Upward Pick Slanting w/ Sweeping/Economy Picking

Playing Technique
#1

Hey! New here, just got the monthly subscription and I just watched all the videos for downward and upward pick slanting and it seems more natural to me to do upward pick slanting. It’s actually almost immediately helped me play cleaner and that is an awesome thing to experience, so thank you!

I have a question about sweeping with upward pick slanting. For most of my guitar playing life I have been playing with a perpendicular angled pick straight into the strings with a little bit of an angle as to more easily cut through the strings. I adopted a technique that some call thumb muting where I would rest my thumb on the strings as I would play them to mute the lower strings as I ascend up through scale patterns. I’ve also adopted economy picking (or directional picking as claimed by an old guitar teacher) as well and play mainly 3 note per string patterns using this method. I have noticed in the downward pick slanting videos you mention how Yngwie Malmsteen uses downward pick slanting combined with sweeping to ascend certain patterns and I was wondering if there would be any difference if I just used upward pick slanting instead?

I’ve tried the downward pick slanting technique but it is such a weird and uncomfortable feeling for me and and when I do it, I lose more than 50% of my accuracy while playing. However, the upward pick slanting technique was so similar to what I was already doing I think I have actually increased my accuracy which in turn increased my speed almost instantly just by angling my pick upwards instead of flat which is amazing. Thanks again.

Anyway, just a couple of questions:

  • Should I bother learning downward pick slanting if upward slanting works so well for me with economy picking even though I will most certainly have to reduce my speed down to half of what I play again just to get the accuracy back up to par?

  • Do the upward pick slanting rules apply for economy picking and/or sweeping?

  • If you can theoretically play any picking pattern with downward pick slanting by using a combination of that and economy picking, can the same thing be applied to upward pick slanting?

Thanks!

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#2

Yes you can essentially do a reverse Yngwie style where you just flip the pickstrokes. Everything then works with UPWS.

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#3

The angle of the pick slant should be in the direction you are going when sweep picking or economy picking (Which is sweep picking of just one string to another). When you are ascending through a scale use DWPS, and when descending use UWPS. Trying to sweep an ascending line with an upward pick slant will make it difficult or impossible to do it smoothly and accurately

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#4

Makes sense. Thanks!