Howdy all, so… for the longest time I never gave it much thought on what to do with my picking hand for general playing. Then the Cracking the Code stuff exploded and I’m trying to perhaps change my technique as I’m not sure mine is a good one or not.
My ‘default’ technique seems like a combination of my wrist and forearm moving together.
Here’s a .gif I made of it: https://i.imgur.com/7XXMKqp.gif - see how HIGH up in the air the lower part of my thumb is? It basically -never- touches the strings.
But I see so many USX players have the lower part of their thumb touch the strings, like this: https://i.imgur.com/zQ3C2xD.png
What I’ve been trying to do is switch it to the way I see more people play USX, not just because it seems more ‘common’, but because it also seems to be a very similar approach to switching to DSX when needed - so I’m trying to find a USX primary motion that doesn’t require much movement to switch to DSX. Basically switching from some kind of wrist+forearm to strictly wrist.
One of my issues is… I can’t seem to purely wrist pick, it just feels weird and I think part of the issue is because I don’t know where to place the ulnar side of my hand on the bridge.
In this pic, this is my ‘default’ (wrist+forearm; lower thumb up in air) hand on the bridge for palm muting the E string: https://i.imgur.com/ynGL9eC.jpeg (the red circle is where it touches for palm muting E).
When I try to do the purely wrist picking, I’m wondering if THIS spot is more accurate? https://i.imgur.com/qhXt8XE.jpeg (note: I got my hand into position, then just tilted it to the side so the view of where the string touches is easy to see).
My ask is… for any players who commonly use a lot of palm muting (such as metal music, like myself), could you please share a picture of where the string touches the side of your hand when you’re palm muting the low string? Low E, low B, etc. - whatever the lowest string is on the guitar you use.
Thank you very much!
I feel I’m practicing it wrong because when I recorded myself trying to do wrist motion USX with my lower part of thumb touching strings, it was still coming up into the air a bit and back down on the strings. I think it’s just a matter of the distance of where I start the pick and where my hand placement is in relation.
Edit: You can see the difference of where the E string touches the ulnar side of hand, it’s quite a drastic difference. But I’m simply not sure if this is correct/common - https://i.imgur.com/Irc5CFE.png - I’m also starting to doubt myself a bit and wondering if my wrist+forearm combo is fine as well? I just don’t see many metal players using that style. I wish there were more close up shots of people’s picking hands from different angles.
