Viewer Decode - Pickslanting vs. Crosspicking

[@jazroc56]

I think Troy will go down in history as having revolutionized the teaching of contemporary right hand picking techniques. Not only has this channel had an immediate on my own life-long search to understand the intricacies of my own picking, but also my ability to teach picking has blossomed into clear and concise explanations that my students find tangible and relatable. Seriously grateful!

[@romainbertrand253]

Troy's approach and infos change my entire way of playing and give me the freedom I was missing.

[@azuran133]

Word.. This is case study material in the field of educational technology

[@azhaz578]

Would love to see your breakdown of Tosin abasis technique. Would be interesting to see how his hitchhiker thumb affects his playing.

[@patrickkish6662]

I've made stupid comments on here in the past. But Troy's passion and enthusiasm for teaching will help you. It's a fact.

[@quintinpace2627]

I'm kinda like kean. I just started on a bluegrass kick and and I found out I can crosspick np. Tony Rice's version of "Church Street Blues" is great for that. Previously, I was mainly an UPS, and your vids have really helped me get through some technical hurdles Troy. Now that I've consciously added DPS to my playing I can see things really coming together. Keep it up man.

[@troygrady]

Awesome! Glad to hear it.

[@Soloist1983]

Recently subscribed to Troy Grady's site, found out I have been crosspicking my whole life, had the feeling that the speed I was looking for was simply not possible with my technique, indeed crosspicking can be quick, and I was quick at it, but it was nowhere near what I heard Petrucci and Gilbert doing. Maybe it was the physics student in me but I just knew that there was something different going on, picking without lifting up, making straight lines...I would have NEVER thought to do any of this, hoping practicimg rest strokes can get me out of doing crosspicking as my primarily technique

[@naiktanish]

Troy Grady , please do a video on downstrokes rhythm guitar technique employed in playing master of puppets . The videos are amazing!

[@shawnbell6392]

Interesting mention of jazz players, some of whom were playing very fast, fluid lines ages ago. Would be interesting to know more about them.

[@jestingapple1287]

Fantastic as always!! thanks for all the time and effort you put into your videos , they really help!!!

[@paulsprouse7239]

In my opinion Troy has done as much for the guitar as every player he has analysed combined in this series, possibly more, in heeding his words it's no wonder so so many of us have falling down over the years, how can anyone expect to learn these right hand techniques without a frame of reference (I'm the same age as troy) as there hasn't been one until Troy invented this frame of reference through all this amazing work he's done, in as much as players who invent genres so has Troy invented this paradigm shift towards ultimately younger players being able to break thru these barriers far far earlier on with all this information from Troy and inspire a new generation of players, and in that he is a true genius and is a total Professor

[@surethebest]

Hey Troy, once more: just awesome vid! Appreciate your work very much. Learning er very day, literally. Watching my right hand. Cheers, Richard from Paris

[@troygrady]

Thanks Richard! How are you guys making out over there?

[@aashmanvyas9159]

Troy how much do you bench bro

[@theintuitiveguitaristfrank9202]

Why .... Whats the point when the entire focus is about mechanics of picking speedy and accurately

[@adamprovo4423]

4 4X12 Marshall cabs loaded with greenbacks

[@chasemcdaniel3620]

Troy looks like a small dude. I'm not a big guy and I play guitar. His forearm size in relation to the guitars imply ...hes a small dude. Ive stared at hands for a long time.. His are like mine... Not that big. He's probably 5 foot 7inches... Hes a fit guitarist...not a bench presser..

[@nambasaurus]

Do you have any recommendations on how we can film our picking hand with stuff at home?

[@Anders_Gronlund]

Thanks Troy, for great lessons and insights! I may have missed this in the video, but it just occurred to me that the circular pick movement in crosspicking is a perfect way of transitioning from downward to upward pickslanting (and vice-versa). So that the crosspicking picking technique is inherent in the two-way pickslanting technique and an important thing to practice in order to get a smooth two-way pickslanting technique.

[@robertblanks9602]

Troy you’re such a down to earth guy and so patient with this training. Much respect and appreciation for this and all your great teaching 👏👋🙏👍✅👌✌️🤘🎸

[@StevenMartinGuitar]

Great work! Very much looking forward to hearing Andy's stuff with you.

[@caratcranker5874]

Another totally comprehensive awesome Troy video !

[@dwightburns6699]

Troy is one off...just impossibly beautiful and such a great guy....credit to hard work and innate fire and soul... :-) Solange.

[@dwightburns6699]

Andy for sure!; Love this page... very wellpresented just the most informative and comprehensive you tube format...Troy many thanks!! May you keep it going. . :_)

[@Emmanuelle_Neo]

éste chavoruco es una bendición para los guitarristas.

[@rotze2007]

this guy really has some talent to nail things in a global context. one might say all this effort could be invested in other things to save the world, but hey i love this stuff :)

[@deebee684]

Particularly like your thoughts on not having a value judgment. Very open minded to realize that "wrong" technique is not wrong at all and can even be beneficial in different contexts. Good philosophy for picking, playing in general and life.

[@seanmullenguitar3692]

I'll give Kean a positive comment on his playing ... At the tempo hes playing just guessing it's around 98 on the metronome his technique seems fine ... Because he's not playing fast he can can have a range of motion mechanics all of which will clear the string whether it concave , convex curvature cross picking bouncing dribbling dwps uwps or no way pick slanting ... None of that motion finesse really matters till u get to about 150 Bpm ... When Batio goes into alt picking robot arm that's when u need a slow motion analysis because ur at a speed where u have to work out for u what will get the pick to clear the string ... we all have to work that out with some speed work as well as slower practice ... Video ur self playing the line faster and u may start to see different technique in how u cross the strings ... Troy I think had talked about this before ... overthinking slow motion mechanics can be counterproductive ...

[@Plymouthmusicschool]

Really great stuff! refreshing to see such brilliant observations on guitar technique that has confused me my whole life. Thank you SO much for your efforts Troy! keep it coming :)

[@jameswcollett]

I'm trying to get my head around what it means to "cross pick". Is there an essential definition? I must have missed it...

[@johnnoel5292]

Kean is on the verge of two way pick slanting! Hey Kean, since this was posted a couple of years ago, were you able to finish cracking the code?

[@WilliamTanaka]

What a great turn of events! 11:14 "hey with you currently organization of technique you will have some difficult to do some yngwie runs, but you are in the right route to play tumeni notes"

[@bradleystroup1457]

I understand the whole bounce picking thing. when I got into Joe Bonamassa and then Eric Johnson, I wanted to have that movement so I could travel across the fretboard. Ritchie kotzen does a similar thing and Guthrie govan does it with diatonic scales. I hated that bounce part about it until I saw the crosspicking video on this channel and that helped a lot. I came from the Paul Gilbert style into add the ej style then adding the cross picking and doing a bit of Jason Becker style where you have scale runs from and arpeggio and it's economy picked. there really isn't one way to do it and it's a bit more free form like Marty Friedman was talking about

[@sksatkheli]

Troy Grady did strange things to me. I play guitar for 15+ years now, never having gotten good at alternate picking. Always working around it. I practiced an alt-picking lick with a metronome for months, never making progress. I watched his videos on pick slanting, can play the easier licks now - very fast. I couldn't quite believe it. I also did not need to practice at 20%. I practice starting at 70-80% tempo now.

[@nicolasschurmann]

You changed guitar history!

[@clarkfeeley1959]

Alright great video as always. I've really been paying attention to my picking and I rarely use 2 way pick slanting at higher tempos. I inflect the thumb and 1st finger for upstrokes when needed in conjunction with some loose wrist technique. But I DO setup the motions with hammers/pulls nearly always. This is very interesting, but to be honest I'd rather just do what works so well without too much thought.

[@keantse]

Thanks for this Troy!

[@gustavoalcarde]

Troy I really like your scientific break down of picking and your thought process, I'm kinda new here so I wondered why there are no videos about the left hand work from you, as for some guitar players like me the left hand is the laggish one. I know there are a ton of videos out there covering left hand conditioning, however I just would like to see your approach on that.

[@troygrady]

With fretting technique, you simply don't see large numbers of players failing to execute basic things they way you do with picking technique. But if there are good ideas there, and we can think of them, we're happy to take a look at them!

[@michaelobrien4245]

troy your videos are great.... i am so surprised in all the of yours or anyone;s videos ...i have never heard any one ever explain something that a guitar teacher told me years ago....it was a breakthrough like understanding and memorizing the modes for the first time...and it was so simple...he said...when your playing fast...just.barely touch the strings and feel the vibration between the fret board and your finger tips......it was absolutely amassing how fast and clean my runs became .once i understood how to control that vibration . .. it's like hearing a song while your running you finger up and down the E to find the key.....you don't just hear it..... you can feel when it's right ........just wondering why no one ever explains this to there audience....there;s got to be lots of people out there that this would help..... .

[@ForViewingOnly]

Excellent video Troy!

[@JoshuaPatrickGarrett]

Hey Troy, how about another analysis on flat-picking on nylon strings with the average classical neck?

[@felipearanhademarte]

When will we be able to get "the magnet"???

[@perromanchado]

superb as always Troy.

[@James523001]

Chris Thile, by the way, is left-handed and plays right-handed. I wonder how that aspect, non-dominant v. dominant hand as pick hand, factors in to slant, motion, strength of pick stroke, etc., if at all. Same with Glen Campbell and Steve Morse, both left-handers playing right-handed.

[@gogox98]

I really hope Troy manages to make a living because he definitely deserves it, yet gets very little views.

[@luisechegoyen7041]

Really like your stuff. It's helped me play Bach cello suite 1 prelude at a better tempo even though that that piece isn't supposed to be fast. It's a good picking exercise if you ever try.

[@FredneckMusic]

So is the E Major violin partita Prelude. It's a perpetual motion piece. There's a sweet three string cross picking arpeggio sequence on the first page.

[@luisechegoyen7041]

Thanks guy. Are there any other suggestions you have?

[@FredneckMusic]

5th Caprice by Nicolo Paganini is another perpetual motion piece, yet very beautiful. My favorite recording is Itzhak Perlman's 24 Caprices.

[@Bricklinsv1970]

There's a 30 second guitar song by Alex Skolnick on a Testament album called The Ritual. The track is called Signs Of Chaos. The last run on that is very strange and I don't think anyone is doing it correctly in tablature or video covers. Would love to see the 30 second tune dissected . if any of you guitarist out there want a challenge check it out and post it

[@A_b_o_m_b_A]

Hey Troy, when you alternate pick, does your forearm move with your wrist, or does just your wrist move when you pick? I've noticed the first half of my arm does this, and I want to know if that extra movement is alright or not.

[@pilotilassi9187]

Great video as always. Please do a breakdown of Andreas Obergs technique.

[@GGRetroRally]

Do you sell the iPhone guitar mounts? I need to film my picking somehow. Thanks

[@FlaxeMusic]

Please, please, look into a guy called Armen Movsesyan. He's an absolute monster that deserves to be investigated thoroughly. I'd urge anyone reading this to check Armen out and get on the bandwagon, he's got a ton to give.

[@williamlove9821]

Troy's rockin tha reverse mullet on this one

[@chrisk316]

Hi Troy, I love your work! But all I see you do is try to figure out how to play other people's music. Where can we hear some of your own original content?

[@Uuur10]

Right. Let's see your "original content".

[@ravishgoel8718]

actually he is doing a great work, he is helping us know every other techniques from legends so that we can play with the right technique that is comfortable for us

[@UnbelievableRANTLERS]

I'm pretty sure the OST of basically every vid on his channel is made by him. Maybe not the format you're really asking about, but still, if you watch the actual Cracking the Code series, there's a ton of original music/arrangements going on.

[@chrisk316]

+Uuur10 i was not trying to be an ass at all. He is obviously a very good picker, i wanted to hear some of his music

[@ricomajestic]

He's teaching the mechanics of picking not showing off his own music!

[@oneeyemonster3262]

Thanks for doing the videos Troy...no wonder my picking hand seems to have a mind of it's own sometimes.lmao....You're gonna to have to add Hybird picking into rhe mix...You know, the intro to cliff of dover.lol I watched some the videos a long time ago...I think Paul Gilbert say something about starting on the UP stroke

[@bloodlord1989]

How do you stop swipe addiction? lol . I can't stop doing it once i hit a certain BPM and i'm not even a sweeper or learned to sweep on purpose ( i skipped that for alternate picking). (Edit: I'm working on G to B to high E strings and i don't swipe and sweep when i go lower then the BPM "threshold" for me. 170 BPM on 8th notes is my limit before i start the swiping and sweeping. I've worked slowly going up in BPM trying to hit 180 BPM on 8th notes for the arpeggio)

[@paolocortezmusic]

Hey, Troy! I hope you can have a video regarding the George Benson picking technique. Peter Ferrel is a master of this and I would love to see this on your page in the future. The cross-string (downstroke on the 1st string to upstroke on the 2nd string) has been a problem to me and Peter mentioned that George doesn't up stroke coming from a downstroke from a different string. Maybe, it's somewhat identical to Gypsy guitar playing of downstroking ever change of string (?). Anyways, all the best!

[@troygrady]

It’s very similar to Gypsy picking - it’s one-way economy. We look at George in our most recent feature on Frank Gambale. Part 5 of that series has some slow motion with George but the whole thing is worth a watch if you really want to understand what George does.

[@paolocortezmusic]

@@troygrady Got it! I'll check on that video. I've been seeing couple of guys do this technique but i see different tweeks and approaches from them like Dan Wilson's and Cecil Alexander's. It's still no one strict way of doing it.

[@paolocortezmusic]

@@troygrady Hey, Troy! I just want to mention one of my most bizarre issues on my right hand technique... When I do a ascending line (lower string to higher string) I could easily alternate pick with cross string picking very naturaly, but when I do a descending line (higher string to lower string) I can't even when I have the escape motion of an upstroke to a downstroke on two separate strings. It would be easier for me to economy pick with an upstroke on every change of string descending. Is it normal? Should I continue to develop the alternate picking motion or should I stick to this method? Thanks in advance for your response!

[@PastoAzul]

This was VERY helpful!

[@enterthefollowing]

Kean is a badass guitar player for sure

[@brianm2145]

I don't know if you take questions from KZbin but it can't hurt. I was wondering what kind of and what thickness of pick you play with. Personally I play a 1 mm. I read an interview with yngwie and he said he used a 1.5mm. I was just wondering what your philosophy is on picks.

[@troygrady]

Most of the players we've interviewed use thicker picks. I personally don't have any strong preferences and I'll play with pretty much anything from the gray Dunlop nylons on thin side to just about anything heavier. I have not found any particular gauge to be critical in learning these technique, even if you may develop preferences later on. In general the great freedom of learning the movements is that you can make music with whatever you have on hand, and that includes picks, guitars, strings, and so on.

[@rigoreyes2776]

Marty Friedman's picking is very unorthodox but makes great melodic music.

[@GGRetroRally]

Hey troy.. if you were looking to start trying to improve your picking from a very slow starting point.. would you start at DPS with the yengwie /eric johnson method, two way pick slanting or cross picking? cheers

[@troygrady]

Most of our viewers seem to point to downward pickslanting as being the easiest of these systems to learn. But plenty are also upward pickslanters. In general, 1wps of some sort is probably the simplest. However my general recommendation is that you should pursue whatever is easiest for you, regardless of what you think you should do. Also, keep in mind none of this is directly connected to speed. These are accuracy movements. Speed is just a thing that develops as you become comfortable with the movements, whichever system you use.

[@GGRetroRally]

Appreciate the reply, thank you ever so much.

[@bingefeller]

I would love to see a Jimmy Herring Masters in Mechanics!

[@LQVendorFP]

cross-picking with wrist rotation is the best but hardest to achieve

[@angeljuan3546]

Sorry im spanish and cant understand very well... In fact, pickslanting is down UP down etc... And crosspicking also down UP down... What is the diference?both are alternate picking and only change the angle of the pick, right?

[@troygrady]

That's true! They are different types of alternate picking motions. Pickslanting motions move in a straight line. Crosspicking motions move in a semicircle. They have different capabilities depending on the kind of phrase you have mapped on the fretboard.

[@angeljuan3546]

Troy Grady yes because you can't do very well the phrase That you do for crosspicking, using pickslating... Its about common sense i think... Thanks a lot!

[@ForViewingOnly]

A really dumb question here, but does anybody struggle with the standard 'strat-type' position of the volume control on their guitar getting in the way of their picking hand? It's only really problematic when I'm tremolo picking on the high E string (I've been playing a lot of surf style guitar in the last 6 months, like Misirlou by Dick Dale). I think when I'm tremolo picking, there are much larger movements in my right hand, and I'm knocking the volume knob and slowly turning the volume down! :-) There must be a problem in my technique here. It's such a problem that I'm thinking of removing the tone pot and shifting the volume knob to the tone position on all my guitars. Does anybody else have a problem tremolo picking the high E string?

[@ForViewingOnly]

Maybe a solution would be to lift up my pinkie on the picking hand so it clears (goes over the top of) the volume knob. Usually my picking hand pinkie touches the body of the guitar.

[@frozencons]

Absolutely. I love Strats but this is the biggest PITA about playing them for me. I have to bury my pinky behind the volume knob to get much done on the high e. I'm considering going to a single tone knob and moving the remaining controls back one spot. I'll plug the resulting hole somehow, I guess. You're not alone ;)

[@Lydomina]

Yep, I always smack it with ascending patterns though, I'm fine with tremolo picking.

[@severalpaperclips]

Lifting the pinky over the knob is the same solution Yngwie uses, in part because there are times when he even wants to articulate the knob with his pinky while he's picking.

[@pacofuckhead]

My solution was get rid of my strat and get an Anderson Atom.

[@jakobmonninger7226]

Very, very cool Video! Awesome! :-)

[@The_Musical_Cartograph]

every time i see your videos i want to work on my techs :)

[@nigeltufnel2645]

Yes more of this!!!!!! :)

[@infinitedream6690]

Ótimo conteúdo mostra um ponto de vista diferente...

[@mavisser3211]

so this guy has been following this stuff for 8 years, and that is the level he plays at? should tell you something.

[@ZockerBruderschaft]

Basically every Troy Grady is about pickslanting

[@briann8911]

Hey Troy. I gotta make a correction. I agree he's using a method that creates a U-shaped cross-pick, however he's doing it in a way that could be improved, and I say this with experience. He's doing a kinda warped 'V' shape rather than a smooth arc. An efficient arc-shaped Carl Miner pick-stroke is like a golf-swing... where every muscle is working together and no muscle back-tracks half-way causing that bounce I was discussing. I agree he's better than most with his cross-picking, but I think he can improve his speed if he follows Carl's example. As far as his one note-per string picking... I guess I really need to buy a magnet, lol... because you'd be surprised how much faster he could go once he removes that bounce. Do you sell the magnet pre-assembled?

[@troygrady]

Indeed! Good observations. Streamlining and improving this is the name of the game for Kean now. In addition to learning the simpler straight-line pickslanting movements for the speedier stuff.

[@keantse]

I think I've found a way to develop straight line 2wps movements for guys like me. Practice playing a rest stroke on the first note of a new string after every rotation. So for the sixes chunk that would be: (reststroke D) - U - rotate - (reststroke U) - D. And for a circular sixes chunk would be (reststroke D) - U - rotate - (reststroke U) - D - (reststroke U) - D - rotate - (reststroke D) - U. I posted a clip of this on my channel.

[@briann8911]

I couldnt find your video. But I agree with what you are saying. I do something kinda similar... I actually practice moving from string to string without doing any pick motions at all... I just basically hover the pick right over the string. This is great for learning complex patterns. After I feel comfortable with the movements, I then add-in the U/D picking motion, sorta as an afterthought. This really makes me focus on positioning rather than pick-stroking. You can eventually get to a point where you are oblivious to whether or not you are using an U or D motion, and it just becomes all about the movement between strings.

[@keantse]

Brian, just uploaded it. Will check out that Carl Miner video again. Cheers!

[@briann8911]

I saw it, and your 2wps looks nice. Yes, check out Carl Miner, and I will be ordering your ghetto device as well, and maybe upload some videos of my U-shaped picking (before and after)

[@sellershoppergaray9737]

In spanish pleaseeee!!!. Alguien que los subtitule a todos los capitulos en español!!

[@Sorc47]

I think Kean has just found an amazing way to learn TWPS. I'd love to know Troy's opinion on this, adding rest strokes seems like a great way to stop the habit of bouncing and I have made progress after just 3 days of practicing this way. This is the original video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y2aoiKuEfd18rM0

[@troygrady]

Kean has made some great progress and we've discussed this on email. Mainly, I won't argue with anything that works. If you get results from it, then more power to it! Personally, I see no reason to "stop" bouncing, because if it's crosspicking and not bouncing, then there's nothing wrong with it. In fact, as we've seen in the techniques of Steve Morse, Martin Miller, and in the upcoming Andy Wood interview, the crosspicking movement and the pickslanting movements can live happily alongside one another. And this probably provides the greatest benefit in terms of flexibility, since they're both essentially helping one another, blending smoothly together in more complicated lines which aren't neatly one technique or the other. This is something to shoot for. But again, if you find that a thing works in the short term, then by all means do it!

[@Sorc47]

***** I have always played with really inefficient string hopping and getting rid of that motion was the most important part for me when learning any kind of PS. Bouncing might be fine for people who already use it in an efficient way, but that wasn't my case, so I found the rest stroke idea very helpful. Anyway, thanks for your long response.

[@troygrady]

Gotcha. I only use the term bounce to mean stringhopping. If that's what you're doing, then sure, whatever you can do to help remove it, then by all means!

[@keantse]

For 2wps, I got the idea of practicing rest strokes by watching Troy's slo mo clips. I noticed that he tends to play many rest strokes and quite often they happen on the first note of a new string after a rotation. I just experimented with this idea, and found it helped me learn the basic 2wps movements. I noticed that rest strokes do have their own unique tone and articulation, so it does make sense to practice 2wps without rest strokes too. I still like the sound of my default bouncing, erm I mean crosspicking, technique for certain situations. The edge of the pick "bows" the string which gives a rounder attack. Strict linear side to side picking in 1wps and 2wps and has a sharper transient in the note's attack and creates more pick edge sound depending on how much picking edge angle you dial in.

[@caratcranker5874]

Wow, I would of loved to let Troy see my picking attempts of TOO Many Notes, back in the day, I got it down 95% perfect. [speed wise] God only knows what my picking hand was doing. It's very COOL to know someone like Troy [Only Troy] can actually tell you what you are doing. A+ all the way.

[@RunFool]

Sure you may be a master of picking mechanics, but do you even lift bro? LolBut seriously though, Kean seems to share my problem of a somewhat weak left hand, especially the little finger.

[@chasemcdaniel3620]

The example player missed a note...

[@prognosis77]

I quit

[@chhau123]

Some how Troy reminds me of Gordon Ramsey

[@joebreher7493]

Of course you realize that -- if we are to analyze dozens of thousands of guitarists' picking techniques -- your horseshoe-y thing needs to be mass-manufactured. Is that in the works? Can I buy one?

[@troygrady]

Not currently! There hasn't been enough interest before but you never know, we may give that a shot in the future.

[@TheDisizit1]

for point of comparison here's my take on this aka let me trash this kid real quick

[@etherlords88]

broh... just practice and play whichever way you feel comfortable...

[@bleensteen9331]

LOL, everyone does that, and most get stuck in mediocrity. This is about how not to do that.

[@rustyshackleford4743]

Yeah terrible advice ehterlord. You should be ashamed

[@etherlords88]

Rusty Shackleford indeed... i'm ashamed of myself wasting 20 minutes of my life trying to figure out the point. don't forget to post your album names and gig dates after launch...

[@pierrelacoste9251]

PLEASE...WHY IT IS CALL......PICKINGLANSTING???????👈✌✌✌✌✌👏👏👏👏👈👈😆

[@luisechegoyen7041]

first!

[@davidtilling2614]

Or dont use a pick at all..

[@troygrady]

Not a bad suggestion!

[@karesolheim6943]

Much talking😊

[@stupidusername38]

I think you would have been able to help the guy even more by presenting that single stroke arpeggio by asking him to play it starting with a downstroke (like he did) and that also ask him to play the same thing starting on an upstroke i'm sure you would have seen a differnet picking motion happening.

[@troygrady]

We actually did this. Kean sent a five-string version of the pattern starting on a downstroke, inside of which you essentially have the four-string pattern starting on an upstroke. Same movements. They're both in the ballpark, and great starting points for future streamlining on Kean's part.

[@ryan.m990]

....and he didn't ask for a single cent for these CTC videos on KZbin...🤘🦾🎸

[@sellershoppergaray9737]

In spanish pleaseeee!!!. Alguien que los subtitule a todos los capitulos en español!!