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Not quite Benson picking but this interested me and I wondered what others here thought of it.
This guy----Armen-Gurgen Movsesyan---was born in Russia and now lives in Texas. He played piano for many years and has only been playing guitar 6-7 years. Amazing to me.
He mentions the "small movements in my index and thumb. As a matter of fact, it takes out so much motion from the wrist."
In an interview I read, he mentioned Django as a hero. Loves Gypsy jazz. But his picking approach is not what one normally sees / hears from such players.
What do you guys think?
Armen Movsesyan – Picking Demystified | Jazz Guitar Society
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12-02-2016 06:32 PM
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12-10-2016, 02:55 PM #1852joaopaz Guest
I'm going through this thread from the beginning.
I had already seen Philco's video on YT a couple of years ago(?) when I decided to try "Benson picking".
It was hard at first but it took little time to be certain of it's potential - particularly sound-wise I liked it very much. And after some time if feels great as well.
But I think I went just midway, and ended with a somewhat unclear grip and posture.
So when I discovered this thread here it was just the pretext I nedded to fine tune it!
So far I'm only on page 1
but it was enough to change a few things:
1 . switch to bigger and lighter pick - I can't believe I'm not using my red jazz III! so it's now a Jim Dunlop 50 years, golden pick, 0.89. It has a nice grip surface and it's feeling very comfortable.
A used as always a sandpaper with a very fine grit to smooth/round somewhat the edges, as I makes a world of difference in the final sound.
Next step was to shif the grip to the upper right corner of the pick. Maybe I can still go closer, don't really know at this time - If I can or even if it's required.
What I'm really focusing so far is on the relaxed wrist, the movement in that area. I pick a few lines to play and try to focus my attention on that area, really feel like my right hand is going through the motions not concerned with what's happening on my left hand - something I always stress with my violin students, but that I feel I must apply to the guitar as well.... the right hand is not responsible and should not be concerned with the left hand mistakes and vice-versa
With a week into it, if feels really nice and if something "is happening" but I'll sure will have to wait a lot more for concrete results... no worries, the path is always fun.
Here's a few photos: playing position; grip; wrist.
Any tips, Master Philco?
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@joaopaz.....looking good!
If you have the patience to read the whole thread then you will discover that all of us have gone through various enlightening moments and just as many frustrating moments. The balance of those moments differs with all of us.
The bottom line is that "eventually" (which can mean ...."after a couple of years") one should see an improvement.
Given that your fingering hand is keeping up its end of the bargain.
Personally it's been, at first, very frustrating but eventually extremely rewarding. I should really emphasise the "extremely".
Indeed without gushing too much it has become a joy to pick up the instrument and just be able to concentrate on making music without being stopped by awkward picking situations. I really hope it goes well for you.
@MarkRhodes I did post some Armen Movsesyan above your post. He has an extremely relaxed and powerful picking technique and there are definite similarities with the Benson style.
Especially the small wrist movement and allowing the fingers to actually move as well (the thumb and index).
This movement of the fingers reduces the movement of the wrist and hence the movement of the arm.
The technique seems to involve less movement of everything.
I still do some experimenting with pick angle and these small adjustments make a very big difference.
The angle I refer to is in relation to where the tip of the pick is pointing.
Is it pointing to the tip of your index? Or is the tip angling away from you toward the floor?
If you combine these angles with small wrist rotations (flat to the plane of the strings or rotating outward) there are many different "feelings" when striking the string.
After some time the wrist wants to feel a certain angle and you start doing it automatically. Perhaps thats why even GB's hand looks different depending on where and what he's playing. It seems to be a changing and adapting or fluid technique.
In this regard Armen's technique seems to be more stable. He doesn't have to deal with the extreme angle of the pick.
Clearly he is not using a standard grip. Holding the pick between the index finger pad and the top of the thumb immediately solves the clumsy sideways wrist motion that stops a lot of players.
Then it becomes how much wrist movement you employ. Then it becomes how little wrist movement you employ by using finger movement.
It seems obvious then, that controlling the small movements of the tiny point of a plectrum is not the job of a big forearm movement and that using a traditional grip forces you to do so.
Yes, there are many great players who defy that concept.
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Philco, I had forgotten about that post! Joaopaz has Armen's "Picking Demystified, Volume 1" and may say more about it here, should you be curious. From what I've gathered, Armen's picking approach varies and I'm not sure what his 'default' is, but his technique dazzles.
Originally Posted by Philco
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01-04-2017, 07:13 PM #1855joaopaz GuestHi Mark, guys... Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
About Armen's video - after some time with it I feel the title is somewhat misleading.
Not that the video contents aren't great, but the title seems to point in other direction...
The videos are about picking options, related to phrasing, and not about picking technique.
I have this slightly bitter feeling that the video lesson leans more towards the lick-type video than anything else - albeit the sophistication of the examples.
I'm sure some more advanced guys will love the examples enclosed. But this is not really what I was expecting.
To put it into context - this thread here is for sure a lot more suited to those who want to try other picking options - that's my case
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01-04-2017, 07:15 PM #1856joaopaz Guest
Since I started working along this thread - fine tuning my previous attempt at Benson picking - the pick has been a problem.
It took me a long time to finally settle down with the Dunlop Jazz III before this.... the Jazz III was my close to perfect pick until recently.
But trying to apply the concepts here (that I find to be working) the Jazz III was too small for that.
So I started looking around (again!).
The Dunlop .88 seemed to work but it kept sliding off position; I have dry skin and this has always been a problem with picks. That was one of the reasons why the Jazz III worked great.
With the Fender medium I could get a fine grip but the shape wasn't working on the lowest strings.. too noisy on the Tomastik Infeld's that have a slight rugosity on the low E and A strings.
Well, a pair of scissors and a 2000 grit sandpaper may have solved the problem!
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From last night (posted today on Facebook):
https://www.facebook.com/bacarandoav...4355087556597/
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Benson Picking ahoy
PS: one thing that hasn't been discussed much here ( or elsewhere) is the half rest stroke, and what do i mean by that: you do a line that ends on a downstroke/ rest stroke and you immediately clear the string preparing for the next phrase. this makes the picking much more lighter; less "hammered" and is very clear on this video that he his doing it all the time, and i think thats' also a key ingredient in is playing, and also the reason why so many people don't get how this works.Last edited by nunocpinto; 01-20-2017 at 06:40 AM. Reason: Thinking About
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Hi,
I come from several years of Gypsy Jazz playing and I know the rest stroke technique pretty well.
When I moved to electric guitar I didn't need to worry about volume anymore so I developed an "half rest stroke" technique. I use the rest stroke when descending over the strings (from low E to high E) and alternate picking when ascending. Basically, I guess it's some kind of "economy picking".
Part of my "vocabulary" is built over rest stroke/sweep picking patterns but I always practice alternate picking quite a bit so I can go back and forth without any problem.
I also play with my thumb a lot and the technique is pretty much the same when descending over the strings, you probably know that already. You gotta rely on some tricks to be fluid and proficient using downstrokes only but the tone is just perfect, to my ears.
I got interested in the Benson Picking because it seems a good compromise between tone and speed. I tried it yesterday for the first time and it seems comfortable for me. I struggled a little bit for 30 minutes looking at my hand and controlling the attack angle but my hand feels relaxed. I can use both downstrokes and upstrokes, I can do rest stroke or alternate picking, and the most important thing: I like the tone.
I don't know if I'm doing it right but the more I angle the pick, the fatter is the sound. It's like turning the guitar tone down a little bit and the angled pick seems to "click" less on the strings, producing a more natural sound.
I use Jazz III picks but they're too much thick for this kind of technique so I tried a Fender medium and found it better.
Using this technique, I had the impression that the strings were narrower. I play faster and more relaxed but I need to practice more and be cleaner.
Do you use BT also for chords and octaves?
Can you do sweep picking good? I have some problems, expecially going up from high E to low E.
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I'm making huge improvements since I started to practice this technique. Tone is better, speed is increased, my hand is more relaxed. I realized that I was holding the pick in a very similar way, so I needed to work mostly on the attack angle. The transition is going very well, the only thing that is not working for me is sweep picking from high to low strings. I can't keep the pick angled, how do you do?
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Oh this is very easily done but it does require a change of hand and pick angle. I cannot give you a specific video of Mr Benson's but can only say that he does it (sweeping from hi to low) all the time. Originally Posted by emicad
You can easily see the angle change and it takes not even a split second to do it.
Watch closely a number of Benson videos and you will see it and recognise clearly what he is doing. This technique allows the back sweep and forward sweep to be more precise and clearer and also more controllable . At least that's what I have found.Last edited by Philco; 01-31-2017 at 05:57 AM.
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Watch closelly at about 1.48 ! Originally Posted by Philco
Last edited by nunocpinto; 01-31-2017 at 06:25 AM.
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He seems to NOT angle the pick at all when doing that upstroke sweep picking. And that's exactly what I'm doing instinctively.
I force myself to keep the pick angled but it doesn't seems to work very well when doing this.
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Posting link to this great video* - not for 'picking' but for familiar hand & finger positions:
Playing with thumb à la Wes
*flipped and re-uploaded by kind permission of forum member Alter.
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Benson's What's New is playing through the same PA system I've just used - what a sound/tone!
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Not convinced that thumb-style upstrokes are about 'alternate picking' (or 'the need for speed for its own sake)', I began wondering whether they might be more about avoiding string skipping.
That reminded me of the challenges of using a pick, and it occurred to me to look differently at 'Benson picking'. Not new, perhaps - but new to me:
Last edited by destinytot; 02-19-2017 at 10:10 AM.
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Most of you guys here know or heard about Troy Grady. While reading one of is interviews i spotted some very relevant aspects to this thread.
Here is an excerpt:
"Have you seen the Tuck Andress article on picking?
Oh yeah. Years ago. And he gets a few things right, but that article, like so much of the discussion about picking, is overly focused on what I call the motion mechanic, which is how you move the pick back and forth—which turns out not to be problematic. Because, as he points out in the article, they all work.
You've got the gypsy technique, in which you use these big movements with a nice wrist arch—which is what I use in the jazz clip that we uploaded recently. He talks specifically about George Benson in that article.
Yeah. That was the next question.
George Benson is a gypsy-technique player.
Sort of.
Well, identical, actually. The actual string-switching strategy that he uses is the subject of our next episode of Cracking the Code.
So you are going to do Benson, because…
Well…no.
I imagine you're aware of the brouhaha on the internet over Benson picking…
No, I'm not aware of the brouhaha.
Benson is not unique in that regard. His technique is the most fundamental technique in all of advanced picking, and it is shared by Yngwie, by Django, by Eddie, by Steve Vai, by Randy Rhodes, by Eric Johnson—you name it.
It's called downward pick-slanting. You may have heard of this. If there's been discussion about George on the internet, then this may have been mentioned, but I don't think anybody really understands, or has really connected the dots, as to why this is such an important observation.
Basically the entirety of that technique involves using what I call downward pick-slanting and switching strings exclusively after upstrokes—or using sweeping, which is the Yngwie and the George innovation. Sweeping in only one direction, though. The very next episode of the show, which is coming out pretty soon, is going to deal with all of this. You'll understand when you watch it.
But, again, there's this conflation between the way he holds and moves the pick with the string-switching strategy. That's the critical observation. When you deconstruct the problem you begin to understand that it's a layered problem. Picking technique is composed of layers, like a protocol stack; you can swap them out. The way that you choose to hold and move the pick does not relate in any real way to the way that you choose to move from string to string. They're modular.
So I can hold the pick in any one of a number of ways, and we can say, "Well, George Benson isn't like Yngwie because he does this", and he holds the pick for what I call trailing-edge picking, where he reverts the pick backwards
Yeah, right.
That's how I used to play, when I started. That's in Episode 8, which shows when I switch from this way to this way [mimics transition from trailing-edge to leading-edge attack].
Those are the things you can see from ten feet, but that's not the problem. If it were the problem we would have solved it fifty years ago.
There are two problems in advanced picking. One is hand synchronization, which I think at some level we all understand.
Right.
You need to keep it together at speed; otherwise it just becomes a jumble of notes.
The other problem is switching strings with accuracy.
It's never been a speed problem. That's the first thing. It's never been that we can't move out hands fast enough or that we need to have some highly efficient way of moving the pick. That's not an issue. It becomes an issue only when you get to the level of Rusty Cooley.
You have a Batio who plays 210- or 215-beats-a-minute sixteenth notes; that's kind of his comfort zone. When you start tabbing out Rusty's stuff, as I had to do for the Code Archive recently, I realized that Rusty routinely hits 240 beats a minute.
So we can say, "Is he like the guy on the track team, who has natural sprinting abilities? Is he Usain Bolt? Is that where the speed comes from? Or is he simply doing something different with his hand that enables that extra twenty beats a minute?"
To me that's an icing-on-the-cake kind of problem, because that problem happens way, way above the level where picking becomes problematic. Picking becomes problematic at 140-, 150-beats-a-minute sixteenth notes. So you have an enormous gulf that you need to cross before you can even start worrying about why you can't play as fast as Rusty can—or, for that matter, as Batio can.
And that gulf appears when you realize that you cannot switch strings without making mistakes. So how do you thread the pick through the strings? The way that George does it, the way that Yngwie does it, the way that Randy Rhodes does it, Steve Vai does it, Tal Farlow, Django Reinhart—all of these guys—is called downward pick-slanting. And it involves using a downward angle on your pick and switching strings exclusively after upstrokes.
If you tab it out you will realize that Yngwie and George only ever switch strings after upstrokes. That is the key. It is the key to why they can enter the plane of the strings and exit the plane of the strings with total efficiency—because the strings are arrayed in a flat plane.
Obviously we know we have to drop the pick in between two strings to start picking and then raise it up again. This constant raising and dropping of the pick is something I call string-hopping. We mentioned it in Season 1. It was the set-up for the solution that comes in the next episode.
String-hopping when you try to do it fast is this pecking movement. You can't get over a certain speed, because you're constantly banging into the strings. So it begs the question: "If this can't be done quickly then how should it be done?"
And when you watch Yngwie play or you watch George play you don't see any of that, because it's not there."
But there is a lot more info in there about Benson.
check it out:
C&T: Troy GradyLast edited by nunocpinto; 03-06-2017 at 08:01 PM.
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Well, that gets my vote for "Thought of the Day." (Not that I never heard it before but that today I realize I had not fully grasped it before and need to work on it.) Originally Posted by nunocpinto
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Miles Okazaki, who uses Benson picking, just put up a live clip filmed from a GoPro camera on his guitar. Gives a look at his picking hand.
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Also:
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Peter Farrell just did a 2 hour and half video live on Facebook a few days ago. It's a gold mine of information for those of you still interested in this subject; and hopefully can further help to clear what this way of playing really is.
https://www.facebook.com/peterfarrel...1043126957219/
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03-22-2017, 10:36 PM #1872joaopaz GuestWow, thanks for the update, Nuno! Originally Posted by nunocpinto
Peter Farrell just did a 2 hour and half video live on Facebook a few days ago. It's a gold mine of information for those of you still interested in this subject; and hopefully can further help to clear what this way of playing really is.
https://www.facebook.com/peterfarrel...1043126957219/
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While sitting to practice.
I've been wondering about this.
For many years I played a Strat copy and my forearm laid across the face of the guitar. (Strat-style guitars make that convenient.) I anchored on the bridge, which was common among rock guitarists of my era. (Born late '58.)
But an archtop is a different animal.
I've played one for over a decade now but I've never given much thought to how my arm is situated on it. For a long time, I think my upper arm was draped over the upper rear bout, not actually resting on it.
A recent strain to a back muscle (nothing serious though hard to ignore) got me to thinking about this.
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I love Benson picking for playing single note lines; I think is the better technique for that. I have practiced this technique for a couple of months using normal exercises and songs and i find it awesome. It is easier to skipping strings with this technique as well, due to the fact that you have a great fulcrum in your wrist, there is less movement and the string reference is better.
But at the end I have returned to standard picking technique,..., Why? It is impossible for me to strum properly with Benson picking.
The downstroke strum is not bad, but the upstroke is another thing, I don't find the way to strum 1/16 notes in a funky way with the same quality I get with standard picking.
My fault.
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Yeah I find that a challenge too. Any pointers anyone?
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