I use DWPS (DownWard Pick Slanting) most of the time. My picking technique is basically DWPS and economy picking when I can. Pick rotate/UWPS (UpWard Pick Slanting)/alternate when I must. Pure alternate picking is very hard to do at higher speeds. One of the greatest pure alternate pickers is Al Di Meola. And yet he even admits that sometimes he uses economy picking because pure alternate picking is not fast enough!
Example 1. The opening two bars of Black Night by Deep Purple. It’s a very simple with an even number of notes prior to the string change. So it can easily play it with all DWPS or UWPS.
Slow with exaggerated technique. Once with DWPS once with UWPS. Notice how easy the string change is. That’s because I’m changing after an even number of notes
.
Fast. It’s basically just tremolo picking with a quick string change.
.
.
.
.
Example 2. The next four bars of Black Night. It’s complicated because you’re often changing strings after playing an odd number of notes (i.e. the string hopping problem as described by Troy Grady comes into play). This means either economy picking or pick rotation will be required. It’s fairly easy for beginners because it’s quite slow. You can play ANYTHING with pure alternate picking if it’s played slowly enough. When they try to speed up beginners can get into trouble unless they have a technique that combats this string hopping problem. If you’re going to alternate pick this at speed you will need to learn how do do a pick rotation. I prefer economy picking if possible. Here I use a combination of economy picking and pick rotation leading to a change to UWPS
Slow and exaggerated.
Fast. It’s not simple. I’m playing the notes as fast as I can.
.
.
.
.
Example 3. The Major scale in A
.
Amaj scale ascending. I’ve tried to show the string hopping problem that occurs when using alternate picking. Hopefully you can see where I get stuck. I mucked up the last two notes though. I economy picked them. Force of habit.
.
This problem is easily overcome by way of DWPS + economy picking.
.
Example3b. Descending A major scale using DWPS. It doesn’t work. I have exaggerated the string hopping problem to make it easier to understand.
Example 3c. Overcoming the above problem by switching to UWPS.
.
.
.
Now I can put all the parts together. Look for the pick rotation and transition to UWPS.
If you watch this video by Troy Grady it encompasses the technique I described above.
I probably should have just posted the video link!
When picking you you always be using some sort of pick slanting. Whenever you change strings after playing an even number of notes it’s simple. You’ll be above the plane of the strings and can move freely to the next string. The problem arises when you change strings after playing an odd number of notes. Your pick will be buried beneath the string plane. There are a number of ways to overcome this.
Malmsteen does it by “cheating”. He uses a pull of when necessary to avoid getting stuck.
Eric johnson (and malmsteen) construct there lines so that string changes only occur after an even number of notes to avoid the problem.
Batio and Di Meola are just insanely good at pure alternate picking.
Pure alternate picking is hard. Alternate picking the major scal e is horrible. It’s so much easier using economy picking. The transition between DWPS and UWPS becomes easier with practice, obviously.
Edit: After looking at those gifs I admit they look a bit fake. I used the GIF conversion option in Microsoft’s clipchamp program. So take some of them with a grain of salt. I suspect the GIF conversion has played a part. At any rate the ideas are sound.
).
)
