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I think someone has posted a video of Ben's here before. I looked but couldn't find it.
Anyway, I found this one useful.
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02-19-2025 12:23 PM
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I think I posted something of his here before.
Clickbait titles aside, his videos are good and he's formidable.
(Not that I use a plectrum these days...)
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With all due respect to this guy, who clearly has very good picking technique, this advice is utter nonsense lol.
Any time a guitarist starts by giving you a "basic physics" lesson, you should immediately be sceptical lol. His basic physics lesson is simplistic and wrong in two ways:
1. The reason people struggle with picking is not that they're picking from the wrist and it requires "too much force". Pretty much anyone can pick quite fast on a single string with no issues. The problems occur when changing strings, for exactly the reasons Troy Grady identifies, namely the geometry of the guitar and the path of the pick. The idea that you solve picking by maximizing economy is the kind of 90s instructional video advice that Grady helped us move past.
2. It's far too simplistic to say that you change the rotation point of your hand, and thus reduce the moment arm, by changing where you touch the guitar. If you pick exclusively with side to side wrist motion, the only way that would be true is if your forearm starts moving too. As long as your forearm is anchored and stationary, the rotation point will *always* be your wrist. Now most people don't use pure side to side motion, but the point is that the diagnosis of the problem and solution to that problem are misguided.
What I think is actually happening is that by changing where you touch the guitar, you are reorienting your hand and thus engaging a different set of muscles, or in Grady parlance, using a different motion mechanic, which can indeed make picking a lot easier. Grady has worked with medical professionals to examine the physiology of the wrist and understand how these motion mechanics actually work, again moving us past the 90s instructional video level advice.
The grain of truth in what he's saying is that analysis on its own doesn't make you good at picking. But what analysis does is help you actually understand what the problem is that you're trying to overcome. Oz Noy or any other great player doesn't have to be consciously aware of the fine points of mechanics to play well, but understanding what they do to overcome them helps to come up with a plan of attack, whether that's modifying your mechanics, or modifying fretting hand patterns to maximize the mechanics you have.
End rant lol.
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""What is the MOST important picking hand concept?" "
try to hit the strings you want to hit.
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Alrighty!
Originally Posted by BreckerFan
You're right no doubt. But I have to say, even with Grady's advice (which from what i recall is something along the lines of 'engage in controlled random experimentation until you find a smooth, fast and easy picking motion') I never did really succeed in avoiding or excising from my playing the wrong technique (string hopping).
The issue was that, while I could spend a lot of time doing the controlled random experimentation, until I learned an efficient picking motion I was essentially cementing the wrong technique, if that makes sense. Now, while it is quite possible to do the wrong finger picking technique, I vouch for the fact that it's considerably easier to demonstrate the correct finger picking technique, whereas I didn't get anywhere with Grady's videos or advice. And with finger picking technique it literally is a case of starting slow and working up speed in a traditional way that according to Grady is quite different from the strategy he espoused (start fast). What this all means is that the beginner finger picker can be easily shown the correct way to finger pick and thus can start playing music right away applying what they know, whereas if someone string hops then until they learn how to stop that, they're still just doing the wrong thing.
Of course, finger picking still takes a really long time to develop...
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That's fair, I think part of the problem with Grady's stuff has been that while as an analysis it's excellent, what to do with it and how to teach it hasn't been worked out. But even without a pedagogy, it's helpful in just understanding what's actually going on with picking.
The problem with 90s instructional video advice is that without a clear understanding of the problem, the offered solution doesn't really help. Changing the contact point of your hand, when understood as a way to engage a different set of muscles and perhaps utilize a different escape motion, might be sound advice, but without a clear understanding of what challenge you're trying to overcome and how the solution overcomes it, it's bound to create confusion as well.
IMO the most straightforward use of Grady's stuff is to identify the mechanics you already have and then to adjust your lines and left hand to suit. A lot of the problems came for people when they learned about double escape, which sounds like an alternate picking cure all, and then tried to change their mechanics to it (I include myself in that group lol). I think with patience it's possible, but it's a harder path for sure. I eventually gave up, but the bullet, and went full Gambale style economy picking, which means using a lot of weird fingerings and left hand stretches.
Can't blame you for changing to finger picking tho. The existence of Matteo Mancuso by itself is a good argument haha.
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That's absolutely incorrect. The picking mechanics series provides exercises that you can do to prove the validity of the mechanics and learn how to implement them correctly. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
Test Drive Your Motions
You can read this page for free, but to see the video you either need to open a paid subscription or supply an email address; joining their email list gives you five free downloads, enough to get a feel for the material.
I have no affiliation with Grady other than being a satisfied customer. I subscribed to the Masters in Mechanics series for about 4 months and found it very helpful.
The other thing I'd mention to those who have not yet explored Cracking the Code is that Grady is not pushing a "one size fits all" approach. He shows lots of different mechanics via pro players that use them effectively. Different strokes for different folks. Pursue what works for YOU.
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Fair, I guess I haven't paid close enough attention to everything he's been doing! I'll have to check these out.
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I submitted several videos (made with a Magnet) to Cracking the Code and Troy Grady reviewed them. (Tommo did too.) Both sweet guys with great technique, very encouraging, but they didn't provide as much help for my picking as Ben Kerrigan's video (which cost me nothing!) did. To each his own.
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I'm not saying that Kerrigan is "wrong." He seems to have identified yet another interesting variable that may very well be helpful.
I've yet to try his premise on the guitar - it seems potentially useful, and if it works for me, great! If what works for him or Mark doesn't work for me, that doesn't make it bad or wrong. It is interesting to see all the different ways that different players develop effective solutions.
Interesting vid. Thanks for posting it, Mark.
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1 - Good rhythm
2 - Hearing it
3 - Knowing the fretboard so well you know where the best mechanical location of the notes you're hearing is
4 - physical stuff
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I assume you’re talking about order of priority here, in which case I’d probably agree. The mechanical stuff is useful only when you have the other stuff together. My guess is that Troy Grady or some such would argue that it would be a huge bummer to have all that stuff together and have it not work because you never got the mechanical stuff working. Originally Posted by vintagelove
They would probably also argue that, being small and wayyyy down on the ingrained muscle memory level, something like picking mechanics probably takes significantly longer to correct than it does to learn first the right way.
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This may be true in some cases but not in all, and perhaps not even in most. If we think of Django, we think, "Well, yeah, he only had two working fingers, so he had to work out a way to play with that limitation." True. Yet decades later, young people with all four fingers learn to play Gypsy jazz in the traditional way, which starts with rest stroke picking. You can't play that music (-at tempo with a good sound) unless you have that technique. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Charlie Christian played mostly downstrokes. (85% in Barney Kessel's estimation, and Barney saw Charlie play.) Many early jazz players played "mostly down." (Frank Vignola still does---I asked him!) A lot of early blues players were that way. If you play mainly downstrokes, you can't play some things really fast, but your lines have more punch than strict alternate picking allows. (Same for economy picking it is faster but produces a much more legato sound, which is great if that's what you want but not so great if it isn't.) If you've always played with alternate or economy picking, switching to "mostly down" could prove to be a great challenge even though it is conceptually simpler.
In bluegrass, you have some really fast players who use acoustic guitars and although there is less uniformity in picking approaches than one finds in gypsy jazz, there remains quite a bit of it.
Shred guitar requires a certain technique too, either in its legato or its 'pick every note' varieties.
One might argue that for many guitar styles, the technique you have (or lack) greatly influences what you choose to play. (Miles used to complain that many players needed to go to "Notes Anonymous" meetings because they did not know how NOT to play too many notes.)
Some players are remarkably versatile and can "do it all". (Steve Lukather? Lee Ritenour?) Most of my favorite players----Django, Wes, Charlie, Herb Ellis, Hendrix, Beck, Clapton, SRV, Johnny Winter, BB King---were not like that. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."
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The most important picking hand concept is that the picking hand does not use concepts to pick, it uses complex mechanics that surpass and elude anyone's capacity to grasp.
Fortunately, the hand is fully capable of mastering these indescribable mechanics without one's attempts to conceive them. It is important to realize that the hand has been doing complex things for which there was no explanation since forever, but more to the point, today the present understanding of the hand by the top people who study it still has major gaps in how it works and how some things it can do are done.
Hands can learn to do anything if they get feedback about how close they are at satisfying what you want to accomplish. This can't be done with concepts, that's the wrong language, an unintelligible confusion for the hands. The clear language of the hands is the conscious comparison between what you intended to do, against what actually resulted. It is like the game where one says, "cooler, warmer, hotter..." to the other seeking the place or object. As long as you really listen to what you play and consciously compare how close was the result to what you wanted, the hand, always "listening" for feedback, will "overhear" your assessment and adjust the complex mechanics themselves... but your assessment must be a conscious one to produce the feedback to have effect.
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I gave this a try the other night. The advice to pick from the part of the hand between the wrist and the base of the fingers just doesn't work for me. I can't do it without muting all of the strings and this position seems to make string-hopping impossible (for me, at least), which seems to make playing an arpeggiated style more difficult. It might work really well for scalar lines. I may experiment a bit more. Originally Posted by starjasmine
Maybe the technique that does work for me is just too ingrained: I rest the pinky side of my palm on the bridge, touch the pickguard with my pinky (which gives me an unchanging reference for the plane that the strings occupy), hold the pick between my thumb and index finger, and pick mostly from the wrist.
Earlier in this thread, someone said basically that moving the fulcrum just doesn't matter when the distance from wrist to pick vs middle-of-hand to pick is so short. I tend to agree. In fact, the longer lever when fulcruming from the wrist amplifies small movements of the wrist more than a shorter lever created by fulcruming from mid-palm, which means that the wrist moves very little to make the pick move more. So perhaps anchoring from the wrist is actually more efficient than anchoring from midway between the base of the fingers and the wrist.
I seem to recall that Dennis Sandole taught Martino and others to pick from the elbow while holding the wrist still. That's an even longer lever. While that approach certainly worked for Pat, I gave up on it a while ago. Maybe I'll retry with my current pick grip...
Anyway, interesting discussion, and thanks again for posting the original vid, Mark.
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I’ve really learned a lot from information provided by Tuck Andress.
https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...20+version.pdf
The above document is found on the Tuck and Patti site.
Tuck & Patti
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Yes, downstrokes. This man, although not a jazz guitarist made a career out of using only downstrokes. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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Yes, agreed. I don’t see Troy as advocating for any approach, just aiming to understand how things work. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
It helped me understand what I was doing!
So it’s no surprise he doesn’t have a way to teach it.
What you have is a number of already present solutions that all have inherent trade offs.
Double escape alternate is hard to learn although clearly the most versatile. OTOH do you get the acoustic projection and strong dynamics of the easily learned rest stroke? But then can rest stroke get you the evenness and pocket of true rhythm alternate? How many hours of you have to work on Economy/sweep picking’s natural tendency to rush compared to the mechanical challenges of alternate? Everything has its challenges, and there’s not a right way.
Otoh there are definitely wrong ways!
ideally you need to know what these trade offs are I guess. I do think alternate picking is the most poorly understood and taught. But alternate picking can be executed a number of ways. Sometimes I think it is more a moral admonishment than a technique per se haha.
When you teach stuff like you have to decide what you are going to teach and how and really get into the specifics.
I would say there are clear picking pedagogies out there, especially in the jazz world - but there’s also a lot of teaching that just demands you do certain patterns of pick-strokes without any reference to the physical nature of those strokes. Or those that teach purely based on ‘this is what my teacher taught me’.
Simply being told ‘Charlie christian mostly used downstrokes’ or ‘Mike Stern alternate picks everything’ or ‘Django started each new string with a downstroke’ is simply not that helpful. Im grateful to Troy for making that clear.
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forgive me for posting my own vid on the subject, but I think it’s relevant. Probably most of you have seen this.
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