Totally a contribution! Positioning is an important topic.
Re: hand size, I am one of those slightly smaller-handed people. I can reach a three-string distance more or less comfortably from one anchor point. So I don’t move much if I’m playing acros a three-string group. If I have to play across more strings than that, I’ll move. But once I get to the new location, if I have to reach a three-string distance, I tend to stay there anchored in the new spot.
What I’m not following is the connection to doing the two different wrist motions from a centralized arm position. It’s not clear to me that this is related to hand size or anchoring. Just as an example, if I want to play in a Gypsy-type style, where I only do upstroke string changes, I’ll do it with the anchoring approach I’m describing above. I can get all six strings that way. There is no need to use the opposite wrist motion to do that, even though I have smaller hands.
On the flipside, if I want to use both wrist motions, I can use the same anchoring approach. But now I’m just making the two different wrist motions on whichever strings I’m close to. I don’t think my hand size influences whether I choose single-escape or both escapes.
Let me know if I’m understanding what you’re getting at!
We made several minutes of updates to the USX chapter of the Pickslanting Primer this weekend to include feedback from all the recent and very valuable discussions we’ve been having in “Technique Critique”. Those edits have been uploaded and you can watch them now:
For example, the whole “body contour” problem, leading to unwanted wrist flexion, was a big hole in our instructions. It would be super easy for someone to hold the guitar the way they always do, and not be able to figure out why their arm position doesn’t look like the one we’re using in the lesson, or why the motion doesn’t work the way they want it to. Here’s what the “contour problem” looks like:
And here’s what the solution looks like:
In the video lesson, we now demonstrate the motion with this overhead shot so you can see exactly what it’s supposed to look like when done correctly.
We also address how to use a trigger-style grip without the knuckles dragging on the strings, and without needing to lift up the fingers uncomfortably to avoid this problem. And finally, we’re now super duper clear about the range of motion needed to perform this motion, with visual overlays for the straightness of the wrist and a note about not going beyond this point.
The USX motion checklist has also been updated to include details on all these points, with images for each of them:
Many thanks to those who have contributed feedback on all this, and especially to those intrepid explorers who posted videos and asked questions. If you don’t get feedback from users, then you really have no idea if your stuff is actually working. So that feedback is super valuable and all of it goes right back into the product as quickly as we can get it in there.
For some reason hadn’t seen that most excellent Switching Escapes video. It illuminates unfortunately that I had my DSX wrong, I had slightly pronated arm instead of your slightly supinated! Took me a few days to get the DSX somewhat doable with supination, nowhere as smooth and steady as with pronation sadly. The tip of the pick tends to dive under the string on the upstroke and get stuck easier. (And as a side note, I had to give up using the trigger grip here because on the upstrokes the string sometimes penetrated under the fingernail of my index finger if I wasn’t extra careful and it hurt a lot lol?)
Also after viewing the updated checklist and many days of trying USX I’ve realized I simply have to hold up my right arm in the air to keep the wrist straight to avoid flex and thus avoid rotation, even with a guitar with only a very slight contour. This allows only one point of anchor which is the palm, and also makes the shoulder tired with burning sensation after only 10-15 seconds which seriously limits the practice time. Hopefully the shoulder will become stronger eventually, as my previous forms have been “lazy slouch” types without any supporting muscle activity. Even with this form and without flex it’s hard to avoid rotation or knock-on-the-foor movement, currently I’m up from the 30bpm speed to 60bpm but any higher will instantly introduce unwanted movements or stop escaping. In any case, it’s a slow progress and I’m hoping at some point it will click and I can do the jump to 150bpm+ speeds.
You shouldn’t be keeping the arm in the air without contacting the guitar! Nobody plays that way that I’m aware of and I’m sure you’ll get tired trying to keep your arm that way. Sorry for the confusion on this — that was just a way of helping you visualize what straight looks like so you can find a comfortable anchor position that comes close to that.
The guitar I’m using in the lessons has a Fender arm contour and there may be very slight flexion in my form which is fine. A few degrees is ok. The idea was to communicate clearly that a pronounced ‘Gypsy flex’ is not what we are looking for, and to provide a simple explanation (elbow behind the body) for why that sometimes happens.
Regarding speed are you talking about 90bom sixteenths? That’s way too slow. If for some reason you can’t move faster than that, then this suggests there is something wrong with the motion and I would stop trying “work it up to speed”. Instead, find a motion you can do more quickly from the start because that is the one that is working better.
Edit: Sorry, I was on the train and replied before reminding myself what thread I was replying to! I had visions of you trying to play guitar with no anchor point and burning out from exhaustion and wanted to make sure yoiu didn’t do any more of that.
The name of the game at this stage is finding motions that you can do that are working. You’ve had some successes here. There is nothing wrong with a pronated form if that’s the one that’s working for you. We have a whole chapter on that in the wrist lessons because it works. David Grier, Molly Tuttle, Oz Noy, and Frank Gambale all play that way part of even all of the time in Molly’s case, so you’re in good company.
Once you get anything that’s clicking at all, transition to building out musical vocabulary. The smoothness and consistency will come with time so long as you are feeding these motions with variety and keeping an eye on how smooth they feel. I’m hardly the fastest player in the world and probably not even the fastest player on this forum. But I have tons of options in the 140-180bpm range where lots of music happens. On average just given the stuff we have to demonstrate and teach, I will make much more use of those tempos than the relatively less common times when I have to play a shred pattern at 200-210bpm.
I mean, how fast is this really? 150 maybe? Within your wheelhouse with your pronated form if you want it.
I’d like to piggy back off of this post as the content is very applicable to my own situation. However, I would like to first take a second to acknowledge what an outstanding job you have done figuring all of this out, writing it down, and creating videos for it. I felt completely hopeless before. It’s awesome to have it all written down, demonstrated, and a forum to discuss. Kudos !!!
Similar to “SlowButSloppy”, I play with an upward pickslant and I can perform the downstroke escape (DSX) fairly well. I can cross strings playing 16th notes at 150 bpm as long as I am switching strings after a downstroke. When it comes to working on the USX, I too am having to slow it down considerably (16th notes at 100 bpm) in order to perform the motion correctly. It feels really awkward and I have been working on it for a couple of months. I have my daughter video the motion when trying to play it at higher speeds (16th note 150) and I revert to DSX. I have read your suggestions to not go so slow but I am not sure what else to do. At this rate, I believe this is going to take me years to learn this motion. I understand it shouldn’t. Any suggestions?
The idea is that if you can only do it impractically slow speeds, then it’s not really “correct”. The pick might be traveling sort of the way you want it to, and you might be playing the notes you want, but that doesn’t mean the underlying motion is really operating the way you want it to. And being so close to the speed limit is not a great place to be for smoothness and general ease of playing, and doesn’t give you a whole lot of room to play at different tempos.
As with all things technique, a short clip of both of these motions would help to see what you’re actually doing. These two wrist motions are so incredibly similar that if they feel somehow dramatically different to you, it could be that we’ve led people astray into thinking they have to “do” more than than they really have to. And I apologize for that!
So let’s try a different tack. One thing you can do is just pretend the string changes don’t exist and use your DSX motion, and play the lines you want as smoothly as you can. You want the most feeling of smoothness you can get, with the most even-sounding pick attack, accurate fretting, and the best hand synchronization you muster. If you can get all those things happening at once, that’s actually pretty big. If you do this right, the playing should sound good, even if you hear some stray noise here and there. And there’s not even a guarantee that you will hear that noise, or that there will even be any to hear.
So just as an example, if you’re doing a scale, sure, one string change every 7 notes is going to be a downstroke. But lets not worry about that. Just play the line as smoothly as you can. I’m not saying to specifically use what we call “swiping”, where you intentionally hit the string. I’m saying just don’t think about it one way or another, and instead focus on getting all these other elements happening. Ignore any noises that you hear, in the name of developing ease and smoothness. How effortless can you get all those ingredients to feel? What does it sound like when you do that?
Getting all these basic ingredients happening solves the most prohibitive beginner-stage problems in picking technique. Some people play their whole lives and never get any picking technique at all that feels fluid, and sounds synchronized, on any kind of line. Figuring out how to make certain string changes sound a little cleaner is by comparison a smaller step that you can take after that.
Thanks for the response! One detail I accidentally left out was the bpm’s I was talking about were occurring on one string. I’m talking simply picking on one string. I feel I should be able to start with a DSX motion and then “morph” into the USX motion by turning my hand slightly and slowly as I am picking. I’m trying to keep this as simple as possible eliminating the left hand so I can focus purely on the picking motion. From your post, it sounds like if the two motions feel very different then perhaps my DSX motion isn’t really correct, I just think it is. I’ll keep trying to figure that out.
Not totally following you, but the way you switch from DSX to USX isn’t by turning your arm. It’s actually by changing the way the wrist is moving. You keep the arm stationary, and just move the wrist in a different diagonal direction. Just as an exmple, here’s what that looks like:
Notice that the arm doesn’t change its position, or not that much. But the motion changes. The upstroke escape motion moves from the upper right of the screen to the lower left. The downstroke escape motion moves from the lower right to the upper left. It’s magic!
But again, don’t worry about that too much right now. If you can do either one of these motions on a single string at 150bpm, then you can do it well enough to try it on some musical phrases. See if you can get your hands synchronized on some kind of simple musical phrase that you like, and see what happens. Knowing what it’s supposed to look like is helpful, for sure, so you can occasionally film yourself if you want to check your progress. But these changes between the motions are so slight that you may be able to suss them out by feel over time just by focusing on a feeling of smoothness, good sounding pick attack, and hand synchronization, and keeping in mind generally what is supposed to be happening at a mechanical level.
Ah, you’re right. I did say “turning my hand” and meant to say “turning my wrist”.
I am hearing your suggestions about obtaining a good feeling of smoothness, good sounding pick attack, and hand synchronization and am not ignoring that advice. However, I would like to make sure you are understanding what I am asking.
Let’s say that I am playing 16th notes on the open A string at speed X using the DSX motion. While continuing to play 16th notes on the open A string, I should be able to switch to the USX motion. However, I can’t do that. What do you think I could work on to correct that?
I never worked on that. I just worked on musical phrases. I can do that now in demonstration videos like the one I linked to, but only because I worked on musical phrases that required it, then became more aware of what I was doing, then learned to recognize the feel of the two different motions, then learned to swap them on a single note a single string. So making videos like that is the last thing I was able to do, not the first. Switching wrist motions on a single note, when it’s not even required, It’s almost more of a party trick than something you’d do in actual playing.
Instead, what I’m suggesting is that by doing this more intuitive type of playing, where you just focus on trying to play the lines with smoothness, you can back into it the way I did. Intellectually, you know what is supposed to be happening. You could draw it on a napkin. That’s a big help. Most people go their whole lives never knowing that the wrist can even move in different directions like that. Just knowing that fact can help you become more aware of these things as you accidentally do them correctly in the course of more “intuitive” musical playing like that kind I’m recommending. Doing things right, somewhat by accident, and learning to identify it by feel afterward and reproduce it, is how I learned pretty much every technique I know.
So the suggestion here is twofold:
One, if you get all the other ingredients happening together, even if you never learn to switch motions at all, you may still get pretty good-sounding playing because the only note that would even have a chance of sounding “off” would be one string change out of every however many notes. And that might just not be that noticeable. Depending on the type of phrase.
And then, two, getting good at the single-motion type playing, may help make it more obvious when and how you need to learn to make those other string changes clean, thereby helping you clean up. Your hands may figure out some of this on their own, which you can then become more conscious of, and learn to do it more deliberately.
How is muting done when playing on the B and E string? My thumb heel is comfortably muting the EAD string, but if I try to mute the G string I either lose contact with the low E string or also mute the B string.
I’ve been practicing my USX on this short section of Petrucci’s Happy Song where he bounces between the B and E string doing 2nps for a few bars:
On the B string I can mute the G string with my first finger, but when my first finger is on the E string I can sometimes hear the open G ringing out. I tried moving my picking hand a little extra so it mutes the G string when I’m on the high E but then I sometimes hear the low E ringing out as it’s left uncovered.
It all depends on what part of the hand you are muting with and what you are muting for. Are you muting just to keep the strings quiet or muting to get a percussive staccato effect? If the later, it’s typically easier to mute with the other side of your hand. This is often more conducive to USX down wards pickslanting anyway since it tends to naturally put your hand in position for it.
If on the other hand you are just trying to dampen the strings so they don’t ring out, you can use your pinky to drape over the high strings while still maintaining the “thumb palm” muting in the low. Likewise you could also incorporate fretting hand muting as well for the higher strings.
This was one of the only ‘intuitive’ things I stumbled upon all by myself. That was the only way I could keep my hi gain amp quiet. At least, the only way that worked for me. I’ve seen others get away with different dampening protocols. But that pronated thumb palm thing seemed to work great for me, with no extra effort.
It’s puts things into a position where DSX is strongly preferred by the body though. USX…probably pretty tough, at least for me. 2NPS stuff starting on a down stroke was always an Achilles heel of mine from that posture so I’m pretty sure I was brute force string hopping when attempting.
Great suggestion. MAB and Rusty Cooley both preach that approach.
Muting is something I’m struggling with at the moment. With the forearm and wrist resting on the bridge setup, the pinky heel is very close to the bridge and some noise can get through.
At the end of a phrase or during bends or vibrato I move the picking hand forward to clamp down on noise.
Im not too familiar with left hand muting techniques for muting noise on the strings lower in pitch…?
If on the other hand you are just trying to dampen the strings so they don’t ring out, you can use your pinky to drape over the high strings while still maintaining the “thumb palm” muting in the low.
I don’t see how I can dampen the G string with my pinky while playing on the high E string (the string highest in pitch). Surely that would only work to mute e.g. the high E string while I was playing on e.g. the G string?
I haven’t seen either of these keep the first finger in contact with the G string continuously, for muting purposes, while playing on the high E string.
It depends on how close to the bridge saddles you are. It really is a discipline in itself, and experimenting in finding the perfect spot is key. If you are too close to the string exit point on the bridge saddles particularly with a floyd rose, it’s tough to mute that way, and you will get more unintentional noise particularly on the lower strings. However this location tends to sound better for staccato playing in the higher ones. If you move to closer to the neck, it tends to choke everything too much. For me I have found it’s right in between the bridge pickup and where the strings exit the saddle and at somewhat of a slant if possible. You get the damping and chug on the low strings if you need it without choking too much out.
Typically it’s only done for those higher in pitch than the ones you’re playing. But I’ve seen Troy do it for lower too, but it’s most for end of phrase licks to dampen everything.
Are you asking about playing the B and E strings and muting those strings at the same time, as a percussive effect, like Al Di Meola? Or are you asking about muting the strings you’re not playing, i.e. for noise control?
