What's your crosspicking speed?

Playing Technique
#1

Hey guys!

So I’ve never been much of a crosspicker, but I’ve had a fair bit of success with the Gambale/Bruno 2WPS sweeping thing, as well as the EJ DWPS approach for rock/blues pentatonic work.

Recently though, I’m really getting into it! I’m finding a blend of rotation with a bit of “wrist assist” is working, with a combination of elbow and fingers for string tracking.

I can manage 16ths at 140-160 on scalar-ish lines interspersed with lots of 1nps ideas, and I can do about 120-140 on full six-string arpeggios (after about a week of practise, an hour or so a day).

Is that way slow? Decent? Where’s your crosspicking at? I’d love to know.

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#2

Interesting technique of using elbow and fingers for string tracking. Would love to see a video of it.

I just setup my camera and did a test drive a few minutes ago… to make sure I was still actually escaping both strings… and it was dark and blurry, but I could still escape both sides at >200bpm. I can hopefully confirm this tomorrow when I get a powerfull lamp setup. Also, I’m using an Iphone 4… so that might be making this tougher. Also, I am just barely above the strings… so my form has little margin for errors. But I am not tracking at all… and as we are all finding out… tracking is the hard part.

The fastest exclusive one-note-per-string that is in my comfort zone is now 160 bpm ( I did that on Thursday) That is no swiping and no errors for a good 15 seconds. As Troy said… there is no reason why we can’t get that up to 200 bpm.

I think I can pick almost anything at 160, including single string hops (not back-to-back string-hops) But I still can’t do 2 string outside alternation (for more than 3 strokes at anything above 135 bpm. So until I figure out how to do that… my dream is out of reach.

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#3

I don’t even know where to begin with crosspicking! I’m interested in seeing videos in his thread though. Would love to see a quick vid of you cross picking @NickJennison before you go to NAMM.

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#4

I think I might have phrased that in a slightly misleading way - I’m using elbow tracking when I’m traversing more than two strings (either skips, or arpeggio-type lines that cross multiple string), fingers when I’m moving between two adjacent strings.

200bpm is amazing! I’ll have to keep working hard at it, but it’s good to know it’s possible! As a wise man once said to me: “anything that’s do-able is doable by you”…

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#5

Oh yah, I think what your saying is what Troy does as well.

Well, what allows me to go really fast… also keeps me from being able to do two-string alternating from the outside. I can’t use my fingers for ‘reaching over’ between the two strings… since they are already being used for my picking… its a trade-off…and its driving me nuts. I’ts all still a work in progress… so maybe I can overcome it.

After viewing my video… I notice I am not making a typical crosspicking ‘U’-shape… its more of an arc. And man… its just barely clearing the string… by maybe a mm. I’ll post videos tomorrow.

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