The rules of Elbow

Playing Technique
#1

Okay, so I have established that I am an “Elbow player” and that means DSX. I have been doing a lot of reading, and watching and playing - and honestly, there’s some conflicting information I’d like to get cleared up before I waste another second of my life practicing my guts out on something that won’t yield results. lol I really just want to clarify this. Thanks in advance!

  1. Downstroke escape means I need to do a downstroke before I change to another string. Yes?

  2. This should mean that on a 1-2-3-4 thing, or any even note-per string example technically I should have to start on an UPSTROKE to end on a DOWNSTROKE. The trouble is, I can comfortably do both very fast. I tried to explain to myself WHY this is, and all I can think of is that a) I am string hopping on the last note? or b) I have changed my pick slant to UWPS and this is what makes the reversal possible?

  3. My pick slant is subtle, I oftentimes don’t think I have one but upon investigating it’s there, and it’s pretty inconsistent. Does Pickslant impact the rules of this picking motion? If so, how?

  4. Begin between the strings; again this usually will mean an upstroke, yes?

  5. Move towards the bridge diagonally from neck pickup to volume knob (Maybe a bit of an exaggeration)

  6. Ascending sweeping/economy picking anything more than 1nps sucks doesn’t seem to work for this motion, yes?

Thanks, guys.

#2

Doesn’t sound like trouble to me! If both things work for you, then they work for you. Maybe you’re swiping. Maybe you’re involving some other joint. Who knows. Who cares? If it works and sounds good, then that’s what’s important. Going down that rabbit hole just isn’t going to provide any way to make things better if they’re already good.

Elbow motion moves almost parallel with the strings. The motion isn’t very slanted so the pick doesn’t have to be very slanted either. Honestly, it’s all automatic. The elbow can only move one way so there’s nothing you can really change about that. There is no way to “do pickslanting” any different than what you’re doing already. What you’re doing is already correct, so nothing to see here either.

Same answer. We all watched your Mr. Big solo. It was damn awesome. Why bother worrying about which direction the pick is supposed to go? It goes the way the elbow moves. You can’t change it anyway. It’s not like you have to remember to make it go that way. It’s already going the only way it can go, and it seems to be working.

I apologize for giving people so much information that we’re causing them to overthink things. We’re trying to make it clearer in the instructional material how to know when things are working and when they’re not, so that you basically skip over stuff if it’s unnecessary. We’re getting there bit by bit.

The only thing in your playing I’d worry about is if there is some line you want to play and it’s not working. Like, actually not working, where you can’t play it at the speed you want, or something about it sounds weird or feels weird. If you run into something like that, and you can’t figure out some way of making it work with your technique, put up a clip and we’d be happy to take a look.

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#3

The same here. But in my case it was a psychological thing. In my mind downbeat=downstroke.

Same here

Depends. I’m not a fan of sweeping for a long passages, but I use it for typical 5 notes run (2 strings). With palm anchoring it doesn’t work well though.

#4

First of all - Troy - No need to apologize for aquiring and presenting great information! I have made great strides in just a couple of days from this information, so I am very grateful. Thanks so much for your reply!

Overthinking. Yep, I do that. That’s on me, though. I also like “absolute” answers, a concrete “yes this is possible, no this isn’t possible” and the reality is that things aren’t always so cut and dried. For somethings, yes.

Working my way through this, thanks again, everybody!

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