Warm-up and DWPS

Technique Critique
#1

So I know these are not very well recorded videos. I had my 6 year old daughter do it so enough said. But judging how my fingers swallow the pick, I wonder if you could even see the pick regardless of what angle I film from???

Anyway this first video is playing a theme two times through with all single notes and then I’m trying to tremelo pick it and I get tripped up. I did NOT warm up, because I don’t believe that warming up should make you play THAT differently. I mean, I believe without warming up, most people probably play at around a 75-80% level of their warmed up level, but here, my level is like only 40% of what I am capable of doing. Give me 10 min of playing and I can probably play this same tremelo picked theme at 90%. This tells me something is wrong with my technique.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-Vtn5AOTQA5OTZ1ZmdrSzRrUVE/view?usp=sharing

Next video is me having trouble with palm muting and tremelo picking.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-Vtn5AOTQA5N2pZLU10Y21DM0E/view?usp=sharing

But here is me a few months ago playing the same theme with three fingers (index, middle and thumb)

(Ignore the exodus riff that comes after it)

So I know it is hard to see but am I DWPS??

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#2

FYI just cleaned up the formatting on your post a bit. To make the YouTube embeds display correctly the link needs to be on its own line. If you replace the Google Drive links with YouTube ones you can make the embeds display for those as well.

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#3

These look great - there’s a lot of potential here. Your faster speed looks quite fluid, and so is your all downstroke rhythm technique. I don’t share your concerns about warmup at all. If that’s you at 40%, I’d be terrified of you at 90%!

Like other clips we’ve seen posted recently, if anything, you’re perhaps guilty of flip flopping between a variety of different movements. You’ve got a slower movement that’s twisty and rotational in appearance, and a fast tremolo that’s more of a supinated wrist movement. Are you aware you’re switching between these movements, and is this intentional?

Also, I wouldn’t be too concerned about whether you’re “dwps” or not. That’s a string-switching concept, and is only going to be relevant for certain types of lines. For example, the “theme” lick you’re playing - that’s not going to work with dwps. That line has mixed numbers of notes per string, and to do that super fast you’re going to need crosspicking or 2wps or something.

Again, your fast movement is great, and if you want to watch that fly, I recommend starting at the beginning as we’ve recommended others do: choose a simple pattern, like an Yngwie pattern, and learn that on a single string with chunking. Do this in a single position first, then in different positions. You’ve seen @aliendough and @Hanky_Pooh’s threads on this same subject. That’s how it starts.

Once you establish hand synchronization and accuracy on a single string, you’re ready for multi-string. But again, great start here and try not to put the cart before the horse in terms of worrying about “pickslanting” until the basics are in place.

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#4

Dude, write a song going back n forth between the speed picking and the exodus riffs. You could start the best metal band ever. \m/:rage:\m/ . You need a drummer to kick that **** into some half-time grooves every once in a while.

#5

Nothing glaringly wrong with the movements to my eye. Could there be an issue with how your pick attack angle is working? In the first google drive video, for the tremolo part, is the pick’s orientation in space relative to the path of its movement such that the attack is very similar on both downstrokes and upstrokes, i.e. the pick isn’t “leaning into” strokes in one direction or the other? If the orientation of the pick is such that upstrokes have a different attack than downstrokes, that can cause more of a “grabbing” sensation as the pick crosses the string. One test would be to try out the tremolo stuff with a more flexible pick, where the “grabbing” won’t be as strong as it is with a very stiff pick, and see if it feels any smoother.

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#6

is there a faq on how to do the basics here like quoting, uploading etc? I’m a real luddite when it comes to this stuff! sorry

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#7

Hey, no worries! Can definitely be a bit of a learning curve. A couple things you can try:

There’s a tutorial created by Discourse (the folks who make this forum software) that gives a quick interactive overview of how it works. It works with a chatbot called “Discobot”. To start this tutorial, send a direct message (click your profile image in the upper right, then the envelope icon to get to messages), with the following text: @discobot start new user

Second, also using the direct message feature, you can message yourself to test features. For example try sending yourself a message with an image, quoted text, embedded video etc. Most of these formatting things ( are done via the composer toolbar. Some like video embeds work automatically and just require the link on its own line. Go ahead and play around with it a bit and let us know if you still have questions!

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#8

hahah, I bet you say that to all the boys on this forum!
That doesn’t mean that I am only at 40% of my potential speed. I mean, every time I miss a note, I’m moving down the percentage by 5% or so. I’m only talking about accuracy, not speed. if you look at my youtube video, I feel that is like 90% of what it should sound like.

no i have no clue what I’m doing, but if asked, I would have said I think I’m doing wrist deviation, but it is so sloppy it is becoming supination?

wait a minute! I’ve been watching Teemu for a while now, and he was able to everything (or so i seemed) with DWPS? Now I’m not sure what I should be doing…?:confused:

#9

haha, well the spped picking riff is from an actual piece of music. It’s a Japanese composer. I’m going to be doing metal versions of his orchestral works over the next few years and that’s one of them.

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#10

hmm…you might be on to something there. I tried it with a .40mm and seemed smoother. so that means I shouldn’t be using hard picks? I have no idea what I am doing because I can’t see anything! :grin:

#11

so take this riff from Vio-lence:

here are the tabs:
Capture

does that mean I should be uwps for the F# and maybe a flat parallel attack against the D string? I’m I really supposed to jump back and forth at this speed changing pick slanting acccording to what string I’m on?

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#12

Your playing does not look sloppy at all. You’re just not familiar with the movements you are making. Your slow-speed form looks like a type of crosspicking to me. This is a specific picking movement that traces a curved path in the air. It is useful for playing complex phrases that move beyond “shreddy” type patterns.

Your higher speed playing looks “pickslanty” to me, by which I mean a movement which is more straight-line, back and forth. I can’t comment on that movement further without a closer look, but the bottom line is both of these techniques look good to me and have potential.

No, Teemu does not do everything with dwps. He demonstrates his two-way pickslanting movement for scale playing, and also for arpeggio sweeping. He talks about being an upward pickslanter (ish) for phrases that require it, like the “Gilbert” sixes patterns, and so on.

It sounds like you may not yet be clear on pickslanting as a concept, and why it is used. No worries, you have to start somewhere. The short story is that it is a method for switching strings, and certain phrases require certain pickslants, depending on the types of string changes involved. Certain players, like Yngwie and Eric Johnson, do limit themselves primarily to one pickslant. But they can’t play all kinds of phrases that way, and they actually avoid the ones that don’t fit their technique. Crazy, but true. This is why you do not see Yngwie playing three-note-per-string scales with alternate picking, or descending sweeping arpeggios with great accuracy — those types of phrases don’t fit his technique.

The how and why of all this are covered in detail in the seminars, and the Pickslanting Primer, and to an extent the animated episodes of the Cracking the Code show. If you’re starting from scratch I’d recommend the Primer since it is the closest thing to an introductory lesson that we have right now. Moving forward it’s high on our list of priorities to expand the intro material to clear up some of this confusion. But for the time being, there is a little more homework involved in coming up to speed on these concepts so you can get the most out of the conversations that are happening on the forum, and in the interviews.

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#13

More flexible picks are more forgiving of subtle pick attack issues that can mess with your consistency. That doesn’t mean you’ll always have to use a flexible pick, but it supports the idea that your consistency issue is arising from a nuance of how the tip of the pick is interfacing with the string.

If you can get results you like better with a more flexible pick, there’s a good chance that without making any major adjustment to your overall hand/wrist/arm movement, you can probably improve your consistency by just experimenting with small adjustments to how the pick sits in your grip, until you find an attack angle that works smoothly for both the downstrokes and the upstrokes with a stiff pick.

#14

i just watched him play Judas Priest (I think) and then right after Metallica’s Blackened and to me it looks like he is in DWPS position…?? am I wrong?

so that means he would not be able to improvise, or he would have to plan out what notes he is going to play ahead of time before he plays anything in order for him to use his unique pickslanting technique?

I’ve watched all of the CtC animated episodes twice but didn’t pick up on everything because I think I was so fixated on DWPS. I’m pretty lost right now because I’m not sure how to practice at this moment. I can’t go back to my original 3-finger pick holding technique because it now feels weird. I may have to get the pickslanting primer and try to relearn how to play the guitar.

#15

That’s right! That is one of the core concepts of pickslanting. You don’t just “play anything”. You choose lines which fit the pickslant. Or you choose a pickslant that fits the lines. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

I’m not 100% clear on what problem you’re trying to solve, or what think you can’t currently do that you want to be able to do. It looks like some of your movements are already pretty fluid, so just on the surface, I don’t think there is a huge revamping that you need to do, necessarily.

One thing you might consider is taking a private lesson with a teacher that knows this material, who may be able to help (1) Figure out what you want to do, what’s working, and what’s not, and (2) help you set a reasonable plan to work toward, so you can move forward on your own.

I’m sure any number of the fine teachers in the “Teachers Lounge” section of the forum would be happy to help. In general I would say I’m thrilled that everyone here is so knowledgeable, and seems really focused on helping people learn.

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#16

As much as “paradigm” has become a dirty word in the last decade or two, that particular CTC insight into understanding the non-universality of elite guitar picking is a profound paradigm shift, and frankly an aspect of CTC that deserves wider recognition. I think scores of guitarists over the years (myself included) have rejected independent discoveries over the years that would have been consistent with what CTC has discovered, on the grounds that “that can’t possibly be it, because then you wouldn’t be able to play X or Y!”. The myth that high level players can rip through arbitrary phrases (rather than ripping through only certain types of phrases they’ve either worked out in advance, or idiomatically settled into) is perhaps the most damaging myth in all of shred guitardom, however far back you want to go.

I think it’s an important point that almost gets lost as a “forest for the trees” thing. As I’ve heard Troy repeat a number of times, and as his analysis of guys like Yngwie and MAB has consistently demonstrated, it’s not that pickslanting principles constitute a “weird trick” that gets you partway there, but rather “this is how the instrument is actually played by top players (regardless of whether they’re aware that that’s what they’re doing)”.

Of course, not all players are pulling the same tools out of the toolbox, and they don’t all have the same way of executing the principles, but the ubiquity of the principles themselves is pretty much undeniable at this point. I think that “how do different people execute these things?” is the most interesting mechanical territory still ahead for CTC, especially with respect to fast crosspicking.

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#17

being shackled by such a guitar policy would mean he wouldn’t be able to improvise though…I have hard time believing there are certain things Yngwie wouldn’t be able to play!

well, there are a bunch of things, but first and foremost, I want to be able to play that chromatic lick on the A string 0-1-2-3 and 2-3-4-5 palm muted and hit all notes perfectly at least 80% of the time (16th notes?).

very true indeed. I don’t think I’ve seen more humanity on a forum before coming to this one. People here are truly awesome.

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#18

Exactly the opposite. Systems like dwps make it dramatically easier to improvise because you don’t have to consider every lick in the known universe, just the handful you know that work. Why do you think every Yngwie solo is basically the same licks, just chained together in a different order? This is not a knock on Yngwie. EVH, EJ, RR - they all improvise and compose the same way.

The bigger issue is that we have failed to communicate the core concept of dwps to you. This is squarely on us. The number one rule of alternate picking when you use downward pickslanting is that the final note on every string must be an upstroke. Obviously this rules out lots of phrases. But it’s the way the whole system works. Do you know why that rule is in place, or was it just not clear from watching our stuff? Again, not a knock on you - it’s on us. We’re always trying to get better at getting the point across.

#19

You are being too hard on yourself. I’ve watched the 12 episode series twice through. I know about ending on an upstroke; what i didnt get was that DWPS is relevant only for switching strings. You basically presented this school of thought as “there are many different ways to pick a guitar; observe each one and pick one that’s good for you”. You were pretty clear with this, but my brain doesn’t operate like this. I want to be told what to do. This shortcoming is all mine. I’ve been playing for 27 years (on and off) and didn’t want to spend years on a certain technique just to realize that it is not working years later. I had to pick one style to start off, and when I saw Teemu and his seemingly dWPS regardless of what he was playing, I decided to pour everything into that.

I haven’t seen really anyone else on here have the same issues that I have. That is probably a healthy indication you guys are teaching everything just fine. :grin:

#20

Warm-up is not about speed only. I suggest to always warm-up your left and right hand. Unless you want to experience real pain in your hand, just like I felt ((