Hey everyone, I’ve been trying to practice inside picking but I’ve hit a problem whereby I do my downstroke on the bottom string, then as I change direction to hit the upper string again, I end up hitting the bottom string again on my way up, leading to a very sloppy sound. Would anyone happen to know how to solve this? It really only happens when I try and play fast, because at slower speeds I have more time to “clear” the bottom string, if that makes sense.
Hopefully this diagram would help
Your picking is too flat across the plane of the strings. Try pulling the upstroke up and away from the strings a tiny bit to give you room to clear the string on the way to the next one.
Yea. I’ve by no means mastered it, but pick slanting can help here, which, IME, needs to be incorporated into a unified fluid motion, and often needs to be learnt as a whole new thing because we all often have our own natural slant to which we need to add both the other slant and the ability to control which we’re using at any time.
Would pick slanting help if I want to move back and forth in between these two strings rapidly?
I’ve by no means mastered picking with slanting to get great fluid and articulate speed. I’d say I’ve tried to incorporate slanting, as someone who’s been relatively comfortable with alternative picking for a long time, enough to believe that working on it can provide a lot of value to one’s technique. So don’t take my thoughts (too) seriously.
As for what you ask about … a sort of one-note-per-string-two-string thing … then yea. As I see it, to go between strings while changing directions, you have to find a way to get the pick our of the way of the string at some point. Slanting and lifting/lowering the pick are, AFAIK, the only ways to solve this problem. And they’re also pretty much the same idea, where slanting involves rotating the forearm and lifting/lowering your pick involves lifting the forearm and also the hand through the wrist (YMMV). Some combination of these movements is probably always at play in anyone who’s achieved accurate picking speed. Which is also the trickiness of it, as realistically, figuring at that combination and how it’s sort of “multiplexed” together is non-trivial.
One’s idiosyncrasies come into play all the time, of course, which is why I think focusing on the core mechanical issue helps you try to solve your own problems with what your body/hands are capable of.