Anyone not use rest strokes?

[rpjazzguitar]

I like the sound of Gypsy jazz guitar, so I'm interested in the picking approach. I like what I'll call the snappiness of the sound. It's a difference in the springiness of the stroke, if I can call it that, or at least that's as far as I've gotten in understanding it.

But, after all this time, going to "start on a downstroke when you switch to the next thicker string" feels just about impossible after years of alternate and sweep -- mixed up.

If I were starting all over, I think I'd focus on sweep picking. It makes playing written out lines easier and it gets a good sound. I thought of Chuck Wayne's sound as floaty, but Jimmy Bruno seems to get whatever sound he wants with the technique. I guess if you want full jackhammmer, you'd be more likely to be happy with alternate. Maybe.

[timmer]

I do not use rest strokes and, after skimming this thread, I doubt that will change. It seems very complicated and I am still not sure what it is supposed to achieve.

Funny, I embraced downward pick slant style because I found it less complicated than trying to master pure alternate or 2-way economy picking. Alternate, it's tiring and error-prone changing strings with the "sewing machine" hopping motion. Or maybe the arcing cross-picking motion. 2-way economy, it seems like you have to dynamically change the pick slant constantly to suit the line.

With this style, your pick orientation is rock steady, and most of the string changes involve simple linear motions. All string changes off of up strokes are easy. Half of the changes off down strokes are easy (downward sweep/economy pick). That last one, as Christian says, is a bear (upward string change off a down stroke). Most players develop a special (albeit perhaps string hoppy) motion for that one. Workarounds, heh.

Mind you, I'm not actually resting on the next string for every down stroke. But it often happens naturally anyway. Not only does it give you more of a connection feel to the string, but it's an efficiency aid. The elasticity of that next string helps your pick motion to slow down and reverse direction. It just always felt so relaxed and natural to me.

[James W]

I remember hearing about 'two way pick slanting'. Isn't that 'double escape' like Molly?

Not quite. Two-way pick-slanting is changing the slant at the necessary point to get over a string, whereas double-escape escapes both sides on each stroke anyway (at least in theory) and as far as I can tell features no pick slanting.

[Litterick]

Funny, I embraced downward pick slant style because I found it less complicated than trying to master pure alternate or 2-way economy picking. Alternate, it's tiring and error-prone changing strings with the "sewing machine" hopping motion. Or maybe the arcing cross-picking motion. 2-way economy, it seems like you have to dynamically change the pick slant constantly to suit the line.

With this style, your pick orientation is rock steady, and most of the string changes involve simple linear motions. All string changes off of up strokes are easy. Half of the changes off down strokes are easy (downward sweep/economy pick). That last one, as Christian says, is a bear (upward string change off a down stroke). Most players develop a special (albeit perhaps string hoppy) motion for that one. Workarounds, heh.

Mind you, I'm not actually resting on the next string for every down stroke. But it often happens naturally anyway. Not only does it give you more of a connection feel to the string, but it's an efficiency aid. The elasticity of that next string helps your pick motion to slow down and reverse direction. It just always felt so relaxed and natural to me.

Different strokes for different folks.

[Christian Miller]

I remember hearing about 'two way pick slanting'. Isn't that 'double escape' like Molly?

I think he really is just trying to help people, but it's a difficult thing to codify and it gets pretty messy pretty fast. Just look at what folks go thru to try and describe pick angles and motions: Paul's baseball diamond or Troys clock. I think it's clear to them what they're saying but often times it takes a lot of effort me to get it. And those devices don't seem to touch on the other variables like arm and wrist positions, neck angles and so on.

If I had to teach a beginner how to pick a string I'd be completely useless.

I think this little quote from one of his posts in that forum link explains what he's up to pretty well:

...the problem is when there is no particular “way that works for you” or is “natural for you”. I spent six years not knowing what is natural. Then another ten thinking the one way I had discovered was the only way...

I got lucky I guess. I didn't go thru anything like that. 16 years in I was playing better than I am now in terms of technique.

otoh rest strokes work really well with beginners because they feel very secure and comfortable and you don’t have to worry about whacking the next string by accident. So I often find myself teaching it to kids for the same reason as I teach finger rest strokes.

[Christian Miller]

Funny, I embraced downward pick slant style because I found it less complicated than trying to master pure alternate or 2-way economy picking. Alternate, it's tiring and error-prone changing strings with the "sewing machine" hopping motion. Or maybe the arcing cross-picking motion. 2-way economy, it seems like you have to dynamically change the pick slant constantly to suit the line.

With this style, your pick orientation is rock steady, and most of the string changes involve simple linear motions. All string changes off of up strokes are easy. Half of the changes off down strokes are easy (downward sweep/economy pick). That last one, as Christian says, is a bear (upward string change off a down stroke). Most players develop a special (albeit perhaps string hoppy) motion for that one. Workarounds, heh.

Mind you, I'm not actually resting on the next string for every down stroke. But it often happens naturally anyway. Not only does it give you more of a connection feel to the string, but it's an efficiency aid. The elasticity of that next string helps your pick motion to slow down and reverse direction. It just always felt so relaxed and natural to me.

I actually started off with economy (self taught) and relearned as rest stroke guy later.

I think a big determining factor is not when you go up and down but actually how you hold your pick, the angle with which you make your strokes. have your wrist and whether not you anchor on the bridge or guitar. The pick movements that are most logical to make come from this imo, but we teach as if it’s the other way round.

There are multiple ways to make it work, but I’m glad I know at least one way which seems to always work (with trade offs like all techniques)

[bediles]

Not quite. Two-way pick-slanting is changing the slant at the necessary point to get over a string, whereas double-escape escapes both sides on each stroke anyway (at least in theory) and as far as I can tell features no pick slanting.

The elbow pickers usually change the slant but the wrist pickers just move their wrist on a different axis for their 'non natural' escape, no change to the slant.

[bediles]

The funny thing is that the only escape/secondary motion left out of the CtC observational study is the downstroke escape for primarily rest stroke upward escape players. I guess it doesn't pop up in the shred guys too much or at all. Or is just hard to quantify for some reason. Form change (change in supination)? finger motion? wrist/forearm combo motion? All of the above?

It's been said in this thread in other ways but not having a downstroke escape at 270+ 8th notes is probably not that big of a deal. Slow than that you can prob get by with semi efficient cross picking when you need it maybe not with Grant Green levels of string hopping though.

[ccroft]

otoh rest strokes work really well with beginners because they feel very secure and comfortable and you don’t have to worry about whacking the next string by accident. So I often find myself teaching it to kids for the same reason as I teach finger rest strokes.

Makes sense. I'll remember that if I ever teach a beginner.

My last student was in '84 or so. Big-hair teenager somewhere out in Queens. He told me he wanted to play like the guy from Whitesnake. I had no idea what that meant so he played me some. Can't remember what it was like. I asked the kid if he realized how much work that guy put into being able to play like that. He asked me if I could just show him a few tricks. I told him he was going to have to work hard. He never did. I think I saw him 2 more times before I gave up on teaching. He had an impressive pointy big-hair 80's guitar though.

[Litterick]

My advice would be - practice the down rest strokes every day with absolute mindfulness, maybe on an open chord, and graduate to playing everything with downstrokes for a while. The upstroke can then be learned as an extension of the natural arm recovery.

Your video made a lot more sense than the written explanations. I practised the rest stroke and found it quite useful.

[Christian Miller]

Your video made a lot more sense than the written explanations. I practised the rest stroke and found it quite useful.

great! Yes discussing it in text probably makes it seem more complicated than it is.

[timmer]

There are multiple ways to make it work, but I’m glad I know at least one way which seems to always work (with trade offs like all techniques)

Yep, that's a point that TG also makes. The notion that there is one all powerful technique to "pick anything" is a fool's errand.

[James W]

Yep, that's a point that TG also makes. The notion that there is one all powerful technique to "pick anything" is a fool's errand.

Quite. I guess TG is just being a bit click-baity with these videos ...

[Christian Miller]

I forgot it was Soikkeli in that Choro video. My mate/the bass player in my quartet did a gig with him the other week, said the tempos were entirely ridiculous.

Need to get back on the Choro train at some point - more fab technical practice that’s also cool music

[dasein]

I think we have enough evidence now that you can acquire plenty of speed and proficiency with a number of different picking styles (up escape, down escape, double escape, with the wrist, with the elbow, with the fingers, reststrokes vs not, etc).

What I think any player has to do, besides find the right technique that fits their particular body, is think about what kind of articulation they want.

Take two contemporaries, Benson and Martino. The former was mostly upward escape with lots of reststrokes, the latter was a consummate double escape player. Their articulation was very different -- Benson always felt like he was going for an eighth note line similar to Horace Silver or Wynton Kelly, swinging and mostly straight with a touch of R&B. Martino had a much more machine gun-attack. I prefer the former over the latter, but that's a personal preference, and there's no right or wrong answer.

I had a couple teachers over the years who tried to get me to do strict alternate picking, locked into the meter (downstroke on downbeats, upstrokes on upbeats). But I could never get it that comfortable, and I'm honestly glad I didn't. I find that way of thinking tends to lock you into eighth notes. The players that I want to sound like use a lot more triplets, accents in unexpected places, ghost notes, slurring, and lots of other stuff that doesn't neatly fit into an up-down grid.

In fact, a great experiment might be to try playing with all downstrokes for a bit. You can't play very fast without using legato, and I wouldn't recommend playing like that outside of the practice room. But it gives you a very good feel for how to place downstrokes anywhere in a line, which makes syncopation and accents much easier.

[pauln]

...how to place downstrokes anywhere in a line, which makes syncopation and accents much easier.

The big difference in picking techniques to me is whether they differentiate up vs down strokes with respect to what they may be used to do. For me, I would never attempt a picking technique in which placement of up or down strokes in a line were needed in order to do particular things like make the notes louder, more intense, become accents, be syncopated, be strong beats, etc.

I don't see how trying to do such prepared placement makes anything easier. With free strokes, all these things may just be executed by the stroke, independent of whether up or down; never having to set up or prepare stroke polarity to do any of these things.

My theory is that people want to "float" their picking hand (why is that?) which results in actually not floating because they have to hold their hand against gravitation. This means the attempt to feel an even level of effort for up and down pick strokes results in uneven pick strokes - the down picks are firmer. Attempting to counter that to even things out results in the up stroke needing to be firmer which may tend to feel peculiar even if the results were nice even tones. So they live with firmer down strokes and worry about placement of stroke polarity when approaching the execution of various dynamics and rhythms.

Touching the guitar with the picking hand fingers is considered the opposite of floating, but it actually is much closer to the objective of the floaters. The contact with the guitar acts as a suspension against gravity and more truly allows the hand to float. With the hand suspended the up and down strokes can feel even and sound even. Combined with free strokes, this allows any series of strokes to express any series of dynamics and rhythms - loudness, intensity, accents, syncopation, beat strength, etc. This replaces producing dynamics and rhythms as a pick stroke polarity preparation problem with a more natural process that is independent of polarity, more directly executed, more like how you would sing it.

Please understand I am describing my thoughts and opinions; all challenges happily entertained.

[rpjazzguitar]

Most people hold a pencil in what is called the Dynamic Tripod.

But, some people can't do that, and their pencil grips involve more fingers or a different configuration.

Apparently, this is due to differences in the way people's hands are ennervated. It's pure physiology. You can't teach some folks to use the Dynamic Tripod grip -- it will always feel uncomfortable.

You can have a beautiful handwriting either way.

When I think about this, I'm left with the question, why expect all guitarists to be able to pick any which way? It is possible that a particular individual will never be comfortable, or capable, of playing somebody else's preferred way.

[Christian Miller]

I think we have enough evidence now that you can acquire plenty of speed and proficiency with a number of different picking styles (up escape, down escape, double escape, with the wrist, with the elbow, with the fingers, reststrokes vs not, etc).

What I think any player has to do, besides find the right technique that fits their particular body, is think about what kind of articulation they want.

Take two contemporaries, Benson and Martino. The former was mostly upward escape with lots of reststrokes, the latter was a consummate double escape player. Their articulation was very different -- Benson always felt like he was going for an eighth note line similar to Horace Silver or Wynton Kelly, swinging and mostly straight with a touch of R&B. Martino had a much more machine gun-attack. I prefer the former over the latter, but that's a personal preference, and there's no right or wrong answer.

I had a couple teachers over the years who tried to get me to do strict alternate picking, locked into the meter (downstroke on downbeats, upstrokes on upbeats). But I could never get it that comfortable, and I'm honestly glad I didn't. I find that way of thinking tends to lock you into eighth notes. The players that I want to sound like use a lot more triplets, accents in unexpected places, ghost notes, slurring, and lots of other stuff that doesn't neatly fit into an up-down grid.

In fact, a great experiment might be to try playing with all downstrokes for a bit. You can't play very fast without using legato, and I wouldn't recommend playing like that outside of the practice room. But it gives you a very good feel for how to place downstrokes anywhere in a line, which makes syncopation and accents much easier.

I found that I could go quite a bit faster with all downstrokes than I would have thought. IIRC Mike Moreno plays downstrokes only for medium tempo 8th note lines. The Tristano school (Billy Bauer) was quite known for insisting guitarists practice this. Maybe that’s why Satch ended up with his legato chops haha

[Christian Miller]

Most people hold a pencil in what is called the Dynamic Tripod.

But, some people can't do that, and they're pencil grips involve more fingers or a different configuration.

Apparently, this is due to differences in the way people's hands are ennervated. It's pure physiology. You can't teach some folks to use the Dynamic Tripod grip -- it will always feel uncomfortable.

You can have a beautiful handwriting either way.

When I think about this, I'm left with the question, why expect all guitarists to be able to pick any which way? It is possible that a particular individual will never be comfortable, or capable, of playing somebody else's preferred way.

that is true, but it’s good to know things you can teach that work for basically everyone. I believe left hand classical posture is one. It’s not the only way to do it, and it’s not the way a lot of my favourite players do it, but it works for everyone including those with small hands, such as children.

I believe rest stroke to be analogous for the right hand.

The number of technically highly capable players who have come out of this school show that (as with Benson picking) and this is a technique that exists independently in other cultures (such as Oud technique and Tres Cubano.) So it’s not a panacea, but it works.

I’m of the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it school. But it’s important to have a pedagogy for technique and an understanding of how it works imo. It doesn’t have to be that one - there can be different schools. But this is one thing that works.

We wouldn’t expect someone to play demanding classical piano pieces without careful instruction in technique. Or at least a teacher who knows when to correct something, and when to let it alone. I don’t see why jazz should be different.

[rpjazzguitar]

If Gypsy Jazz picking always uses a downstroke when switching to a thicker string, doesn't that mean that they could do it all in downstrokes?

That is, if you can execute a switch from a downstroke on one string to a downstroke on a thicker string -- without dragging the tempo, couldn't you just do all downstrokes?

What am I missing?

[Christian Miller]

If Gypsy Jazz picking always uses a downstroke when switching to a thicker string, doesn't that mean that they could do it all in downstrokes?

That is, if you can execute a switch from a downstroke on one string to a downstroke on a thicker string -- without dragging the tempo, couldn't you just do all downstrokes?

What am I missing?

Yes you could. In fact I think that’s a useful exercise for developing this technique.

but there’s a couple of things. Firstly, you sweep/rake downstrokes when ascending which means you can cross strings ascending really fast.

The second is on a single string you combine with upstrokes - which are to considered a necessary evil - and you can play ascending very fast. You can play basically anything ascending very fast.

Descending is a different beast. You want to alternate pick as much as possible which means if you start on a downstroke you want even numbers of notes across strings. If you listen to Django or those that followed him, and Benson for that matter, you’ll notice the descending runs tend to be even numbers of notes per string - often pentatonics, m6 pents or chromatic runs. You can massage things a bit by using pull offs too.

Weirdly string skips aren’t that bad

The techniques works really well with bop/added note scales as well.

[rpjazzguitar]

Yes you could. In fact I think that’s a useful exercise for developing this technique.

but there’s a couple of things. Firstly, you sweep/rake downstrokes when ascending which means you can cross strings ascending really fast.

The second is on a single string you combine with upstrokes - which are to considered a necessary evil - and you can play ascending very fast. You can play basically anything ascending very fast.

Descending is a different beast. You want to alternate pick as much as possible which means if you start on a downstroke you want even numbers of notes across strings. If you listen to Django or those that followed him, and Benson for that matter, you’ll notice the descending runs tend to be even numbers of notes per string - often pentatonics, m6 pents or chromatic runs. You can massage things a bit by using pull offs too.

Weirdly string skips aren’t that bad

The techniques works really well with bop/added note scales as well.

I've posted before about refingering the left hand to accommodate the needs of the pick.

Warren Nunes dealt with the descending problem by using pull-offs -- and refingering things to faciliate that.

For example, if he wanted to play a descending Am7 arpeggio, he might do this: G on E string, 3rd fret. Then E on the G string at the 9th fret. Pull-off to the C and pick the A (D string). And Warren was blazingly fast.

A sweep picker wouldn't have to do that.

Of course, it would be very difficult, I should think, for a sweeper to get Warren's jackhammer attack.

You're saying that the Gypsy players do something analogous. Which is, using even numbers of notes per string in order to avoid, if I understand it, going from a downstroke on one string to a downstroke on the next thicker string. I would assume that has become a element in the overall sound of the solos.

Interesting discussion.

[Litterick]

When I think about this, I'm left with the question, why expect all guitarists to be able to pick any which way? It is possible that a particular individual will never be comfortable, or capable, of playing somebody else's preferred way.

Yes. Charlie Christian played mostly downstrokes, according to Barney Kessel, who saw him play. Worked for him.

Also, this:

[entresz]

I use rest-stroke for articulation and accents mostly - I think most of my playing tend to use alternate picking. I did however adopt a floating wrist technique, largely because I took up gypsy jazz guitar for a few years.

No longer having my wrist anchored to the bridge allows for a lot more control over dynamics and a much more fluid picking technique. Another benefit I've found is that playing fast tempos for extend periods is easier, my wrist doesn't tense up anywhere near as much.

[rpjazzguitar]

Do different classical pianists play with vastly different technique? It's a real question -- I don't know the answer.

I do know, though, that different great guitarists play with vastly different right hand technique.

Here are a few that come to mind.

Lenny Breau -- three fingers, iirc.
Romero Lubambo -- two fingers
Charlie Christian -- all downstrokes
Wes -- thumb only, most downstrokes
Metheny -- light pick, partially folded, lots of slurs
Benson -- held pick backwards (I won't try to explain it).
Bruno -- sweep
Warren Nunes -- fashioned his own picks which were curved to hug the pad of his thumb and played alternate and pulloffs.
etc.
Chuck Wayne -- sweep with a small teardrop pick and focused on 3nps.

How much of this was physiology?

One thing that seems clear: there's no one right way.

If I were still teaching guitar, I would take a look at pencil grip. If it was unusual, I would take care to make sure the picking technique was optimal for the individual, if I could figure out how to do that.