Hey guys, pretty new here and looking for a solve as it seems you are all pretty damn helpful.
For the life of me, I just can’t upward pickslant comfortably. Just straight up can’t find a way to make it ergonomic enough to use.
Anyone have the same problem? How did you overcome this.
Cheers in advance!
What pick are you using? Do you have any video? When I tried to develop it a while back, I found the pick tip shape to be pretty critical, also the angle of the pick to the string (not only is the pick upward slant, but I also angled it “out” towards the headstock).
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Hey thanks for the response, I’m using jazz 3’s
So quite a small pick, but they’re the best I’ve played with.
I’ll try that out for sure and if no luck I’ll try to cook up some footage. Thanks again.
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I normally use jazz III style picks and tried upward with them, but I felt like they were too small and sharp. I found thicker tortex (1mm or thicker) to be better. If you have some other picks on hand, it never hurts to experiment.
I have the opposite problem, down slant is awkward for me. Something that I’ve been doing to try and get used to the feeling is just the general sweeping motion. Raking the strings, and slanting the pick down on the ascending arpeggio and slanting up on the descending arpeggio. Just that simple motion, it feels like turning a key in a door lock; that same wrist motion. I’m starting with that, and then trying to play a single string line with my wrist in that position.
Years ago I got the sweep picking video by Frank Gambale which didn’t go into angling the pick or slanting it. I guess I picked up some bad habits that I find hard to shake off. Maybe because I was muting as I swept upwards which was easier. My downward sweeps were a lot harder to nail. I’m still trying to shake that bad habit on the downward sweep, a lot harder for me too. My explanation for this was because on an upward sweep the muscle above my thumb on my picking hand was there to help muting together with the curves of my fretting fingers muting the string I’d just played. This isn’t as easy for me on a downward sweep unless I curl my wrist so my thumb muscle is muting as I sweep downward, resulting in the upward pick slant problem on a desired downward sweep.
I’m in the same boat. I started trying to get into UWPS a few weeks ago (stopped for a week cause I was visiting people) and I’ve found that I’m getting used to the position as far as comfort is concerned but I think building speed is going to a take a very long time because I can’t really use motion from the elbow like I do with DWPS. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to build up the muscles that give people wrist speed though.
If you normally use wrist movement for DWPS, I would suggest slowly rotating your forearm going from DWPS to UWPS. During that rotation pick at a slow speed while playing around with the angle of the pick to the string (not UWPS vs DWPS but parallel to string vs angled).
Oh sweet I’ll try that, thanks dude!
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I’m naturally an upwards pick slanter. Just came natural to me.
Do you play with your forearm more supinated?
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Sorry for the late response, I definitely do when doing rhythm stuff but when thinking fast playing my body seems to want to upward slant but just not effectively or comfortably. I guess I’ve just gotta mess around more.
You don’t really “do” a pickslant. You do different joint motions. And not only that, but many picking motions don’t have the appearance of a “pickslant” even though the motion itself moves along a diagonal.
A great example of all these points is the Al Di Meola / Andy Wood picking motion in our most recent feature:
This is just a wrist motion performed with the arm resting mostly flat on the guitar. When Andy does it, it has no pickslant. However the motion still moves diagonally. For that reason, we don’t call this an “upward pickslanting” motion, we just say that the downstroke escapes, regardless of what the pick actually looks like.
If you look at your pick and try to “make it slanted” that’s really not a great way to learn this motion because that’s not what makes this motion unique. Instead, you simply place the arm flat on the guitar and move that hand back and forth in whatever way feels comfortable to you.
More generally, if you’ve been playing for any length of time all of this may be unnecessary. You may already be doing a motion that has an escape. Have you tested your current picking motion to find out what kind it is?
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I can’t quite understand how that works, nor can I replicate it but it seems fascinating.
Surprise: your motion in the other thread where you posted the video, looks like this motion. I’ll comment further on that thread.
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