Trouble defining my picking technique

Technique Critique
#1

Hi all, I’m hoping you can help me.

I’m something of a high-intermediate player, I’d say. 8 years of experience.
I’m self-taught and coming back to guitar after a bit of a break where life got hectic.
I have eclectic influences and lots of scale and arpeggio work in my practice routine.
I’m also very unaware of my body when I play, and tend to learn pieces intuitively.
This… may be why I’m having trouble defining my picking motions.

  • I’m definitely a wrist-dominant picker
  • I tend to fumble if I start a 2nps pattern on an upstroke.
  • I’m comfortable making economic motions throughout my scale playing

I’m going to place my own observations in a spoiler so I don’t influence anyone’s opinion before they’ve seen the footage:

Spoiler
  • I’ve usually held my pick in an angle-pad grip, but I’ve switched to trigger-style now.
  • I edge pick, and seem to switch between pick slants and escape motions depending on the direction of the most recent string change.
  • I seem to prefer anchoring on the pinky side of my palm heel, but I will rotate my forearm and “roll” onto the thumb side as I approach the lower strings. Sometimes I won’t anchor at all.
  • When playing more deliberately I may string-hop but I have a hard time telling. It has always felt “plucky” to me but it works fine at speeds under ~144bpm/16th notes, and doesn’t produce picking hand tension.
  • When asked to go fast or gallop, I seem to lock my wrist and use elbow motion

My clips show, in order:
2nps pentatonic patterns
Fast tremolo on one string
3*nps diatonic patterns
(+ a little pentatonic lick in the downstring video)
A gallop on the low E

#2

Not sure if anyone else hears the audio all weird? Like tuned down and glitchy?

From my quick glance, looks like your fastest trem is elbow picking, and the scale playing is wrist. Both seem to be DSX.

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#3

Yes there is an issue with the sound, like it’s down an octave? It’s hard to hear what you are playing because of this unfortunately.

#4

That’s strange, it must be something my NLE did.
I’ll re-export the footage.

#5

I’ve reuploaded the videos with fixed audio.

1 Like
#6

Welcome to the Forum @Zx1 !

Without looking at your spoiler, and just based on the first few seconds of your videos:

  • the ascending pentatonic looks like double escape
  • the descending side is DSX
  • Single-string tremolo also looks like DSX
  • If you really wanted to blaze through an ascending 2nps pentatonic I’d recommend exploiting your already fast DSX motion and learning to play it from an upstroke start

Everything so far looks pretty great and smooth, so unless you have specific phrases or riffs that arre giving you trouble I’d just keep going like this!

PS: the filming looks great (though I would prefer to hear the guitar at a higher volume, possibly through an amp too).

In the future, I’d recommend to post shorter technique critique videos that are max 10-15s long and that focus on a single thing. This way, it’s much easier for everyone to find and discuss specific phrases/licks etc. (you can of course post several short videos if you want to discuss more than one thing).

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#7

Hi Tommo,

Thanks for all your work, and thanks for your feedback!
I’ve been spending time working on my elbow-driven DSX since I joined.
I’ve fallen into the trap of doing lots of scale work which isn’t really “music”.
I’ll come back after some dedicated practice with a shorter, amplified video.

#8

Been there too! :slight_smile:

In that case (and if I could go back in time and talk to my younger self) I’d advise you to immediately move on to some real music: could be an etude, a cover song, a song you write, improvisation etc. The “hard” parts of the song can become your exercises.

And while you do that you can keep in mind the mechanics of DSX and so on, in order to find effective solutions for the parts you can’t play well. This could involve changing the fretting, doing pulloffs, changing the notes a little while maintaining the main character of the lick etc. etc.!

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