Tracking Mystery... more answers

If you watch the Tracking Mystery vid (a Forearm Motion chapter) from about 2:00 to 3;45, two things jump out that might not have been mentioned. First, the gap between the thumb-index unit and fingers 2, 3 and 4 (middle-ring-pinky) visibly increases as Troy ascends towards low E. Maybe this is the “palm stretch” he mentions. Second, the gap between the 2, 3 and 4 fingertips and the high e’ closes as he ascends - suggesting that while the elbow isn’t moving, the anchor point of the hand is. Seems to me that those two items are combining with the other dynamics he mentions, and in a pretty important way. Anyone else see that and agree/disagree? (BTW - Troy, hats off; your stuff is guitar-life changing;)

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Thank you so much for sharing Yaakov - I will look again at the forearm chapter with these insights in mind - and welcome to the Forum :slight_smile:

I think that in general tracking is a little bit overlooked and treated like something that will take care of itself if the picking motion is correct. For now I have switched from my old pronated DSX to supinated flextesiony DSX and while the motion itself is smooth, I can’t switch strings as well as with my old movement. I’ll be posting a lot of videos in July since I have like 10 new picking movements that sort of work and are not hopping but at the same time don’t feel as smooth as they should.
One of the tracking related things I don’t understand is switching strings after upstrokes in wrist-only USX/DBX. Troy says that he doesn’t do any tracking when playing on a 3 string distance and I can’t understand what makes the pick hit the other string then. In Andy Wood type DBX, the downstroke is a compound motion, deviation + extension, then you flex back to hit the string with an upstroke, but once you hit it it’s basically a straight line deviation which I think has no tracking capabilities except for swiping. With downstrokes you can flex further, manipulate the movement to hit the other string, but I feel like there needs to be a little forearm twist/elbow/arm movement added to the upstroke. Otherwise it will be this

b----------
g----0–0-
d-0-------

instead of this

b-------0-
g----0----
d-0-------

I hope that somebody from CtC team can clear that up for me.

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Small clockface hand rotation instead of moving the hand.

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It’s called ‘upstroke escape motion’ for a reason. Yes, this is straight line (more or less), but it’s slanted and you end up above the strings after an upstroke. So, you whether make the motion larger (if you switch to a lower string) or stop it. After that you do your downstroke. If you switch to a higher string your first downstroke would be a bit longer.