And really if you dont use thumb and index to break the plane of the strings then it will likely be some sort of wrist extension to pull the pick out of the plane of the strings during the flawed motion string change for whatever one way escape a player uses. There maybe other ways of doing it but these seem like the most obvious ways.
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i was going through the motions today looking at all the different escape hatches and just that first 3 strokes of the single string pattern
downstroke (thumb index only as place holder for forearm rotation)
upstroke (thumb flexion index in)
downstroke (thumb extension index out)
pick is outside the plane of the strings
probably for myself that is one of the most powerful fragments of my techniques. it helps you escape the string on a downstroke.
now can i incorporate that at high tempo i dont know yet, maybe on certain phrasing I can, maybe not, but the technique appears very bulletproof. however to ingrain it into my playing may never happen, nevertheless the power in that takayoshi technique seems really solid. utilizing this will require extreme consistency, and the only other technique that really opened my eyes to extreme consistency was rest stroke. I don’t know how well I can get with consistency on that specific group of motions inside my playing. the problem with the consistency thing is for rest stroke its simple to keep track of in your brain as you are mainly focusing on one motion, the rest, with this technique you have to keep track of the thumb flexion and extension move when you need it. so it is like keeping track of both the rest stroke, and the thumb flexion and extension moves in real time. without knowing the phrase before hand that move itself to me is a bit useless, however if you bake in a phrase with it you probably could get some things to warp speed with some grinding.
to be more specific you need to know these two moves. the second one has two variations, whether or not it is possible to use these at warp tempo i have no clue, but I take it takayoshi was able to so it probably just takes alot of playing phrases with these incorporated to really get them fast.
and honestly now that i have been more aware of the motion, you have to approach it knowing if you flex the thumb in you have to flex it out if you want to go into some other motion. with my hands in particular when i do more forearm rotation my thumb is more in an extension setup, so if i go into this motion in order to exit i have to be aware that if i am in thumb flexion i have to do a down stroke to get out of it. this means even if you don’t use the down stroke escape hatch, and you desire to maintain the pick trapped on the downstroke that you still must be aware that when you do a up stroke thumb flexion, you will have to do the opposing motion to get set back up if you desire to go into another picking mechanic.
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Claus is an incredible teacher, and he truly is one of the few guitar instructors on YouTube that gives insights in practice phycology, breaking things down regarding technique mastery on the guitar.
You have to have a level of ability first, because the things he suggests, won’t help the novice player.
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Yes Claus is an amazing guitarist. When I watch Tom Hess or Mike Philipovv play they also look like they play extremely well. But there many people which will warn you against Tom Hess and his disciple. You really have to be wary of people that guarantee results. Even Yngwie has said there are no shortcuts. It’s blood, sweat, and tears.
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Claus/Guitar Mastery have sound guitar practice advice and great courses. His “guarantee” is simply that if you put the time in, correctly, and learn how to FOCUS intensely on specific areas of your playing… you will improve!
Don’t misinterpret what Claus teaches as simply as “shortcuts”. They are ways to teach yourself to utilize your practice time more effectively, by reducing the amount of volume of material you want to learn. I listened to his videos for years and bought several of his courses. All fairly priced and very sound.
You shouldn’t lump Guitar Mastery in with Tom Hess/Mike P, who btw have some good content also. I don’t like their marketing tactics, especially the creepy things i’ve read that Hess does.
let’s keep this thread on its original topic. Thumb/index picking technique.
I am going to chime in on this thread, hopefully nobody gets mad or anything - all I can do is relay my experiences with it.
Okay, so I have been playing for quite some time and over the course of many years there’s some stuff picking-wise that I am very good at, and then there’s a bunch of stuff that’s extremely challenging that I’d LIKE to be able to alternate pick, but no matter how I attack it it just isn’t happening.
I’ve tried the thumb/index finger thing on and off and with the pad or the trigger grip, there’s some stuff that doesn’t work out for me;
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Tempo. I can get pretty fast with it, but not faster than about 16ths at 170bpm or so.
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Dynamic control. There is none, I feel like I have to really “muscle” it to get the same tone at faster tempos let alone super loud notes.
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To achieve speed and/or louder tone - that “muscling” adds a lot of pressure on my finger. I am strong AF so after a long practice session (I like to play guitar) my finger is in AGONY.
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More to the point, I have become accutely aware that the heart and soul of my picking issues is systematic tension, and that “muscling” adds to that.
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I naturally tend towards Elbow with a pronated form. 16ths @ 200BPM is actually pretty easily attainable with that setup. Lately I have been pursuing wrist motion with that same pronated form and I took it up to 16ths @ 200bpm this morning which is way faster than I need to be, lots of gas in the tank I suppose.
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Connection to that inner rhythmic pulse is a bit weak…
So for me it’s kind of a no-brainer; What I naturally gravitate towards is way faster right out of the gate, doesn’t hurt and doesn’t contribute to any kind of unnecessary tension or pain.
Anyways, that’s just me and my experience - good luck to those who pursue it!
I found Chris’ explanation of it really interesting. I’ve spent almost zero time trying the thumb/index motion stuff just because I can’t get any speed with it. Once I heard this, it made me realize why. I wasn’t doing it correctly. In fact we may want to just call it thumb motion and drop the whole notion of the index because that joint seems to move just because it comes along for the ride.
I have it queued up. The parts pertinent to this discussion are from 9:16 - 9:35 (the whole thing’s good though, great job teaching in the whole video)
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Right, but what is crazy is you can mental switch your brain to moving the index, as this is how some players unlocked more to it like Takayoshi did with his technique. Sure the thumb itself when flexed in can theoretically extend out on a different angle as the flexion, I see that with my own thumb index technique(this can allow you to go wherever you need inside or outside the plane of the strings. this is also the same for the thumb flexion it can also go at an angle to get the stroke inside or outside the plane of the strings). However I do see how the thumb is most important as this is the digit used in flamenco and classical rest stroke, so I would say develop this one over the index first. Although it appears that in classical and flamenco it has nothing to do with flexion and extension at the joint, but more from the lower portion of the thumb. But you can perceive it from the index as well, I did in the beginning before learning the rest stroke. However now I can easily feel it mentally from my mind, and only perceive it as the thumb. And I think from developing the rest stroke technique with the plectrum pick for about 2 years now has helped me to unlock that coordination of it more clearly.
And last night I was talking with Scottulus that if you basically just draw tiny clockwise circles (I am usx and clockwise feels most natural) with the pick, just think you are scribbling circles with a pencil, and watch how you can dbx with that motion. Here is where it won’t net you speed though is that the motion draws the complete circle, this in and out of the thumb/index flexion/extension is basically a curved line, as is the same with forearm rotation one way escape, which will be faster because you aren’t drawing the entire circle. nevertheless it is a very solid dbx motion, and feels super easy with the drawback of you probably won’t get it beyond 9 to 10 notes per second because you are creating wasted movement by drawing the complete circle motion. If thinking of drawing little circles doesn’t work, try thinking of it like you are stirring something with just the index and thumb.
Wow, just found this video of Chris, great example of his thumb technique, he can really burn with it!
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That is what I said I assumed the mechanic actually was, way up earlier in this thread. Not to flex or anything. 
I will have to give it an actual go at some point. I can move my thumb that way quite fast off the guitar, but it becomes awkward when actually holding a pick. I’ve noticed he appears to hold the pick very loosely with a lot of flop - might need to experiment with that.
Let’s see [scrolling up…] Yeah I guess you did! Well done and well spotted I usually skim-read when I hear people rattle off specific muscles outside of the main bodybuilding ones I know lol!
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| Tablature for MEMBERS - YouTubeDamn I can’t slow down the YouTube short! WHAT IS HE PLAYING? Lol
Great topic.
I use the thumb/ index technique a lot. In many of my accuracy experiments, this one seems to result in better accuracy for me at high speeds. YMMV
I used to think you couldn’t play fast with it - but obviously you can - plenty of amazing examples of this in this thread.
Is it not recommended in CTC? I’m pretty sure I sure I saw it discussed in the Yngwie videos when I was going through them!
Also in the OP video is the discussion of the ultex picks - I got onto these a year or so back - amazing.
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Check out this short from Cesario. He very clearly is using wrist motion, with subtle thumb/index movement. To me this, illustrates what Chris Brooks wrote and has said about the technique in the past, in that the thumb/index movement is “secondary function” of wrist motion.
The wrist USX motion is the prime mover with the thumb/index following, adding accents and dynamics and facilitating string crossing. I see this in all of the players who use this movement.
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The phrases have to fall in line otherwise you will have to fall back on a gypsy jazz style rest stroke utilizing half rest strokes to compensate for lines that don’t follow the rules of only switching strings on swept string changes and upstroke escape on the ascended phrasing and upstroke escape on the descended phrasing, otherwise that is when the thumb/index will come into play for outside string changes for musically ascending string changes and inside string changes for musically descending string changes. But it seems like with Yngwie he only does the pull off thing on descended phrasing stuff. Joe Stump however doesn’t follow this rule, and uses more thumb/index to do the string change maneuvering on the descended phrasing.
I didn’t want to do this, but I will post this here for a bit to show how I might approach this short with my techniques.
This is what I mean so the red box indicates the start of the maneuver. I would do either forearm rotation or simulated forearm rotation on that downstroke. Then the blue box is the thumb flexion and extension move to get the pick out of the plane of the strings on a downstroke, which is against the rules in usx. The thumb flex upstroke is an escape stroke, and when I extend the thumb back out it shoots out differently from the flexion, putting the pick outside the plane of the strings. It goes out at a different diagonal on the downstroke.
So in reality the only time you really have to use thumb/index is on that one maneuver. I just think of that part of the combination of two phrases as faked fours sequence, using that upward ascend to force the outside string change because of the 1 note per string fragment that occurs.
This is just how I try to mentally wrap my technique around the inconsistency of shifting my setup position off kilter. You don’t really have to do the thumb/index thing until that very last downstroke before the outside string change. It will be a slightly different thumb/index motion, more adduction from the picked held abduction form, if done this way with little to no flexion or extension since the thumb will likely already be extended. And can even be wrist extension with no thumb/index movement, either way you have to get the pick outside the plane of the strings on that downstroke so there will be a motion that has to occur to do that outside string change, another would be forearm pronation.
That’s a clip from his video on his forearm technique, though it’s not obvious he’s using any forearm because he’s wearing long sleeves 
When he refers to his forearm technique, he means wrist/forearm blend as pure forearm is visually very different to what he does and he also states that the thumb technique is applied on top of his wrist/forearm motion, very cool!
He also has a separate video on his thumb technique:
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So what I notice is with any way you choose to use the thumb/index if you do tiny circle motions with it you can dbx with it. Even with this way Chris Brooks is showing in joebegly’s post, thanks for citing that exact time stamp btw.
Once you feel the motion, in your mind just imagine yourself drawing circles, and you can dbx across the strings. I wonder if this is how Joe Stump does his descended phrasing with alternate picking with this approach.
Straight line back and forth will always be faster, as will the forearm rotation, but when you need to escape the string on a trapped motion this can definitely help to keep everything calm and collected while maintaining the usx setup.