What is Stringhopping?

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What is Stringhopping? Know your enemy! And learn how to defeat it with more efficient mechanics. troygrady.com

[@BenEller]

Another brilliant video from Troy and the CTC team! This stuff is my religion. Thanks again for all you do!!!!

[@troygrady]

Ben Eller Thanks Ben! Much appreciated and glad to be adding to the conversation.

[@Biwlll]

***** As always an excellent job! I was already your fan because of the material about Yngwie and EJ... but with the Morse Pack let's say that: Morse is GOD and you are the prophet!

[@bingefeller]

***** Hey Troy, any word on episode 4 yet please?

[@emiliopoison]

So, when you slant the pick, you make cross picking instead of string hopping?

[@troygrady]

That's right!

[@stepitupandgo67]

I feel like troy might be the technically best guitar teacher on the planet...I've never had another teacher break stuff down this technically for me before...anybody?

[@chrisking6695]

He is pretty smart man. He approaches it from an engineering perspective. I believe he went to an Ivy league college as well. He's no dumbass.

[@SecretEyeSpot]

dude..if you start a school.. I'm signing up..

[@troygrady]

***** Thanks! That's basically what Masters in Mechanics is. We've kicked around the idea of doing some live things but those would obviously be way more logistically complex to organize,, and we're not sure it makes sense to do that for basic concepts like the ones we're still covering in the show and MM series. You never know down the line though.

[@RohannvanRensburg]

Great video as usual! These are by far the most useful resources for non-instructor interaction guitar lessons. There are tons of videos on guitar technique out there, but none actually accurately analyze the techniques of greats. In fact, there are really only a handful of pro players out there that are half-decent teachers, especially in a non-interactive way ("procedural memory does not equate declarative memory").

[@riellymorton]

Troy! You basically answered my question from the email in video form, not sure if it was just a coincidence but once again YOU ROCK!

[@PanamaJack666]

10/10 for editing and explaination! Great stuff!

[@frozencons]

The Season Pass is definitely worth the money. I've been really happy with the content Troy and his team have produced. Great job, guys!!

[@calansvc]

Fantastic work Troy. How about a video on how to actually get from point A (where I'm at... still stuck at about 100bpm after decades) to point B (where you're at...300bpm?) :) Information about how to practice right-hand technique is just like the information on picking mechanics: there is countless volumes of it, and most of it is either wrong, inefficient, or vague. I would LOVE to see you create a video with the same amount of detail and knowledge, aimed at getting us mere mortals up to speed. Ideas: 1. Your favorite exercises 2. How to best use those exercises 3. How to use a metronome (as in, when to increase speed, by how much, etc) 4. How to recognize progress, and where to go from it 5. How to recognize problems, and how to fix them 6. How to "unlearn" bad picking habits 7. etc. etc. The list goes on and on....

[@elephantricity]

Its funny because when EJ explains the Hop technique he ends up going to DWPS when he starts playing fast, but in his mind, he is still bouncing.

[@Brutalgruve]

Always impressed with your lessons, picking patterns are great things to check yourself on. One thing i have found is, when improvising solos, you will string hop a lot when going outside your "riff" repertoire. This is great stuff for honing in those moments' of going off the charts and just feelin it, then going back and reworking structure and actually expanding the phrase. That may be stating the obvious but it works for me to go new directions. Thanks for the work that you do

[@Cloroqx]

Your content is phenomenal. I hope your channel continues to expand like crazy. Much love!

[@ForViewingOnly]

Extra points to Troy for including the Atari 800 in one of the animations!

[@potatoheadhaoy]

I have a picking exercise in 15/8 for arpeggios to get rid of that "stuck between strings" feel. Idk what to call it, like strict alternation arpeggios I guess? Anyway, you play a G major 9 and a C major 9 (both voiced 1,3,7,9), and you go 6-4-5-3-6-4-6, 5-3-4-2-5-3-5-4 (strings, not frets). So, d-u-d-u-d-u-d, u-d-u-d-u-d-u-d. You can also invert it by picking upwards on the first note. It lets you practice switching between the span of two, and three strings, which makes for a large part of the transitions you make between strings.

[@LDN_MZK]

I found it!! I saw this video a few years ago and couldn't re-find it. Cheers Troy! Great video!

[@CamiloVelandia]

Amazing! Thanks for making this

[@PaulCrane_1]

Awesome stuff as usual. Just ordered a season's pass. Killer!

[@SalHEMI-g3i]

another great lesson troy ! thank you my friend . can't wait for the next one . great job as always and i think your a great guitarist ! thank you . best regards to you , SAL.

[@stepitupandgo67]

it's good to know that even the god steve morse pick swipes accidentally from time to time...inspiring...

[@La_BrosseAdam]

Another great technique analysis, thank you Troy!

[@OnSugarHill]

Really loving all these videos! Keep it up. It would be cool to see you do a video at some point that shows picking some more unconventional licks. Seeing some stuff from Jonathan Kreisberg or Allan Holdsworth would be cool. Kreisberg especially has a killer technique

[@jfo3000]

OnSugarHill Agreed. Both guys are amazing. I'd love to see Holdsworth's picking from Troy's camera angle, he switches from DPS to UPS rapidly while doing mini-sweeps for legato runs and seemingly never trips up.

[@alexs6057]

Troy I've seen almost all your videos now but I have a really hard time even playing the simple licks you play haha at the same speed. How many years did it take for you to develop the technique to play fast? Your alternate picking skill is out of this world

[@diederrr]

How don't you have 1 million subscribers, you need to advertise dude

[@troygrady]

diederrr We just crossed 30,000 a few days ago, which we were thrilled to see. We were in the teens less than six months ago. Can't complain so far!

[@severalpaperclips]

diederrr I figure the gunslinger mentality among guitarists is partly to blame. In some ways, it's like learning how a magic trick works; a lot viewers will be inclined to keep the knowledge to themselves instead of shouting it from the mountaintops. But another factor is how much "noise" there is out in the guitar instruction world today. People have heard the same stuff rehashed so many times that it's tempting to assume that anyone claiming to do something new is just blowing smoke. It seems like a lot of people dismiss the Cracking the Code material without taking a closer look at it because they assume it's the same old stuff as every other instructional or channel. I think a lot of people fail to recognize Troy's work as the Rosetta Stone of alternate picking that it truly is. You sometimes see it in comments on the channel along the lines of: "Tilt the pick? Big deal, everyone does that already" or "This is just economy picking". People assume they've heard it all before without really paying attention to what's being said.

[@LuisPabloTamayo]

What a great video!! Subscribed to your channel ; )

[@Scarshockable]

Thank you very much Troy, I love your videos !!! Very very useful and interesting ! So the key of good picking technique (speed picking) is deviation ... ? Deviation ---> Economy of Motion ---> Speed ? I don't understand, for you, economy of motion is not important, the important thing is to not "Stringhopping" and to "Pickslanting" ? I'm sorry if my questions are stupid, but I'm lost with all of this ... Everybody says that the key of speed picking is : Tensionless and most of all "Economy of Motion" ... is that right for you ? PS : Sorry for my bad english, I'm french.

[@troygrady]

Les Fleurs Du Mal Hi! I think you may be confusing the picking motion mechanic with the string switching strategy. These are two separate problems. Moving the pick back and forth is one problem. Getting from string to string is a different problem. Deviation is great for moving the pick back and forth but there are many other ways to do that which also work great. By itself, deviation will not help you move from one string to another. Have you watched all the episodes of Cracking the Code yet? We cover the string switching strategies in more detail there.

[@Scarshockable]

***** Thank you very much for your response Troy, it helped me a lot. I watched all your videos (Cracking the Code and others), but I do not understand some points at least, it is not clear. When I watch your videos in slow-motion, I noticed that even at a very high speed (170bpm and in sixteenth notes), for example with Rusty Cooley, his movements are a little bit "big". When changing strings for example, it goes far beyond the string instead of being "stuck" to the string. So the theories that explain that to play fast, movements should be as small as possible, are false? By changing strings or staying on a single string, when the pick skips a string, he has to be stuck to the string. I have read many articles on your videos, your theories, and according to the majority of people, for you, economy of motion is not essential. It's "Pickslanting" wich is essential to be able to pick fast. There are also different movements: translatory, rotatory, and oscillatory circle picking. There are so many things. Did you already make a video about economy of motion ? In summary, is that the economy of movement is the key to speed picking for you? From where comes the "speed" of "speed picking" ? Sorry if my questions and my explanation are hard to understand, it's very difficult for me to explain what I want to explain. Plus, my english is not good at all. I hope you'll answer me because it will help me a lot !! Thank you Troy !! :D

[@troygrady]

Les Fleurs Du Mal Economy is always important! I just think most people don't really know what it means. Economy does not mean "small". It is a relative term that describes what you get out of something versus what you put into it. I don't think Rusty's movements are large. They are just right for the extremely aggressive sound he gets. The raw speed of a movement is probably related to how fast the neurons can fire, but that is a science question that we will all have to investigate further. In general it sounds like you are focused on speed. I would not be. Can you play totally accurately and play interesting things with total comfort and smoothness at moderate speeds? These are the qualities that separate good players from the players that nobody cares about.

[@Scarshockable]

***** I understand what you mean, thank you Troy for your answers. I hope you'll never stop making videos. ::)

[@sebaselguitarro]

Thank you man !!! thanks for all your work !!! (Y)

[@abigor731]

these are just my personal observations, but deviation as a default picking motion is something that is always questionable, because it often just looks like someone is using deviation, when in fact its something else. it might still be forearm movement, rotation, flexion/extension, even with some finger involved as well, it just gets masked by the fact that you're resting a part of the hand on the guitar. when i play fast, and lift my hand off the guitar and the strings, it turns out the movement is some sort of wobble that, upon looking closer, turns out to be mostly flexion/extension with some rotation.

[@troygrady]

whereisyourgodnow No question this stuff is not always so obvious as it seems. I personally tend to use forearm rotation when I'm not specifically trying not to. I think what's more likely is that in a lot of scenarious, you can point to one movement that's doing most of the work, with the other movements as supporting characters. Sometimes not -- Albert Lee's picking really looks like a pretty even 50-50 blend of deviation and flexion/extension to me.

[@PeterLe61]

Is there a lesson on downpicking efficiency?

[@Bablobiggins]

Troy, while these videos are fascinating, are you going to do videos on other techniques besides picking?

[@troygrady]

agrajag We like to go where there's work to be done, and gaps in knowledge that we can investigate. Picking is a great candidate for that -- it's been a giant black hole for a long time. But there all kinds of things we may look at down the line that share this basic characteristic.

[@MrSpiritcrusher89]

Hi Troy! is there any chance you could make a tutorial on how you record, produce, and mix your kick ass music?

[@godwinbssdd]

i bounce my hand up some times, i always thought it had something to do with timing

[@blackie75]

Sadly a lot of people who learn to shred, lose a lot of the individual voice and musicality they had in their playing. This certainly includes a lot of professional, even famous players. Is this something you've thought about, or touched on in your time studying the guitar Troy?

[@troygrady]

Mox_au So you're saying there are players who play really interesting stuff, with very little mechanical ability, and then who develop great mechanical ability and become less interesting? I can't really think of anyone who fits this description. How would you even know? You'd need to see a clear before / after. The truth is that creativity is a completely different subject. You're either trying to do interesting things or you're not. If you choose to play the same boring stuff all the time, it has nothing to do with your technique!

[@blackie75]

***** Hi, thanks for the reply. You make some interesting points. Firstly, Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. Although I'm not sure where "very little mechanical ability" came into the conversation, I certainly never said it. Surely a person is not considered to have "very little mechanical ability" just because they can't speed pick every note? Wouldn't that include most of the greatest players that ever lived? Such as Hendrix, Gilmour, Knopfler etc.... My point was, that there are many players, especially younger guitarists, who learn have learned to speed pick and end up totally overdoing it, turning into unlistenable, mechanical shred machines, making speed the focal point of the majority of their playing. This subject is mentioned by Guthrie Govern in regards to some of his students over the years, and was also touched on by Paul Gilbert recently, so it's certainly not an opinion that is localised to me. All This being said, I do love what you're doing, and I'm certainly not speaking out against the learning of these techniques. After all I have purchased a couple of seasons myself hehe :) I'm just illustrating that one needs to take care in not overdoing mechanics, and hinder their development in other areas.

[@aashmanvyas9159]

So if I'm not meant to use flexion to get in and out, what do I actually do?

[@8n2720]

It's time to 'graduate' to the next level of guitar-techniques: Allan Holdsworth scales and solo’s. Starting with 'Devil Takes the Hindmost' followed by 'Proto Cosmos' !

[@troygrady]

jo pespi Allan is wonderful! But he's not really known for picking technique. More importantly, there is plenty of great work being done on him already. I would highly recommend checking out Derryl Gabel -- he's a killer player, and both plays and teaches that stuff as well as anyone I could imagine.

[@8n2720]

thanks for the reply. i'm more of a consummate player where every technique balances and re-balances depending on my thought processes. i have listened to Mr.Gabel but find it a bit clinical. i have been listening to a lot of EricGales. he has excellent picking technique but also a lot of fire and soulfulness in his improvisations. you can really hear a very nice balance of Hendrix and EricJohnson from him.

[@JonWRowe]

Have you checked out Pebber Brown's sarod picking? There is a wrist plane movement that you aren't discussing. It's the plane you use when you shake your hand side to side like a dead fish.

[@troygrady]

Jon Rowe There are only two movements the wrist makes -- deviation and flexion/extension. And combined they allow you to move the hand in 360 degrees. It's really a pretty amazing system. A third common movement in picking is forearm rotation, which we've discussed a bunch of times. This is what it sounds like you're describing, possibly with a bent (i.e. flexed) wrist. We touch on all three movements again in yesterday's Albert Lee lesson. But essentially, any movement you can see the hand (and not the arm, or the fingers) making must be a combination of these three things, no more, no less!

[@JonWRowe]

Yeah I think I'm talking about forearm rotation. The way Eddie Van Halen gets the tremolo for among other things Eruption.

[@severalpaperclips]

Jon Rowe I think Pebber's "stirring coffee" analogy is a great way for people to get the hang the useful picking motion he refers to as sarod picking. As Troy says, it's one combination of the movement's Cracking the Code has covered: forearm rotation with a fixed flex of the wrist, though (wrist deviation doesn't really play into it, though in the case of EVH tremolo picking, I think he "locks" the wrist into an ulnar deviation to help keep the hand stable while it rotates; in contrast, I think Pebber recommends a looser wrist that includes a small amount of relaxed elastic travel along the deviation axis). I happen to agree it's a particularly useful combination, though some people will find a different motion more comfortable or useful. Pebber has also observed that there are a wide range of techniques that have been used to great effect by different people, though he strongly recommends including sarod picking in your toolbox. What Pebber talks about that Troy hasn't discussed yet, is the use of what Pebber calls "scalpel picking", which is a finger/thumb driven translational movement of the pick that he often talks about in conjunction with sarod picking. Interestingly, Pebber's sarod picking investigations were largely inspired by observations of John McLaughlin and reading McLaughlin interviews. Pebber has said he's also met McLaughlin a few times and McLaughlin confirmed that his own picking technique came from watching Indian sarod players. Troy has done video based analysis of McLaughlin in the Antigravity seminar. In my own experimentations, I've found that the fastest and most smooth/efficient motion mechanic for me is forearm rotation with a flexed wrist, which is largely in line with Pebber's suggestions, and can be seen in some high profile rock guitarists like Marty Friedman, and is the dominant right-hand technique in gypsy jazz. The drawback is that extreme wrist flexion can limit the ability to do dynamic right-hand techniques like pinch harmonics and palm muting. I find that when I bring my right hand closer to the bridge and adopt a more modest wrist flex, my technique strongly resembles Pebber's demonstrations of applying sarod picking to the guitar. If I'm applying what Pebber calls "scalpel" picking, it's hard to notice. I think it's great that we have so many different ideas to experiment with now, and an organized framework for understanding them.

[@bingefeller]

Troy Grady when is episode 4 coming out?

[@WolfD24]

Hey troy, downward pickslanting seems very logical to me but if want to want to play a 3 note per string pattern across all 6 strings you need 2 way pickslanting, so how to you switch quickly between downward and upward pickslanting?

[@WilliamTanaka]

Like a piano players for example we have to use a lot techniques for especific situations. In this case sweep.

[@samarhello]

***** I don't do that, but I can still play through 3 notes-per-string patterns at around Petrucci's tempo without hitting unwanted strings. You're describing a different technique - economy picking. It works, but it involves more thinking, which makes it less good for improvisation.

[@severalpaperclips]

24Swiffer I don't think I've seen Troy give a prescriptive answer for this yet. For me, I've been trying to develop a technique where the posture of my right hand is as similar as possible for UWPS and DWPS. My "natural" tendency is to do one-way DWPS, but for two-way pickslanting, I force myself do slant as little as possible in either direction while still clearing the strings. In reality, since my "natural" aptitude is for DWPS, I end up doing very slight (almost flat) downward slanted picking and a slightly more conspicuous upward slant for the upward slanted picking. For me, a big part of this is just building fluid UWPS chops so I have a solid base to work with in that direction. Mechanically speaking, for me, my change in slant is a very slight movement of the whole hand: downward slanting has the forearm rotated slightly outward and wrist flexed slightly, upward slanting has the forearm rotated slightly inward and the wrist "straight" or very slightly extended. If my thumb and finger make any additional adjustments, they are so small as to be barely noticeable, though I may have slightly more "thumb bump" in the upward slanted parts.

[@superalvedon97]

***** Two way pickslanting eliminates string-hopping, that´s really the point of it. Although I agree that DWPS + e.picking is nonetheless a super efficent method.

[@superalvedon97]

24Swiffer Alright, I am naturally more of a DWPS player but I´m now starting to get quite comfortable with the idea of TWPS. My biggest problem was and is still when switching from a higher string with a downstroke to a lower one. So what I do is that I do specific exercises to improve that motion. And it´s getting better.

[@Pandamasque]

I'm not an advanced player by any means, but it was really annouying to sit through 7 minutes of paraphrasing the same very simple and easy to understand message before you got to the point of what the more efficient way actually is!

[@aashmanvyas9159]

+Pan Damasque Bro I don't even get it, what is the more efficient way?

[@Pandamasque]

Aashman VYAS Leaning your back and forth movement from parallel to the guitar body to more slanted. So that the downstroke is towards the body, upstroke - away, as shown at 6:16 That way you won't have to do an additional wrist movement of flexing it away from the guitar body after every stroke.

[@aashmanvyas9159]

Thanks!

[@OnSugarHill]

Troy Grady, where are you located? If you're in SoCal, I'd love to take a private lesson with you sometime

[@lucianogerace9951]

I rely a lot on my thumb to mute above the string I am playing, so I find dwps a little hard to do. I am focusing on uwps, is this a wrong approach?

[@NikolajChristensen]

Luciano Gerace For what it's worth I used to do that as well. Has helped me immensely to get rid of that habbit and rely on the palm to mute the lower strings as well as the tip of the fretting finger. This has improvement my picking it lot - check out my channel if you like.

[@severalpaperclips]

Luciano Gerace As someone who is more of a natural DWPS guy, I find that left hand muting helps, but also a lot of the time the corner of the heel of my hand (on the "pinky" side of the hand) is lightly muting the lower strings when I do DWPS. It's interesting how in a lot of cases, people have one slant that feels completely natural, and the opposite slant can feel like a struggle to learn and work out the idiosyncrasies that make it work. I know that when I was trying to find a UWPS technique that would work from me, I got some helpful suggestions from other commenters about how they anchor the thumb or base of the thumb in UWPS. It's just funny to me how some of us find one slant "obvious" and the other "not", but we don't all agree on which one the "obvious" one is. :D I'm growing increasingly convinced that it's less common for UWPS to come naturally to people, and that players who are "natural" beasts at two-way pickslanting are usually people who had a natural aptitude for (or just randomly stumbled into) doing UWPS by default. That is, I suspect that that random "hours in the woodshed" practice has a higher chance of producing "instinctive" two-way pickslanting if the person started out as an upward pickslanter. Fortunately, now that Troy and his team have broken down the details, we don't have to do the "hours of uninformed woodshedding" hoping for a magical transformation in technique, we can target things in a much more informed way.

[@severalpaperclips]

Luciano Gerace On the question of whether something is "wrong", I think the key question is: does the technique you're already using allow you to play everything you want to play? If the answer is yes, then personally, I'd stick with what's working. Just note that when you're applying Troy's "Yngwie style rules", they are described for DWPS. To make the rules work for UWPS, the "directional" parts of the rules need to be reversed.

[@monsterzero1965]

EJ economy picks, correct?

[@guiyegarcia]

I still don't get how Steve Morse's arpeggios are different from bouncing or string hopping. I'm a season pass owner, not a MIM one. Is that why? (sorry for my english!)

[@troygrady]

GuiYe Garcia Yes, the Steve interview is a MM topic. But we sent out a little sampler on that to the Season Pass people when we released the interview, which has some notes on how Steve's approach works. Did you get that? In our next Masters in Mechanics interview, with Albert Lee, we're going to clarify even further exactly how the hand movement works, and we'll probably put a little of that here on the channel as well.

[@rustyshackleford4743]

My forearm is actually twisting. My wrist really doesn't move too much except for the twisting motion.

[@severalpaperclips]

Rusty Shackleford Check out Troy's "Four Motion Mechanics" video. The "wrist deviation" mechanic is just one way to do things.

[@mohamadmustafa5860]

hey Troy, what kind of picks do you use?

[@mateussader9644]

Muito bom!

[@user-md7ch2co2s]

Troy Greetings from South Korea You are the best Can you do some Jacky vincent or Chris impelletteri's stuff?

[@dzabaleban007]

Bullseye every time!

[@MrTubularBalls]

i hate to say it, because Steve Morse is indeed an elite player.. but 1:40 is really sloppy. He's catching the B string with the upstroke on the E string, and the D string with upstroke on G string. You probably can't hear it at that speed and with so much gain, but it's still sloppy.

[@troygrady]

+MrTubularBalls This is not "really sloppy". If something can't be heard, can't be felt, and can't be seen by the naked eye without scientific equipment, how can that be anything but "perfect" to you and your audience? Sure, if the impact is large enough you'll hear it and want to do another take. But if it isn't, even you as the player won't know it's happening because you can't even feel it. What we need to realize is that this sort of thing happens all the time, in the playing of most of the legends you think of as being perfectly clean. Sometimes players even do it by design, for efficiency, which is what I call "swiping". We just never knew it was happening before because historically nobody watched guitar playing from an inch away at 120 frames per second. The real difference between the greats and the average players is that everyone makes little mistakes like this, but then the greats do it you're much less likely to hear it. That's the real argument for developing fundamentally sound technique.

[@MrTubularBalls]

***** Thanks for your thoughts! Never heard of swiping before, it sounds counterintuitive. Don't you lose picking hand momentum? It's really interesting, because some players advocate starting out learning a lick by playing very fast and then work on cleaning it up. I'm thinking of Shawn Lane, but others have said the same. The classical, "conservatory" way of practising is oc the opposite.. I've read the same advice in an unorthodox book on piano technique, which claims that the standard approach builds "speed barriers". Maybe it depends on the person, or maybe a productive practice routine should include both. What are your thoughts?

[@MrTubularBalls]

GMoorefan115 Great contribution to this discussion, very articulate.

[@MrTubularBalls]

GMoorefan115 Riiiiight. Uhm, so.. did you actually watch the video?

[@severalpaperclips]

I think you do great work, but I suspect anyone who hasn't grasped the secret sauce of Steve Morse yet will be even more confused now.

[@troygrady]

severalpaperclips Don't worry, we're going to be fixing that!

[@severalpaperclips]

***** So my days of feeling like a special snowflake are numbered. ;-)