Upward Pick Slanting feels very strange!

Playing Technique
#1

Hi Guys!

I’m new to this site but I’ve been watching a lot of Cracking The Code stuff and finally decided to
get on the forum!

Alternate picking is something I almost gave up on and decided to get back to it a few years ago.
It turns out that I’m a natural downward pick slanter. Something I had never noticed I was doing until I started watching the code series.

After a few months of practice I realised I could play some alternate picking runs which have even number of notes per string. I really got into playing Kee Marcello’s solos form Europe’s ‘Out Of This World’ album. Most of his runs have even number of notes. (and his solos are super melodic!)

Now the thing is I find it very difficult to alt pick a run that has odd number of notes. Like maybe a 3 note per string scale as it is. I mean I can do it alright at a slow, medium tempo not at fast tempos.
I’m guessing the answer to this difficulty is overcome by the use of upward pick slanting…? This is what I’ve understood from watching the series. Please correct me if I’m wrong!

Question - Have any of you found it hard to use upward pick slanting after being primarily a downward pick slanter?
Does it start to feel more natural in time with practice?

Thanks in advance!

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#2

It’s probably best to adopt the new terminology, upward or downward escape.

There are great artists with upward escape, and downward escape, so just one will work very effectively, and you can certainly learn more if you’re interested! Just go for it!

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#3

I agree, but the terms are upstroke escape and downstroke escape! To clarify:

Downward pickslanting is now upstroke escape.
Upward pickslanting is now downstroke escape.

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#4

Thanks!
I’ll keep these in mind next time. I seemed to have missed where
the terms were changed from pick slanting to escapes.

#5

Thanks for the reply!

Could you tell me why this terminology is considered better? I’m obviously missing something here!

Are you saying I’d be able to play just about any thing using a one way pick slant (in my case upstroke escape)? Like what If I’m playing a run which starts on a downstroke and has 3 notes on a string and moves to the next 3 notes on the next string with and upstroke. Wouldn’t the ‘right’ way be to change to the next string using downstroke escape?

#6

I think it’s because Troy wanted to make it clearer somewhat so that Downstroke and Upstroke were in the naming convention the same goes for double escape instead of two way. so that the escape motion is more emphasized rather than the orientation of the pick itself.

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#7

this depends how you pick using USX. If you use your wrist side to side than see if your palm is leaning on the treble side more than the bass side of the bridge. If that is the case perhaps all you need to do is bring your hand closer and rest on the thumbside or bass side of the bridge and it may correct the approach angle so now you would be DSX or Downward escape. It doesn’t take alot to do DSX it just takes a little movement of your hand or also forearm to lean more into the guitar body than your probably use to. If you use forearm motion meaning rotating your forearm then that may be more of a mixed movement but you should be able to see some free stuff that talks about that more than I can explain here.

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#8

My primary motion is DSX, and doing two way pickslanting licks requires me to, at times, switch to USX motions, and for me, it’s just a very slight rotation of my forearm.

It seems you have the exact inverse, your primary motion is USX, so switching to DSX motions are going to feel weird for you.

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#9

I think that the emphasis is really on trapped vs. escaped, and the actual slant of the pick doesn’t matter that much; it happens that the slant is roughly correlated to the direction of escape for many people, but for pedagogical reasons it’s simplest to just look at the escape. So the escape can be (1) on the upstroke, (2) the downstroke, (3) on both the upstroke and the downstroke (“double escape”), and some people choose dynamically between one or more of the above.

There are many tricks that involve removing one pick stroke and replacing it with a HO/PO, and this will suddenly simplify things that formerly required switching the escape direction, e.g., 3 notes (from the perspective of the pick) become 2.