Hey guys - so I’ve watched all the troy grady vids about pickslanting etc, but there must be something very basic about guitar playing in general that I can’t figure out, because there simply doesn’t seem to be any space for me to deviate my wrist… because, well, the body of the guitar is preventing me from finishing the movement. I also hate doing wrist turn movement as a primary motion - I find that I miss a lot of notes that way. Attached is a video where I illustrate the problem.
I personally think you don’t have enough pick exposed to get the most out of supinating. You won’t have enough range of motion to turn the hand outward without your fingers giving you the hassle they seem to be giving.
It’s important that the motion is slanted, not just the pick. The aim is to find a way to escape the strings. For instance, it wouldn’t really matter what motion you play with along a single string, but if you want to leave on an upstroke and go to a new string on a down, your upstroke is going to need to pull away from the guitar in a more obvious way (at first) until it gets refined over time.
Watching at 50% speed, you’re hopping over to new strings (and clipping them on the way) which is a sign that the pathway is not slanted.
Can you do a similar video from a side angle?
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Yeah that’s what I mean, my normal playing isn’t slanted. I’ve experimented with pick slanting on and off over the years, but I don’t know how to move my wrist to the right AND down when the right side of my wrist (like Troy recommends in his vid) is planted on the strings/bridge. I do remember Troy advising more pick to show for downward slanting in another thread - having a small amount of pick showing is an old habit for me, as I was told by some teachers in the past that this was better.
Side angle being the down-the-neck angle?
Here’s a better view. I’ve made another vid as well which I think better explains my issue, but this might do - will upload to youtube when it’s finished uploading. It’s also worth noting that I actually don’t find crosspicking nearly as difficult - I’m not great at it, but I think it’s more just a lack of practice. What I’m struggling with is any movement where the pick goes BELOW the string, and crosspicking doesn’t involve that. Even when I do my best to keep my hand out the way by contorting my hand and flattening my knuckles, it still feels like I’m sort of midly crushing my fingers every time I down pick. Obviously, this can’t be correct, because it’d honestly be so much easier just to lift the wrist to change strings than this, which is what DWPS is designed to avoid.
This is very interesting! I’m afraid I’m not going to be of much help as I’m, as you may remember, doing the rotating thing. But I just see an obvious thing when you roll over to DWPS. You keep you’re fingers tucked in under your hand which make them an obstacle for your movement. I don’t see if you actually correct that when you start playing, but I would anyway surgest that you lift the other fingers up from the guitar body to give your hand more room to move. This is especially important on a strat for me, where the volume knob is always in the way.
hmmm, see, even if I tuck my fingers, my hand is still obstructing my movement. I can’t really do a nine o’clock movement, because the side of my hand is already in contact with the guitar. I also do wonder if it’s possible to do this technique without resting on the bridge.
No, you should “untuck” your hand is what I’m trying to say. Get your fingers away from the body so that they are not i contact. I’ll see if I can get i pic of what I mean.
I’m actually using my middle finger to slide along with the hand movement on the guitar body, but the other fingers are kept away from the guitar. This is of course extreme in the pic, and in reality it’s more relaxed, but you get the point.
For reference, this is me trying to emulate you’re fingers, and in this position I can’t reach the strings either.
Thanks! Yeah, I just tried that. It’s something else. The base of the hand is still preventing my hand from going down. Troy talks about the 3 - 9 o’clock movement, and this is the only movement that I’ve been able to use well when doing straight alternate picking. Basically, when I’m DWPS, the 3 o’clock movement is blocked, and when UWPS, the 9 o’clock position is blocked (though not as badly, because I rest on the body BELOW the strings when picking the lower strings, so with a bit of finger movement, I can still somewhat reach the lower strings.
Not really sure what you mean by “base of the hand”. Is that the palm?
To me, looking at your basic form, I tend to think UWPS shouldn’t be a problem. In comparison with DWPS where you demonstrate the problems with changing form and motion, just tilting you hand up shouldn’t interfer with that. So I would be interested to see a more detailed demonstration of how it looks when you try that. To my thinking and hopefully without insulting you, this could be more of a psychological problem.
By the way, for not being able to do these movement’s, I got to say you do these movement very well. 
… am I?! I’m not even hitting the strings! I don’t THINK I’m pickslanting in the other vids I uploaded, and if I did, I have no idea how I did it. Yeah, I’m talking about the palm. The thing is, the whole idea for me is that I want to maintain that smooth 3 - 9 o’clock movement, but when I turn my arm for the UWPS slant, the 9 o’clock movement is obtructed, and when I turn my for DWPS, the 3 o’clock movement is obstructed.
I mean, I guess any physical problem by definition is psychological, because we control our body through our minds… but here’s the thing about us “overthinkers” - the only reason a lot of us overthink is because not thinking about it didn’t work, and then thinking about it didn’t work, so then we overthink, because occasionally, that does work. Only after a lot of stress, admittedly, but it’s still the only thing which works! Overthinking in my case is merely a result of a lack of natural talent and doing what needs to be done in the absence of said talent. Anyway, I’m just typing that whilst I wait for the vid of me further demonstrating my UWPS problems to get uploaded to Youtube from my phone.
Well, for instance, you’re latest DWPS pentatonic scale was far better than my average try. And I would consider myself a DWPS player.
Ok I wasn’t trying to take away from your very real problem here. But it’s just that, to me, UWPS is so close to what your already doing so it seems more like a problem that would occur only if you do extreme slanting angles. But I’m looking forward to seeing your vid.
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Well hats off to you my friend, I saw the vid you uploaded and that seemed far more consistent than my attempts at playing DWPS! When you say “what I’m already doing” do you mean the picking that I see as being unobstructed (the ones I play at the beginning of the video?) Certainly doesn’t feel like it’s escaping the string. Anyway, here’s the vid:
Yes your unobstructed playing, which is deviation motion, looks very much like my movement when doing UWPS. But to be honest, in your first “different view” video that unobstructed looked more like kick ass DWPS with just a very slight slant.
Ok, so my first thought about your new UWPS demonstration is that your doing FAR to much of the slant angle there. You definitely don’t have to slant so much that the hand moves straight into the body of the guitar. It’s, once again, just a slight slant to be able to just get above the strings on downstroke. It should NOT feel very different from your normal playing. For me when doing UWPS it’s just that I feel I get steady string contact with the pad of the thumb. This makes the arm tilt a bit upwards. Just a hint. The movement I think is still 3 to 9 just that the arm is slightly angled upwards which creates the escape.
Moving to DWPS I see more or less the same problem. It’s unnecessarily exaggerated and there is actually nothing that forces the palm of your hand to be planted on the bridge. You can definitely raise or lift part of the palm from the bridge and still have a downward slant. Look once again at my two pics and you can see that on the first one I only have contact with the part of the palm that’s closest to the wrist. It might feel weird at first because it might make your hand a bit extended, but please try it.
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Alright, I’m tired, I’ll look at this in the morning, tried to record a vid but I just seemed to forget how to even do my good movement somehow.
This is super common. An important part of the learning process is flip-flopping between motions because you haven’t learned to tell the difference by feel. It’s like being a kid all over again, when everything is uncoordinated.
The important point which others are telling you is that you do have motions that work, and your goal is learning to activate them on cue, without inadvertently doing other motions. This is another area where super mega long practice is a bad idea. You get more mileage by repeatedly and in small doses trying to “recall” the motion you want, rather than blasting away for hours on a mish-mash of motions. A few minutes here and there throughtout the day of attempting multiple times to recall specifically and only the motion you want, and doing so by memory of what it feels like, is how the learning part of this works best.
Ok guys, I made an interesting observation. Again, I better explain it in the video, but basically, keeping my wrist straight in relation to my arm seems to really help me keep my movements nice and simple - purely wrist deviation. 95% sure. Certainly feels better to me. Lemme know what you think. Also found that DWPS is helped by this new discovery and adding a bit of wrist flex (?), in another video I’ll upload when it’s ready.
Alright since recording the video I’ve changed my mind, the dwps and uwps aren’t quite working as the body (or strings) is still in the way for the UWPS, and there does seem to be a bit of arm twist in the DWPS motion, but I think keeping the arm a bit straighter improves things somewhat.
Troy! The man I need to speak to - the 37 minute mark of this video https://troygrady.com/channels/talking-the-code/introduction-to-picking-motion/
is what I desperately need help with - I can’t figure out how to do that without my hand getting obstructed by the body. What do you think I’m doing wrong?
Just wondering… when you play the way you like, as in the end of the “normal playing” video, do you feel that you slam into the strings when doing string changes? From what I can see and hear there’s not much of that going on.
I also looked at the video slowed down via Youtube but couldn’t really figure out if the string changes are all after up or down strokes. So what do you say, do you switch strings only after up strokes?