Troy Grady - Two way pick slanting (Cracking the Code)

[JakeAcci]

So, Jake, have you gotten answers to your questions from the TG subscription? What is your assessment now? Worth doing?

#1. Yes!

#3. It depends on what your exact problems are. I think that if you can play fast figures on a single string, picking every note, but have trouble changing strings efficiently, and want to remedy this and get much faster, it's a definite buy. If most of your technique is together but there are certain picking moves or figures that always screw you up and you don't know why, it's a definite buy.

Edited to add: there's a lot of material in the paid subscription and it's helpful to know where to start to get the specific help you want. For me, it was the "antigravity" section that covered all my questions in the OP, but I had to email them to figure that out. If I hadn't, I might have spent a while watching other stuff that wasn't as relevant.

Also, know that I more or less got the answers to my questions I'm not sure if I will keep up with the $20/month subscription. I may just sign up again if there are specific/new videos I want to check out, because I could definitely see myself just not watching the stuff again for a while. He's very thorough and really lays it all out for you.

[dingusmingus]

Whoah, this whole discussion and the Troy Grady videos are very, very interesting. I've been unhappy with my picking for a while, and this does indeed seem to be helping. I may also pay for a month of the full videos, though I've gotten an awful lot of useful info from the huge amount of free stuff.

I think most jazz players will be most interested in "two-way pick slanting" as Jake indicates (as opposed to pure downward or upward pick slanting.)

I normally use economy picking. I've found (as someone mentioned earlier in the thread), that lends itself to downward slanting with playing ascending figures (higher pitch, not toward the ceiling), and upward slanting playing descending. It's working pretty well for me so far. (I realize Jake and others are interested in strict alternate for aesthetic reasons--just pointing out what works for me so far.)

[dingusmingus]

Yeah even with economy there's going to be a lot of two way slanting (unless if your lines never change direction, hah) so there are going to be slant rotations within a line. You could surely create an arsenal of vocabulary that avoids the problem, but it might not suit your aesthetic

Yeah, like you, I'm not interested in creating an arsenal of vocabulary. So, there will definitely be some change of "slanting direction." I was just saying I noticed that if you're doing economy picking, these slanting direction changes correspond with changes in the melodic line (and the left hand). So, picking tracks melodic contour and fingering.

Again, thanks for bringing this up!

[Shadow of the Sun]

If you'd like to sidestep all the issues of pickslanting, give Troy's latest video a watch, about crosspicking, which is a way of allowing strict alternate picking without having to worry about pickslanting at all.

He mentions that the movements used in crosspicking don't work at the highest of tempos, at which point you have to go back to pickslanting, but if you don't want to play at the massively high speeds as a matter of course, it might be worth looking at.

[JakeAcci]

If you'd like to sidestep all the issues of pickslanting, give Troy's latest video a watch, about crosspicking, which is a way of allowing strict alternate picking without having to worry about pickslanting at all.

He mentions that the movements used in crosspicking don't work at the highest of tempos, at which point you have to go back to pickslanting, but if you don't want to play at the massively high speeds as a matter of course, it might be worth looking at.

Great stuff! I have a hunch maybe "crosspicking" has been my default motion all these years. For me, a pretty low tempo ceiling relative to uptempo bebop stuff.

[MatsP]

Benson is entirely downward, just like Django. his hand positioning is different from Django, but the basic mechanics are pretty similar

Benson uses a lot of slurs and position shifting, building off of Django and Wes.

only a few guys use strict alternate picking where they pick virtually every note -- Pat Martino and Al DiMeola immediately come to mind. DiMeola uses a lot of scalar playing, and Martino has a lot of favorite licks.

Troy Grady recently had an interview with Jimmy Bruno, which was both enlightening and amusing. Troy clearly hadn't had a lot of experience talking with jazz guys, and he assumed that Bruno would be familiar with a lot of the terminology and patterns associated with shred guitar. Bruno said that he liked his approach (two-way pick slanting where everything is "swept") because he didn't know what he was going to play before he played it, so that approach kept it simple.

for jazz, i think you either have to use that approach (i know Miles Okazaki uses the same technique) or something like Benson where you use a lot of slurs to make everything work.

or both... IMO, slurs are pretty essential to sounding "correct" when playing jazz.

Interesting points. I myself bought Bruno's book and DVD "The Art of Picking" some time ago, and I got a fair hang of his "elbow technique". It's suitable for jazz, but perhaps not so much for rock, etc. I recently checked out Troy's interpretation of Malmsteen's right hand technique, and he nails it pretty well. This "downward pick slanting" has its strenghts, one of them is that you can get a frightening alternate picking speed with great clarity if you do it the right way, and you have easy access to muting. One not so good thing is that you are more or less forced to leave every string on an upstroke, since it's rather hard to play an upstroke on a lower string coming from a higher string when the pick is slanted like that.

EDIT: The stuff about leaving the string on an upstroke concerns going from higher to lower string. When going from lower to higher and you leave on a downstroke you can just sweep to the higher string, of course, a bit like Bruno is doing it.

[jzucker]

i bought the eric johnson masterclass. I don't see any point trying to change the angle upward and downward while you're alternating. In general, I love the lines he presents but personally, 90% of each lesson is just wasted time. The stories and anecdotes etc., could be cut down to a fraction if he just presented the material. I still highly recommend because $70 for the eric johnson class - for example - is dirt cheap compared to lessons and you can get a lot out of this if you put your mind to it.

I just wish he had a composite of just the playing examples of all 30+ lessons. I figure he could get it down to something like 60 minutes total.

I just skipped over the pick slanting stuff.

[christianm77]

i bought the eric johnson masterclass. I don't see any point trying to change the angle upward and downward while you're alternating. In general, I love the lines he presents but personally, 90% of each lesson is just wasted time. The stories and anecdotes etc., could be cut down to a fraction if he just presented the material. I still highly recommend because $70 for the eric johnson class - for example - is dirt cheap compared to lessons and you can get a lot out of this if you put your mind to it.

I just wish he had a composite of just the playing examples of all 30+ lessons. I figure he could get it down to something like 60 minutes total.

I just skipped over the pick slanting stuff.

Well, it's not like you need it for your own playing really is it? You probably do the stuff he talks about unconsciously anyway.

I like all the story telling personally.... But that's me :-)

[ghoststrat]

You probably do the stuff he talks about unconsciously anyway.

This is what I realized about my own playing. There were days where I couldn't understand why I was able to 'flow', but other days I couldn't play anything. It turns out, I was unconsciously changing the angle as I traversed the strings on my 'good' days. Another thing I noticed is that when I play things that skip two or more strings, it's a completely different motion.

[MatsP]

Well, it's not like you need it for your own playing really is it? You probably do the stuff he talks about unconsciously anyway.

I like all the story telling personally.... But that's me :-)

Many players do the "downward pick slanting" dance unconsciously, yes. Although when using Bruno's technique, it's very counter-productive to use downwards pick slanting when going from higher to lower strings for logical reasons. Personally I find Yngwie's technique interesting, but also somewhat limiting. By the way, I'm sure Yngwie hasn't given much thought to what he's doing, since he's self taught. He's just using what feels the most natural way to him. Anyway, Bruno's technique is more open-ended.

[MatsP]

This is what I realized about my own playing. There were days where I couldn't understand why I was able to 'flow', but other days I couldn't play anything. It turns out, I was unconsciously changing the angle as I traversed the strings on my 'good' days. Another thing I noticed is that when I play things that skip two or more strings, it's a completely different motion.

I agree on all points. And Troy Grady's work, even if he's no super idol of mine, seems to be to scrutinize *why* those fast guitarists have "the flow". In Yngwie's case he's pretty much nailed it.

[MatsP]

i bought the eric johnson masterclass. I don't see any point trying to change the angle upward and downward while you're alternating. In general, I love the lines he presents but personally, 90% of each lesson is just wasted time. The stories and anecdotes etc., could be cut down to a fraction if he just presented the material. I still highly recommend because $70 for the eric johnson class - for example - is dirt cheap compared to lessons and you can get a lot out of this if you put your mind to it.

I just wish he had a composite of just the playing examples of all 30+ lessons. I figure he could get it down to something like 60 minutes total.

I just skipped over the pick slanting stuff.

It's interesting to explore other peoples techniques alright, in order to find possible solutions to one's own hurdles, or just in order to get new musical ideas.

The point with slanting the pick downwards, as I see it, is to improve the rotational movement of the wrist (completely different from Bruno's approach) while still keeping the hand close to the guitar for possible damping. It becomes a sort of "in and out" movement in relation to the string. But then again, you'll have to be careful to leave each string on an upstroke if you're going to a lower string, which forces you to plan your strokes. I have hitherto been very careful about keeping my pick "unslanted", since it allows you to leave the strings on any stroke, and it's required in order to use Bruno's technique (which is more or less economy picking with the main movement from the forearm).

[christianm77]

Many players do the "downward pick slanting" dance unconsciously, yes. Although when using Bruno's technique, it's very counter-productive to use downwards pick slanting when going from higher to lower strings for logical reasons. Personally I find Yngwie's technique interesting, but also somewhat limiting. By the way, I'm sure Yngwie hasn't given much thought to what he's doing, since he's self taught. He's just using what feels the most natural way to him. Anyway, Bruno's technique is more open-ended.

Presumably Bruno tilts both ways (hmmm I'll rephrase that...)

[MatsP]

Presumably Bruno tilts both ways (hmmm I'll rephrase that...)

Yes, that's correct, since he "sweep" (although he doesn't like that word) picks to the next string due to his economy picking style.

In fact, there isn't a lot of slanting necessary, since the main movement is from the forearm, and the relaxed hand sort of "glides" over the strings.

[christianm77]

Yes, I'm wondering if a conscious micromanagement of pick angle is really necessary for economy styles. I was a pretty decent economy guy at one point. I never worried about it, but I held the pick quite lightly.

[MatsP]

Yes, I'm wondering if a conscious micromanagement of pick angle is really necessary for economy styles. I was a pretty decent economy guy at one point. I never worried about it, but I held the pick quite lightly.

No, it shouldn't require any thinking really. The important thing is to be relaxed in hand and wrist, and let it "flow with the forearm" in a way. That is if you use Bruno's technique, of course.

[jzucker]

Well, it's not like you need it for your own playing really is it? You probably do the stuff he talks about unconsciously anyway.

I like all the story telling personally.... But that's me :-)

The stories are fine...They just don't have much to do with the actual methodology IMO...I would like the stories better if the actual guitar instructional stuff was composited into it's own video. As I said, I suspect a 60 minute video would do the trick. I'm tempted to do it myself in premiere. The other criticism I have is that for as long-winded as he is in his story-telling and explanations, he sometimes goes over the musical examples way too fast. I have resorted to loading the videos into "transcribe" in order to slow down the musical examples. I find that pretty ironic that in a 20 minute video with 1 minute of musical example, I have to slow the video down to get the actual notes...

But again, I highly recommend the master series video if you are interested in taking your playing to another level. Despite my criticisms, the material contains at least 1 gem in every video. And for me, $70 for 30 gems is great deal...

[ghoststrat]

Yes, I'm wondering if a conscious micromanagement of pick angle is really necessary for economy styles. I was a pretty decent economy guy at one point. I never worried about it, but I held the pick quite lightly.

Personally, I don't think it is, either, but I've noticed that players who mostly economy pick they change angles depending on the direction they're traveling. In fact, it's a necessity, otherwise the pick gets hung up. It's very obvious in FG's playing. I used to think how much it looked like he was 'brushing' notes.

[jzucker]

Frank is not alternating between down and up-slanting when he plays his swept pentatonic patterns. The transition between up and down sweeping happens every 2 notes. There's no way you could play a pattern like that with 16 notes equal to 160 and above with alternating up and down slanting. The best approach is to have the pick flat so you are not cheating one way or the other or it will make rapid transitions impossible.

It's different for the heavy metal players who tend to sweep an entire arpeggio from low to high and back to low. You can easily employ pick slanting for that but for jazz players, the string change directions happen too often.

i don't know if that's what I have, your link is bad. I have the eric johnson masterclass. And yes, he has fast and slow examples in the zip files but they are not exactly the same as what is on the longer video. For example, the classic fives short example doesn't have the transition from descending to ascending which is on the longer video and on the longer video he goes through the transition too fast so I had to slow it down in transcribe...

[christianm77]

The stories are fine...They just don't have much to do with the actual methodology IMO...I would like the stories better if the actual guitar instructional stuff was composited into it's own video. As I said, I suspect a 60 minute video would do the trick. I'm tempted to do it myself in premiere. The other criticism I have is that for as long-winded as he is in his story-telling and explanations, he sometimes goes over the musical examples way too fast. I have resorted to loading the videos into "transcribe" in order to slow down the musical examples. I find that pretty ironic that in a 20 minute video with 1 minute of musical example, I have to slow the video down to get the actual notes...

But again, I highly recommend the master series video if you are interested in taking your playing to another level. Despite my criticisms, the material contains at least 1 gem in every video. And for me, $70 for 30 gems is great deal...

Yeah I agree, some of the non-technique related interviews are very interesting as well.

[ghoststrat]

Frank is not alternating between down and up-slanting when he plays his swept pentatonic patterns. The transition between up and down sweeping happens every 2 notes. There's no way you could play a pattern like that with 16 notes equal to 160 and above with alternating up and down slanting. The best approach is to have the pick flat so you are not cheating one way or the other or it will make rapid transitions impossible.

It's different for the heavy metal players who tend to sweep an entire arpeggio from low to high and back to low. You can easily employ pick slanting for that but for jazz players, the string change directions happen too often.

This is one I have overlooked. Do you have a vid of FG doing this so I can add it to my perspective?

[jzucker]

This is one I have overlooked. Do you have a vid of FG doing this so I can add it to my perspective?

no, it's from an old lesson on cassette but he emphatically stated not to tilt the pick up and down while you're playing the exercises.

[ghoststrat]

no, it's from an old lesson on cassette but he emphatically stated not to tilt the pick up and down while you're playing the exercises.

I'm not challenging you, just sharing some data.

I know this isn't exactly what you were talking about, but it's one of several places I've seen F's hand do the slanting:

Also, having listened to a lot of interviews, watched tons of videos, and been through everything of Troy Grady's that I can find/afford, there are a lot of times that the player thinks they're doing one thing, but the micro-view shows something different.

That being said, until I see differently, I believe what you're saying about FG playing those passages and not adjusting his pick angle even a little bit.

[christianm77]

Is it not possible that you could try and keep the pick straight, but slant it slightly anyway, unconciously?

Playing around with sweeping today I notice that it's good to not let the pick go over too far. Also the shape of the pick can help with the sweep if you are picking edge on to some extent.

[jzucker]

how can you know if he's slanting since you can't see the pick?

And Christianm77, there's no way you can play pentatonic pattern sweeps at 16th notes @160bmp with 2 and 3 note per string patterns alternating so rapidly doing up and down directions every 2 or 3 notes with slanting. It's just not physically possible and would be so much wasted movement that you would never be able to play fast. I still think you guys are confusing the idea of playing ascending from low to high string and then descending from high to low string with changing direction continually all over the place. As I said before, if you're winding your way through a pattern where all the sweeps are ascending it's easy to tilt that way and then tilt the other way when you start descending but if you're truly improvising or playing a pattern that changes direction continuously it's impossible to uptilt and downtilt. You'd waste too much motion.

There may be some slight angle changes but the changes are definitely not +45 and -45.

I'm not challenging you, just sharing some data.

I know this isn't exactly what you were talking about, but it's one of several places I've seen F's hand do the slanting:

Also, having listened to a lot of interviews, watched tons of videos, and been through everything of Troy Grady's that I can find/afford, there are a lot of times that the player thinks they're doing one thing, but the micro-view shows something different.

That being said, until I see differently, I believe what you're saying about FG playing those passages and not adjusting his pick angle even a little bit.