Wrist technique is notoriously complicated. We’ve spent years filming experts, and working with great players in Technique Critique, to understand the various ways it is accomplished. What we’ve learned is that you can cover a lot of ground with two essential styles: USX and DBX. And now we’ve updated the Pickslanting Primer with an awesome set of four new lessons featuring our latest tips for learning these two powerful picking styles.

A Tale Of Two Escapes

The wrist family of techniques is arguably the most common among all picking motions in popular use. Which means that doing it is thankfully a lot easier than explaining it! In this update to our core intructional sequence in the Pickslanting Primer, we’ve simplified things even further by boiling down the learning process to two fundamental and closely related fundamental forms.

In DBX technique, the player uses the wrist joint to generate a semicircular motion path that allows escaping on upstrokes and downstrokes:

With USX, the motion is generally diagonal, with upstrokes providing the escape and downstrokes often executing a rest stroke for extra tactile feedback. USX technique is also almost always accompanied by its famously visual hallmark, the downward pickslant:

The trick here is that these two techniques can have different mechanical requirements as far as the phrases you can play with them. This can lead to confusion if certain phrases sound suddenly worse – or better! – than you expected. This is especially true if you’re an experienced player who learned one or more of these approaches intuitively, without being aware of doing so.

What’s In The Box

We’ve updated the Pickslanting Primer with four awesome new lessons on performing these two powerful picking styles. These lessons include tips for executing the core forms and motions, as well as explanations of big-picture questions like why we’re teaching these techniques, what they can be used for, and who should learn them:

Topics include:

• What is USX Motion?
• Why use Downward Pickslanting / DWPS?
• Achieving USX form
• Performing USX wrist motion
• The rest stroke
• Chunking accents
• What is DBX?
• DBX vocabulary
• USX alternate picking
• USX escape hatches
• Musical example comparison
• Form comparison
• Switching between USX and DBX
• Challenges in learning
• Which style is more capable?

Sounds Great! Where Can I Watch?

If you’re a current subscriber, or a Primer purchaser, head on over to the Motion Tutorials section and check out the new additions in the “Reverse Dart” section right here for the four new lesson chapters starting with “USX Form And Motion”:

If you’re not yet a subscriber, or don’t yet own the Primer, head on over to our store and get yourself suited up. Either choice is fine by us. Just remember that the membership includes unlimited personalized feedback on your technique, directly from us, in the form of Technique Critique.