What/How am I doing?

So in my month of posting here, I’ve discovered that, despite not being a natural player, I’m actually even worse at being analytical. Doing a simple windshield-wiper movement with my hand feels comfortable. But the only way I can do it is by keeping my wrist completely flat, with the pick path going across all the strings. Every time I TRY to do DWPS or UWPS with that same simple, relaxing movement, I come across this problem of my hand being blocked by the guitar before the pick can even hit the string. HEAVY EDIT: I’ve sort of figured out a way past this, but it’s using mental trickery rather than logic I understand.

The problem is, it takes so much effort to play “properly” with the DWPS technique to clear the strings that I can’t even think about making music, and haven’t learned any new licks since I discovered the concept of DWPS and UWPS, as the last thing I want to do is learn more licks with the wrong technique and solidify my incorrect technique even further. So, in the interest of my gig this weekend, I’m going to post my attempt at playing guitar without worrying about escaped pick strokes, and see if I’m accidentally doing DWPS and UWPS - some have commented that I am, but again, I don’t know how. Here’s me playing “normally”, then attempting crosspicking without thinking about DWPS, and then me trying to DWPS.

HEAVY EDIT: Alright I’ve found a slightly unorthodox solution to my DWPS woes. It still doesn’t make logical sense to me, but it seems to work. I’ll upload a thread about that later when the youtube vid loads, but in the meantime, I would love a review of this technique, because it feels great when it works, but sometimes I try to do this and it’s a complete mess of unwanted open strings.

Hey man,

I originally had a super long response typed up but I think it’s better to keep it somewhat short. Have you considered just taking a step away from thinking so hard about the movements and orientations and what not and just playing like you suggested? Troy has stated so many times that you can’t analyze your way to playing well. A lot of the analysis Troy does is a consequence of someone already having mastered certain movements. They are put under the microscope and certain relative truths of motion mechanics are extracted. These relative truths are used as a pedagogical tool to help players conceptualize missing motions in their own playing. This is my understanding at least.

That said, at the end of the day, you can’t try to “make” a motion happen. It’s a process of trial and error and the brain must fail repeatedly until something clicks. You seem to be “trying” to create certain movements, instead of just allowing them to happen as a consequence of the lick you are playing, the guitar you are playing on, the pick you are using, the amp (or not) through which you are playing, etc. All of these seemingly disparate factors coalesce into what we see on camera as a player’s technique.

Instead of aiming for a physical movement captured on camera as the endgoal of your success, why don’t you aim for the inner sensation of “This feels good, I like this, I get the notes I want as a clean as I want and I feel comfortable.” This is going to drive you far less crazy than what it is you’re doing now, which seems super, super neurotic. This can’t be healthy for you. When you just play, you sound great and everything looks smooth. I’m failing to see the big issue here except paralysis by analysis.

2 Likes

Would a good strategy be to learn a bunch of licks and just learn what I can from the ones that come naturally? It’s true, I’ve always been pretty bad at knowing when to quit at certain things, even if those things are just tactics

1 Like

…except that you are! All these motions you can do are things you learned on your own and are actually pretty good at already. I thought we had mostly addressed this on the other thread. What’s wrong with picking one or more of these motions that you already know how do to, and using them to write/play cool things?

2 Likes

Ah… That’s a good one!

Would a good strategy be to learn a bunch of licks and just learn what I can from the ones that come naturally? It’s true, I’ve always been pretty bad at knowing when to quit at certain things, even if those things are just tactics

I’ve always found it important to have a goal of playing something meaningful, whether it be from a song or a lick Troy has for us in one of the seminars. In terms of what is natural, I tend to shy away from things that come easy. That’s why I started working through the entirety of the Antigravity seminar. You’ll have to divvy up your practice time for what comes easy and what is difficult within the context of your own musical goals and desires.

If knowing when to quit is a problem for you, I can help, because that used to be a massive, massive problem for me. I used to sit around and repeat exercises and sequences with no goal in mind. Just literally hoping one day that it would click. But nearly two years ago I made the promise that I would start by learning things that were either recorded in a studio or on video, with notated pickstrokes, with a realistic tempo, etc. - basically a foolproof formula that if I followed would reward me tenfold. Then, all I had to do was fumble around with the motions until they clicked and then I would match either the song BPM or the performer in the video after a few weeks or months of practice. The whole point is that it gives you the confidence that you can play just like your heroes if you do exactly what it is they do technique wise for the amount of times they do it.

Troy and co. have literally given a library of what - 2,000? - examples of musical sequences, licks, etc. with accompanying video. This is an enormously powerful template you have in front of you. I would pick something that attacks a core weakness that you are passionate about and do not quit practicing it except for the occasional break until you can match the performer. Keep the whole motions thing in the back of your mind. It’s meant to help conceptualize, it’s not meant for you to develop a neurosis over so that you try to control each movement. I can tell you from experience that trying to control aggressively control and create a movement will never get you there. It will riddle your technique with tension and overexertion and could even result in injury or a dislike of practice, both of which will cripple your goals.

I can’t stress this enough, you sound great and the motions looks great. Ditch the video recording and focus on making the motions smooth from an inner standpoint.

1 Like

Well thank you! I’m really not, at least not in the left hand, it took me so long to get any basic movement of my hand working at all, thousands of hours before I could even figure out how to stop getting stuck on the strings. If these motions always sounded this good, it wouldn’t be a problem. Having said that, in the past couple of days I have found a way to consistently trick myself into making the right movements, although I’m still a little baffled by the nature of them. I will upload what I mean, but I’ll just solidify the feeling, because for once, the feeling has actually been reasonably consistent.

I’ve been doing that for many hours a day for years, but your tactic of approaching it is something I’m only just starting to understand. Anyways, thanks for the kind words and your time, both of you. I know I appear to be quite neurotic and pretty much all of my peers would agree with you there on some level, but this is helping to clear up years of repetitive frustration.

1 Like

This is exactly how motor learning works. You do a thing, but you’re not sure what you just did, because you can’t recognize what it feels like enough to reproduce it consistently. The fact that you are at this stage is a good thing, and totally normal. This “tricking yourself” to recall the correct feel of the motions, as you put it — this is the core activity of practice. It is not about metronomes and repetition, it is about recalling the feeling of correctness.

FYI when you upload videos, please don’t narrate them. It makes it difficult to locate the playing examples. Play one or two examples, 15-30 seconds max, no talking. But definitely do include commentary in the text of the post, so it is easier to quote and respond to you. Also, try to play examples with specific fretting, tempo and as consistently clear pick attack as you can. This will give us the best sense of what is working and not working. Noodling clips where you’re not playing any phrase in particular are less valuable, because those clips tend to have quiet, tiny motions that speed up, slow down, and start and stop, and so on. It’s hard to see what you’re going for, and thus hard to give you better insight.

Again, what you’re doing here is fine, and you are on the right track.

1 Like

Regarding the last section of video, I believe you’re trying pick slanting but not rotating the forearm?
Pickslanting can only really work well with forearm rotation, so not directly perpendicular to the strings.
You did do some correct pick slanting rotation near the end. Try curling your free fingers a bit and gliding with the nails on the body, be less friction.

I might be misunderstanding what you mean, because neither part of this statement seems accurate.

1 Like

Troy goes over this in relation to elbow pickslanting.

A slanted pick needs to come away from the strings on upstroke, the joint that does this is the forearm.

The OP has a crosspicking technique, and at the end of the video states his fingers are hitting the guitar when pickslanting. That’s because he’s trying to move the pick in a straight line instead of a curved one.

Basically Suhrite. If you want to pick slant, curve your free fingers in, and rotate your wrist/forearm. This allows the free movement you’re looking for.

Rather than what you did in the video of slanting the pick and then trying to pick in a straight line, hence hitting the body.

I say this as gently and respectfully as possible: You are giving advice based on bad information.

Slanted picking paths can escape upward or downward, and can come from several picking mechanics including forearm rotation, wrist extension/flexion, wrist deviation, elbow, fingers, either individually or in combination. It is simply not the case that forearm rotation is required for pickslanting. Also, pickslanting motions in a straight line are perfectly fine.

I think you might have misunderstood what Troy said in the video. Maybe you are taking something he said in a specific context and interpreting it as a general rule?

This is all in relation to the op’s video. That’s the context. He’s trying downward pickslanting. He needs to rotate the forearm to get the free movement he’s looking for. Would you rather I use excruciatingly accurate language and detailed definitions giving him a full explanation on all the angles of movement of the hand and a full free course on all troys works?

Or just state very simple explanations that will get the results he’s looking for in relation to his video.

Before you reply having a go at my relaxed use of language why don’t you try helping him instead of arguing semantics.

Btw you’re pretty much doing it at 1 min op.
Minimal rotation, you look like you have it.

And induction, how do you pick a scale with pickslanting and no forearm rotation? Be cool to see.

I’m not having a go at you. I’m trying to avoid confusion and misunderstanding by people who read your posts and believe what you write. No excruciating detail is required. All it would take is adding ‘In this context…’ or something similar to the beginning of your statement.

I’ll point out that I’ve been respectful to you, and admitted up front that I may have misunderstood what you were saying.

Wrist deviation? Again, I must be misunderstanding the question because the answer seems pretty obvious. Is there more context here that I’m missing again?

Wrist deviation is the alternate picking guitar wanking movement, that only works for even numbered notes or economy picking. A 3nps scale would need forearm rotation to efficiently pick the next string. The two way pickslanting movement. Troy did a good video on this, “pick, pick, rotate” type movement.

If Suhrite wants to do a good pickslanting movement he’s going to have to rotate the forearm. The way he did it near the end of the video was wrist deviation, causing his hand to hit the guitar body. He could use wrist deviation and flexion to pick, but if the pick is slanted he’s going to have to rotate the forearm to change the pick slant at some point for speed.

At the 1 min mark the movement seems fine. So it is quite confusing as the two way pick slanting he’s doing is decent already.

I’m sure some pick with no rotation, I believe troy has a wrist deviation and extension picking technique with little rotation? But I know for sure using rotation will allow the freedom Suhrite is looking for in the position he shows near the end. Without hitting the body.

Thanks for clarifying. I understand what you mean now. Sorry for the derailment.

The problem is that OP has stated in previous threads that he hates the rotational movement and want to be able to use wrist deviation only. Specifically the 3 to 9 o clock movement. This is of course impossible for you to know if you haven’t followed all of OPs threads.

But I also think Induction is right in that rotation is not the only way of getting DWPS to happen. Wrist only should work just as fine even if it might have to incorporate both deviation and extension. And for one thing I think OP has put his head on the nail showing that maybe a true deviation movement isn’t really working. There have to be some kind of flexion and extension also.

At the same time I use rotation almost exclusively myself so it’s easy for me to say that it’s the best way and is gonna work perfectly for OP. But as OP seem to have tried a LOT of different setups and motions, this might not be true for him.

Yes, to clarify, forearm rotation is not necessary for crosspicking / two-way pickslanting motion. Our first observations and lessons on this included the rotational motion (“down, up, rotate”) but we’ve since observed players like Andy Wood who are basically wrist-only. Sorry for any confusion on this! See here for more detail: