UWPS video? The more detail the better feedback we’ll be able to give :slight_smile:

In upward pickslanting wrist extension stays the same and you just doing wrist deviation or every downstroke you band your wrist extension to take your pick out of strings or you do wrist extension only when you have to change strings after downstroke? And what am I doing?
And am I going in right direction?
P.s. sorry for bad English

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Hi Nick - good question!

Yes. If you use enough wrist extension, then you don’t need to change it for the string change. You can just use deviation for the picking motion, and the pick will clear the string changes automatically.

However: If you do not use enough wrist extension, then you will have a more neutral orientation, and the pick will hit the strings. So you will have to make a small extra wrist extension on every string change, usually on the last note on the string. I do this sometimes without realizing it. It is fine also.

Both of these methods work, and now that you know about them, you can experiment to see which one feels more natural. It is mainly the result of the wrist orientation you use.

The playing looks clean, so that’s fine. The biggest issue I am seeing here is what I commented on earlier. Is this the fastest you can play, or are you playing this speed for demonstration purposes? The concern is that if you maximum speed is not high enough, then you will be too close to the limit all the time, and that can sometimes require too much effort.

If speed is an issue, it might be the combination of fingers and wrist which you are using. There is nothing wrong with fingers “per se” - Yngwie uses a lot of finger movement and he plays very fast. The problem is that if finger movement is not fast for you, it might be a limiting factor. Also, it can be confusing to learn these movements feel like when you cannot control which version of the movement you are using.

Solving this problem is up to you, mainly through experimentation and filming to see if you can isolate what these movements feel like. Have you ever tried elbow or forearm rotation? Those are two different picking movements you can try that might produce different results. You might not want to use elbow all the time, but it can be helpful to learn what different movements feel like.

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thank you for advises!
I have tried not to play with fingers, only with wrist and forearm supination.
Talking about speed, i can play one note quite fast. But with licks i have a problem because of chunking. I haven’t figure out how to do that yet.
Also, i thinck i use forearm movement in DWPS.

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If you can play fast with a tremolo, post a clip of that. We don’t need slow motion for that, but you should roll up your sleeve so you can see what the arm is doing.

Don’t throw out something that is working. Instead of fighting something which is not working, I would rather take something which works really well for one purpose and make it work well for other purposes.

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OK. But I have noticed that when I try to play as fast as I can on one string I am starting to jiggle (like John Taylor describe this) with no pick slanting.

Don’t worry about pickslanting at this stage - that is a string switching concept. If you are having trouble generating a fast, smooth picking motion, then focus on that first.

Also, keep in mind, just because the pick doesn’t appear “slanted” doesn’t really mean anything. What matters is the motion path. If this pick goes above the string when you play a downstroke, then you are using pickslanting even if it doesn’t look like it.

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What’s up, Nick. Nothing looks wrong with what you are doing that I can tell. As long as you are slanted enough to clear the next string on the escape stroke, you are pick slanting. It took me a while to understand this stuff. It looks like you are a downward pickslanter. What are you trying to do? Upward Pickslant? It looks to me like you need a little more slant in your UWPS position. You might have to get that pinky side of hand up off the bridge, Anchor more on the thumb side. This upward thing may never be comfortable to stay in if your a DWPS.

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Thanks for advice!
But in this video, that you responded, I was trying to play as fast as I could without focusing on pick slanting and it was not good

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How fast should I pick on 1 string to start practicing pick slanting?

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160 BPM is enough for starting practising pick slanting?

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Hi Nick. Not sure what you’re asking. There is no ‘minimum speed’ for pickslanting. I think the concern here is that your picking movement isn’t as consistent or smooth or fast as you want it to be. If that’s the case, then it is completely up to you to decide when it is at that point. If you can’t play the way you want to play on one string, it is unlikely that you can play that way on multiple strings.

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