Can someone point me to where the rules are. I seemed to remember a pic or bullet list for the rules for UWPS. There were things like Pronation, pick angle, etc. I can’t seem to find it now unless it was a scene from a video and am not recalling correctly. Thanks
There is no single set of rules for this, and I wouldn’t think of it that way anyway, because you can do this with a variety of different picking motions. I think the way to think about this is which motion are you using or do you want to use? In the “Introduction to Picking Motion” we talk about elbow and wrist motions, and you can find that talk again here:
Again, if you look at someone like Ardeshir Farah, he’s got a whole other thing going on with a blend of arm and wrist motions that are not specifically what we’re talking about here. Out there in the real world I’m sure there numerous ways to generate a pickstroke where downstroke escapes and the upstroke traps. The reason we took a look at the elbow and wrist motions in the intro talk is because they are simple and pretty common.
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Ok thank you for the reply Troy. I will review the video again,
I think Jazzcat might be thinking about the spot in the 12 part series about when Troy discovered what Yngwie was doing, and made a list on ‘stone tablets’ but i think those were the ‘rules’ for DWPS… just a thought
Yes that was it. Thanks curvy! As an UWPS Ihave been DWPS lately and can’t believe I can do both.
Tell me more about how your DWPS is coming along. I’m in the same boat, natural UWPS guy trying to pick up DWPS, having slow and limited success, but some improvement
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There was nothing magical really. I rewatched the primer video on DWPS and applied the side of palm on bridge with slight turning of forearm.
I went really slow for awhile then applied string changing. Within 2 days I was doing the pop tarts lick at like 140. Not fast but still progress.
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We’ve had several discussions on the subject of doing basic motions recently, and again I’ll apologize for the clarity of the instructional stuff. While the demonstrations are accurate in the sense that what I’m showing you there is one way that works, it’s inaccurate in the sense that turning of the forearm is not necessary to execute upstroke string changes.
This clip we put up recently illustrates:
In this quick demonstration you can see that I’m hitting all pickstroke types - downstroke escape, upstroke escape, and double escape / crosspick - without much visible change in what my arm is doing. I’m just changing the motion the wrist is making. So if you’re using wrist motion, then you can indeed do each picsktroke type from a kind of “centralized” arm position where all the pickstrokes are available.
In your case, we’ve spoken about your occasional use of elbow motion. That’s a different animal, and elbow motion as far as we know is only a downstroke escape motion. So there might very well be some forearm element necessary to flip that around for a string change.
But if you want to give the wrist form a shot, the form you’re seeing in this clip involves simply placing the thumb heel and pinky heel on the strings. It results in an arm position that is slightly more supinated than your usual form, so you won’t feel like your arm is pressed up against the guitar body. However it can still rest on the two heels - just not pressed down or causing the arm to pronate. The “Crosspicking With The Wrist” lesson goes into fairly step-by-step detail about how to get into this arm position, so you can reference that if you haven’t yet:
Again, nothing wrong with using the more supinated setup from the Primer, which demonstrates a wrist / forearm blended motion. But if you’re already a wrist player, you shouldn’t have to switch to a different family of techniques just to do a different kind of string change. You can do it from one position if you like.
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I’ve gone though about 40 minutes so far. Is this a new technique that that can also be used for the speed picking, I thought cross picking was for the bluegrass arpeggio playing and not the blazing speeds of MAB. So I though cross picking had a BPM limitation. That is why I was looking to get both DWPS and UWPS down so I could apply the MAB technique of both and not get trapped.
If that’s not the case then maybe the cross picking is the avenue I need to go down.
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Sorry for the confusion here! I didn’t mean to imply that you should do crosspicking. I’m just saying that you don’t have to go changing to a whole different picking motion using forearm rotation just to be able to do downward pickslanting. You can do that with a simple wrist motion that looks a lot like the motion you already use for upward pickslanting.
That was why I included the little pickstroke comparison clip. In that clip, I don’t change to forearm motion to get downward pickslanting. I just change to a different direction of wrist motion. Because you are already a wrist player, it might be more logical for you to go this route and than to try to have somewhat different ways of moving that you then mix and match.
The position you would need for this is described in the “Crosspicking” lesson. There are two of them - the Molly Tuttle style and the Andy Wood style. The Andy style uses thumb and pinky contact points on the strings. The Molly style uses just thumb. The same motions are achievable with both. Because you are a wrist player, understanding these two forms and trying them out will hopefully give you a little more clarity on how your own motion works.
Yes, you can actually use that same form to also do crosspicking. And you can also do that with only wrist motion. So, indeed, you can get downward, upward, and crosspick, from the same arm position. They are not so much different techniques as three different kinds of pickstrokes that you do from one arm position. You can think of them like a family of picking motions.
So basically I’m simply suggesting you check out the “wrist family” of motions, from either the Molly or Andy position, and see if that works for you, since it may involve less moving around to access the different kinds of pickstrokes.
And again, sorry for the confusion. We will tighten up the presentation of all this in some updates to the Pickslanting Primer which we are making right now, which should be out over the next month or two. We really want to get this stuff done because I think it will really help those of you who do actually follow along with what I’m presenting, sometimes revealing just why those instructions are inadequate!
Thanks Troy. No need to apologize. You are charting out information that I have never seen in my years of playing so as you discover new techniques it is impossible to go back and edit every video you’ve made so far in real-time.