A common strategy for combining motions is to use utilize a secondary “helper” motion to handle string changes the primary motion doesn’t do.
With so many picking motions available to choose from, how many should you use, and how would you combine them? A common solution to this problem is to take a single-escape picking motion and augment its capabilities with an additional motion that you only use once in a while. This type of “primary plus helper” strategy offers the simplicity of single escape picking with a little extra flexibility for picking a wider range of patterns.
Primary DSX Plus Secondary
For example, here’s the amazing Andy Wood playing an ascending scale using an approach that combines his DSX wrist primary motion with an secondary assist from forearm rotation:
One of the unique characteristics of three-note-per-string fingerings is that when played with alternate picking, the sequence of pickstrokes on each string will be the inverse of the one before it. If the first string of the scale is played DUD, then the next string will be UDU, the next one DUD, and so on.
Since Andy’s primary motion is DSX, all the “DUD” strings will end on a downstroke, and the pick can simply move to the next string using the escape stroke. But what about the “UDU” strings, how does he manage those string changes? For the answer, we’ll need to take a closer look in slow motion:
Andy starts the first string of the phrase with his primary motion, wrist DSX, so the last note on the string is a downstroke, which escapes. As it does, the diagonal motion of the pick is really easy to see here, moving into the air above the D string for the string change.
Once he begins picking on the D string, Andy maintains his primary motion for the initial upstroke as well as the second note, the downstroke. But on the third and final note, the upstroke, he introduces an additional motion to assist in creating the escape — forearm joint motion:
It’s easy to recognize when Andy engages the forearm joint because motion of the forearm creates a curve, causing the pick to rotate in space. Wrist joint motion doesn’t do this, which is how we know a different joint is actually being used here.
The purpose of the rotation, of course, is to get over the string, like a somersault in gymnastics. As soon Andy clears the D string, he begins rotating the forearm the other way, so that by the time he finishes playing the downstroke on the new string, the forearm is back to its starting orientation and the helper motion is complete.
This clever solution turns three-note-per-string scale playing into a simple repeating two-string sequence, where the first five notes are performed with the primary motion and the last note is performed with the secondary. Simply connecting these two-string sequences together, as Andy does in the rest of this phrase, makes it possible to play scales of any length, up to and including all six strings.
Simple Primaries
Andy’s primary motion mechanic is the wrist, and as we’ve learned, the wrist can perform a wide range of DSX and USX motions. So Andy’s choice to standardize on DSX motion is simply for economical reasons, to cut down on the number of motions he has to learn and memorize.
But other common joint choices for DSX motion, like the elbow joint, don’t have multiple axes of operation. For players who choose these simpler joints as a primary motion mechanic, secondary motions are necessary to make upstroke string changes possible. A classic example of this is the high-speed technique of shred pioneer Vinnie Moore, who augments his elbow primary with forearm secondary in a strategy similar to what Andy does:
Vinnie famously played this six-note pattern in a 1985 Pepsi commercial to such acclaim that we now simply refer to it as “The Pepsi Lick”. Although Vinnie was only on-screen for hand closeups in the commercial shoot, we did eventually get to see the actual picking motions involved on his second instructional Video, “Speed, Accuracy, and Articulation”, from which this clip was taken.
Vinnie’s strategy for this is similar to Andy’s, using his primary DSX elbow motion for five notes of the scale, and a dash of forearm rotation for the sixth note to get back over the string. The only twist here is that that he’s playing the sequence descending, starting on a downstroke, but otherwise the mechanics are very similar: the first string change is automatic thanks to the escape of the primary motion, and the second string change is where the secondary motion kicks in.
Michael Angelo Batio actually plays the same lick in the ascending direction also using a primary and secondary motion strategy:
Because Mike starts the pattern on an upstroke, the helper motion kicks in on the third note of the scale, to allow him to get to the higher string. Then the primary motion is engaged to return to the lower string with no rotation. When you look at the motions being used on each string of the pattern, this is the exact same sequence as in Vinnie’s version of the pattern. So interestingly, even though the direction of the phrase is flipped, if you turned off the sound and only looked at the picking hand, you wouldn’t be able to tell which version of the phrase Mike was playing.
Like Vinnie, Mike is an example of a player whose primary motion appears to be DSX-only. In fact, it’s always been something a minor mystery precisely which primary motion mechanic Mike actually uses. The escape is very shallow, which is consistent with elbow motion, but it could also be a mix of wrist flexion-extension as well. We really don’t know! But it was actually Mike’s 1991 instructional classic “Speed Kills” that provided the first clue to how secondary motion works:
Mike’s strategy for ascending scale playing is the same as Andy’s, with five primary motion pickstrokes followed by a sixth with the secondary. Noticing the small shift in Mike’s hand position as he engages the secondary was the breakthrough in understanding how he navigates the strings with such accuracy.
Primary USX Plus Secondary
Primary-secondary strategies work with USX motion too. Here’s metal master Teemu Mäntysaari adapting the classic descending fours sequence to his primary USX wrist motion:
In the descending fours pattern, a four-note diatonic sequence is iterated across the strings, shifting one note lower each time. Just as with Andy’s scalar approach, Teemu starts with his primary motion, except this time it’s USX. But when he reaches the third note, he engages the forearm and also a bit of wrist extension to lift that pickstroke almost straight up in the air:
As soon as he does this, he begins rotating the forearm back to its original position, allowing him to pick the single note on the B string with an escaped upstroke, and transition back to the top string for another downstroke. So that’s two string changes in a row — one with the secondary motion and another with the primary right after that.
One of the interesting things we’re seeing in Teemu’s approach is that his secondary motion isn’t actually a single motion at all but two joints coupled, or operating together. This combination of forearm rotation and wrist extension is extremely common as a secondary motion for wrist players, especially when their primary motion is USX and their arm position is supinated. It’s easy to see here in Teemu’s technique because the pickstroke moves visibly vertically.
Non-rotational Secondary Motion
Given its rotational capability, the forearm is a common choice for secondary motion, but it’s not the only one. The wrist is also a popular choice as a secondary motion, even when the primary mechanic is also wrist motion. For a closeup look at this seemingly counterintuitive occurrence, we can turn to Andy Wood once again:
In this improvisational excerpt from his all-acoustic interview, Andy plays a circular scale sequence on the top string that includes both downstroke and upstroke string changes. The first string change is a downstroke, from the B string to the E string, and it’s done with Andy’s primary DSX wrist motion, whose diagonal escape path is easy to see in slow motion:
The way back to the B string is an upstroke, and it’s also handled by the wrist — but with USX motion instead of DSX. Notice how the pickstroke changes direction to lift over the B string:
The question isn’t really whether or not Andy’s forearm adjusts as he does this. It might, a tiny amount. But that motion is too small to cause the lifting we’re seeing here. Unlike the ascending scale example we looked at, where the rotation of the forearm was the motion that lifted the pick and caused it to escape, in this example it’s the wrist joint doing the lifting, and changing its direction of motion to do so.
Primary And Secondary Wrist Motion
At first glance it may seem arbitrary to call one of these motions “primary” and the other “secondary”, since they’re just two slightly different motions generated by the same joint. But this makes more sense when you realize that there is never any continuous USX picking in Andy’s technique. USX motion, when it occurs, is used only for specific string changes like the one in this example, after which he returns immediately to DSX motion.
In fact, in the looped example above, notice that Andy could have switched to USX motion for all the notes on the E string, but he chooses DSX instead. It is the choice to use DSX by default that makes this “2 o’clock” wrist motion the primary in Andy’s technique, and the occasional USX upstroke the secondary.
Andy also uses USX for upstroke string changes on mandolin. His playing on the bluegrass standard Liberty is a great example of this:
As usual, the primary motion in this example is DSX wrist. But unlike the ascending scale example, there are no forearm helper motions here. Instead, all the upstroke string changes in this clip are USX wrist motion:
In this case there really doesn’t seem to be any forearm adjustment at all. The pick escapes on the downstroke with wrist motion, and also on the upstroke with wrist motion, just moving in a different direction. Back to back, this basically creates DBX or double escape motion:
You might wonder how Andy is able to do this without altering the pickslant to correct for the attack. The answer is that DBX motion works fine with with a zero-degree pickslant. Instead, the trickier question is why Andy doesn’t need to change his pickslant to UWPS when he switches back to continuous picking with only DSX motion.
And the answer to that is edge picking. As we saw when we looked at upward pickslanting, many DSX motions are shallow enough in their escape that when you throw in a little edge picking, the motion will still be smooth without any significant UWPS. So in Andy’s mandolin technique, where the escape is shallow most of the time, Andy can switch between DSX and USX while maintaning constant pick orientation.
Secondary Motion vs Two-Way Pickslanting
When we saw Andy’s ability to switch between different picking motions with no change in pickslant, it was a turning point in our understanding of how these techniques actually work. In earlier versions of the Pickslanting Primer, we called secondary forearm motion “two-way pickslanting” because of the way it appears to change the orientation of the pick. But this was misleading, because this is not the only way to play a scale. Andy can achieve the same result with only wrist motion as the primary and the secondary and no change in pickslant, and calling that approach “two way pickslanting” doesn’t make much sense.
Instead, what really matters here is the change in motion. Simply “slanting the pick” by itself won’t actually do anything anyway unless you also change the way the way the pick is moving. Whether you do that with wrist motion, forearm motion, or some other joint is really what you need to think about when learning these techniques, not what the pick itself looks like. So for now, we think that terms like “primary motion” and “secondary motion” are a much clearer way to understand how this particular technique works, and how to actually do it.
A simple way of expanding the capabilities of a single escape picking motion is to play through muted strings using swiping.
Single escape picking motions are some of the most common motions in picking technique, used by everyone from John McLaughlin to Yngwie Malmsteen. The distinctive vocabularies of these players are filled with clever ideas, like John’s four-note pattern and Yngwie’s six-note pattern, constructed with even numbers of notes per string. This allows them to capitalize on the efficiency of escape motion for high-speed string changes.
But what if you want to play an odd number of notes on a string? Many common musical phrases, like straight-line scale playing, involve doing precisely that. As it turns out, doing this with single escape motion is possible with a clever hack: swiping.
DSX And Swiping
A great example of the way escape motion and swiping can work together is the alternate picking technique of shred pioneer Michael Angelo Batio. Mike’s core motion is DSX, with downstrokes that escape and upstrokes that trap. In the Antigravity Seminar, we discover that Mike uses strategic swiping on some of those upstrokes to move to a lower string without escape motion:
Much like Jorge Strunz’s stealthy swiping, listening to this example at normal speed gives no indication that Mike is playing through any muted strings. It’s only when you view this close up that the mystery is revealed:
The first string change in this repeating six-note pattern is a downstroke, and as you can see in the clip, downstroke string changes are no problem — the pick just sails right over the E string. But the last note of the pattern is an upstroke that returns to the B string, and swipes right through it in the process. Thanks to Mike’s use of left-hand muting we don’t hear the swipe, but in slow motion the string clearly moves as the pick hits it on its way to start the pattern over.
The benefit of this approach is that it takes a phrase which wouldn’t ordinarily be playable with single escape motion and makes it possible. Rather than devising a more complicated solution that combines different motions, the motor system satisfies its need for simplicity by using a single motion for the entire phrase.
The power of this becomes especially obvious across longer phrases where the technique can be used repeatedly. A classic example in Mike’s vocabulary is descending scale playing, which he performs entirely with DSX motion and occasional swiping:
Just like the repeating six-note scale pattern, this amazing blast of descending scalar speed utilizes swiping to transition from higher strings to lower strings whenever the string change pickstroke is an upstroke.
Specifically, the final phrase of this lick is six full strings of a diatonic scale fingering with three notes on each of them. The first string change, from the E string to the B string, is a downstroke. Downstrokes in DSX motion are escaped, so that string change is no problem — the pick simply drops down on the B string and continues picking. The second string change is an upstroke from the B string to the G string, so that one is handled via swiping. Just as in the scale pattern phrase, no change to the picking motion is necessary, Mike just picks right through it. The third string change is once again a downstroke, handled via escape stroke. The next one is another swiped upstroke. And so on, across all six strings of the instrument.
Three-note-per-string scale playing has long been a hallmark of elite-level picking technique, and Mike in particular is known for his accuracy in doing this. His solution to descending scale playing is ingeniously simple, converting what could be a tricky coordination challenge into a simple application of just one picking motion.
USX And Swiping
Gypsy maestro Joscho Stephan uses swiping to play the exact same repeating six-note phrase Mike does, just with the mechanics reversed, using USX motion:
Listening to this at normal speed, you’d never guess that Joscho was playing through a muted string. To detect it, we’ll have to drop into a slow motion closeup.
Again, Joscho is using USX motion, where upstrokes escape and downstrokes trap, so this time the swipe pickstroke is going to be a downstroke. That means the third note of the phrase, the downstroke on the B string, is the note to look out for. Right after Joscho plays that note, watch in slow motion as he pushes through the high E string to get to the other side:
After the swipe, Joscho plays the final three notes on the top string: up, down, up. This leaves him in the escaped zone, perfectly positioned to drop right back down again and start the pattern over again.
It’s really pretty remarkable how quiet the swiping is in this phrase — there’s very little sound being made by this at all, not enough to be detectable at normal playing speeds.
Directional Swiping
In both Joscho and Mike’s scalar swiping examples, they’re using swiping on the pickstroke that lines up with their pickslant. In other words, Joscho is using a downward pickslant, so he swipes on the downstroke that moves toward the higher string. Mike uses a very slight upward pickslant, but UWPS nevertheless. So Mike’s swipe pickstroke is the upstroke that moves toward a lower string, the same way the pickslant points.
Lining the swipe up with the pickslant makes use of the same mechanics we saw when we looked at sweeping, where the reduced angle of attack promotes sliding. The pick is essentially making a trapped motion, moving in a straight line through the strings, but because of its slant, it has less tendency to forcefully grip the next string and pluck it. The difference between swiping and sweeping is that we’re just muting the second string so we don’t hear it.
Their use of single escape motions with pickslanting is why Mike only swipes when descending and Joscho only when ascending. We’ve seen Jorge Strunz use swiping in both directions, but recall that Jorge uses a trapped motion with a zero-degree pickslant and a high degree of edge picking. So Jorge’s mechanics are essentially symmetrical, allowing equal amounts of sliding in both directions. It’s worth pointing out that when Jorge swipes, we can still see the strings being plucked in slow motion:
So the symmetry of Jorge’s pick attack and motion are not enough by themselves to make the swipe quiet, but instead work together with Jorge’s effective use of fretting-hand muting to really deaden the noise.
In a single escape picking style, you use either USX or DSX motion exclusively, and structure phrases so that string changes occur only during the escape pickstroke.
Single escape motions like USX and DSX are diagonal picking motions where only one of the pickstrokes — either the upstroke or the downstroke — is an escape pickstroke. In other words, only every other pickstroke can switch strings. So in the most straightforward form of a single escape phrase, string changes only occur during that pickstroke.
For example, here’s Oz Noy playing an ascending scale using an interesting four-note-per-string fingering on every string:
On the surface this seems unremarkable enough. It’s only when we slow down and look closely at what’s going on in the picking hand that the uniqueness of Oz’s single escape approach becomes apparent:
Oz is using a downstroke escape, or DSX motion. This is a diagonal picking motion where downstrokes go up in the air, and thus have string switching capability. When you use a DSX motion, you can only move to a new string when you play a downstroke.
So this motion is a perfect match for this phrase, because that’s exactly how its string changes work. Each string contains four notes, starting on an upstroke and ending on a downstroke. Thanks to its diagonal escape trajectory, the final downstroke clears the next string, and Oz can begin the pattern again one string higher.
The Rule of Evens
The synergy between the motion Oz is using and the phrase he’s playing makes good mechanical sense. Alternate picking is a system of twos — down and up. In a DSX motion like Oz’s, the string-switching pickstrokes are downstrokes, and they only occur every second note. So it follows that when you use a single escape motion, and you’re picking every note, you’re going to have to pick an even number of notes on every string.
And it turns out that this is a pretty natural thing to do, because a lot of guitar licks actually work this way. Think about the common one-finger-per-fret coordination exercise:
Like Oz’s clever scale fingering, this exercise also has four notes on every string. So if you start on a downstroke, the final note on every string will be an upstroke. To play this with single escape motion, you’re going to need to use an upstroke escape, or USX motion, because that’s the motion type where upstrokes go up in the air. And this is exactly the type of motion that Gypsy maestro Joscho Stephan uses for playing the same phrase:
The Gypsy picking style is based around USX alternate picking motion, specifically using a distinctive blend of forearm and wrist joint action, and an immediately recognizable flexed wrist posture. So phrases like this one, with four notes per string, starting on downstrokes, are a perfect fit for this type of picking motion, and very common in Gypsy vocabulary.
Single Escape Vocabulary
The way Gypsy vocabulary emphasizes even-numbered phrases during alternate picking isn’t an accident, but a very common occurrence across different musical styles whenever single escape picking techniques are used.
One of the most striking examples of a player who chooses phrases for single escape motion is fusion pioneer John McLaughlin. John’s primary motion mechanic is DSX wrist, using the same arm position, and performed with the same “2 o’clock” motion we saw when we looked at Andy Wood. Here’s a great shot of John’s motion from a 1976 performance with the group Shakti:
In this fortuitous down-the-strings camera angle, it’s super easy to see the way John’s DSX alternate picking motion follows a diagonal path with respect to the guitar, shooting way up into the air above the E string. He’s also holding the pick with an upward pickslant, to correct the pick attack, which is what we’d expect when this type of escape path is used.
John’s use of downstroke escape motion is why many of his signature phrases are arranged so that downstrokes are the final note on each string. A classic McLaughlin pattern is this one, which is four notes long:
If you’ve ever transcribed any McLaughlin solos, you’ve no doubt encountered this pattern many times. Although it’s not obvious here from this camera angle, when we film down the strings in slow motion, the single escape construction of this phrase becomes evident:
Just like Oz’s scale, every string of this pattern contains four notes, starting on an upstroke, and ending on a downstroke. Because of its escape trajectory, that final downstroke moves over the top of the next higher string, allowing us to transition with no mechanical penalty.
A large percentage of John’s fastest playing is organized just like his four-note pattern, with even numbers of notes per string terminating with downstrokes, to match up with his DSX alternate picking motion. This includes not just specific pattern-based phrases like the four-note lick, but also more melodic soloing where the even-numbered construction is less obvious.
A fantastic example of this is John’s blazing take on the Ray Noble classic “Cherokee” with the Tonight Show band in 1986:
Watching John’s performance, it’s hard to imagine that the lines he’s playing might have been engineered down to the level of assigning specific pickstrokes to specific string changes. But indeed that is the case. Examining the transcription of even a short section of his solo reveals the hidden support structure of John’s ingenious, downstroke-powered string changes:
In this two-bar section, nearly every single high-speed string change occurs when the final note on the string is a downstroke. And that’s not unusual. In the first 33 measures of the solo — the entire verse, before the bridge kicks in — there are 49 string changes that occur during fast single-note playing. Only 4 of them are upstroke string changes. The remaining 45, representing a staggering 92% of the fast string changes, are downstroke escapes.
Subconscious Motor Learning
To be clear, the process through which great players like John organize their vocabularies to fit particular picking motions is largely subconscious. We know this because the players we’ve interviewed are mostly unaware of the motions they are making, even when those motions are pointed out to them.
For example, Andy Wood’s DSX motion is very similar to John’s even down to the specific type of wrist motion he uses. For this reason, Andy typically chooses to start pentatonic phrases on an upstroke, ensuring that the final note on each string is a downstroke, to capitalize on the escape:
In one fun moment in our Electric Workshop interview, Andy tried playing these basic sequences starting on different pickstrokes. It wasn’t apparent until reviewing the slow motion video later on that the faster takes were always upstroke, even when we thought during the interview that they were downstrokes.
So the tendency toward primary motion appears to be wired deeply, below the level of conscious awareness. This is not a negative — it’s a big win. This allows players to make sophisticated choices like John’s and Andy’s without nerding out on individual pickstrokes, and instead paying attention to bigger-picture physical feedback. Phrases that feel and sound smooth are kept, while those that sound sloppy and feel awkward are avoided. Over time, vocabulary evolves to contain only phrases that can be played with a certain degree of physical ease and reliability.
At the time of John’s Tonight Show performance, the fact that he was using an escaped picking motion was simply not common knowledge, if it was known at all. The link between this motion and the mechanics of switching strings was probably lesser known still. The idea that one of the most purely capable picking technicians of all time might be subconsciously tailoring his vocabulary to the capabilities of his picking motion would have sounded a little crazy, if not maybe even outright insulting to some of his fans. But to be clear, John’s ability to do this isn’t a detriment, it’s an enabler. More importantly, this iterative process where motor skill interacts with musical vocabulary appears to be the way all complex picking technique is learned, regardless of the specific picking motions or vocabularly involved.
Single Escape Speed
Multi-axis joints like the wrist can theoretically make lots of different motions, but as John and Andy demonstrate, the wrist is still perfectly suitable for single escape playing when you rely on just one of its axes for an entire phrase. The result of this single-axis operation is that single escape motions are the mechanically simplest picking motions you can make. In fact, joints like the elbow only have one axis of motion, so when you’re using that joint exclusively, single escape motion is pretty much what you get.
Because of this mechanical simplicity, single escape motions are easy to do fast. Many of the commonly played “fast” licks in different musical styles are single-escape phrases that feature a simplified structure with even numbers of notes per string. In rock and metal, one of the most common is this six-note pattern:
Made famous by Yngwie Malmsteen, this simple, repeating phrase consists of six notes and always starts on a downstroke. This initial downstroke is easy to anticipate by feel, and many players, including Paul Gilbert, have spoken about using this pattern specifically as a way to develop high-speed hand synchronization through chunking.
In this case, we’re using a combination of wrist and forearm motion similar to what Teemu Mäntysaari uses as his primary motion:
Teemu is playing the pattern on a single string, but because this is a USX motion, upstrokes are still escaping. Even though he’s not switching strings, this isn’t redundant or mechanically costly. It’s just a wrist motion, and switching to any other wrist motion wouldn’t make it any more or less mechanically efficient — it would just make it less suitable for moving from one string to another. By using the escaped version as his primary motion, Teemu gains the advantage of not having to change the motion when moving the pattern across the strings:
Each six-note unit of the pattern is a self-contained chunk, starting on a downstroke and ending on an upstroke. Because of the final upstroke, Teemu can play this pattern on any sequence of strings, in any direction, either ascending or descending. The direction of the phrase doesn’t matter. As long as the final note is an upstroke, he can move to a higher or lower string smoothly.
A picking style is a strategy for choosing which motions to use and when to use them.
At its simplest, your picking technique consists of the motions you know, and your approach for combining them to play different kinds of phrases. But with so many possible motion combinations available, how would you know which ones to use?
The good news is that there are a handful of basic approaches for choosing and mixing different picking motions, and these simple strategies are consistent across different styles of music, and even different plucked instruments like guitar and mandolin. Let’s take a look at how they work.
A player’s primary motion is the default picking motion they choose for single-note playing at a given speed.
With so many picking motions to choose from, which one do players reach for first? It’s a good question, and the simplest way to learn the answer is to ask someone to play a sequence of notes on a single string.
Here’s a short clip of the awesome Andy Wood, taken from a moment in his first interview when he was picking notes on the G string with the volume knob off while answering an interview question:
One of the many advantages of modern camera technology is that you can capture spontaneous moments like this that wouldn’t have been easily visible — let alone filmable — before. Here, we’re getting a look at the picking motion that an elite player chooses subconsciously when they’re not thinking about playing any phrase in particular.
In other words, what we’re seeing here is Andy’s primary motion, which traces an escape path: Andy’s upstrokes rest against the D string, while his downstrokes point right over the top of the B string. So this is a wrist motion that moves along a diagonal where upstrokes are trapped and downstrokes escape. In other words, this is downstroke escape, or “DSX” motion.
It’s important to point out that the actual wrist joint motion Andy is making here isn’t strictly side to side but slightly diagonal, lower on the thumb side of the motion and higher on the pinky side. We call this a 2 o’clock wrist motion, using a simple clock analogy which you can learn more about in the wrist section of the Primer. The point is that if Andy attempts this motion with different arm positions, the resulting escape trajectory can appear to change. But that’s due to the position of the arm, not the motion of the wrist joint. Whenever Andy is asked to play a line that moves quickly, no matter which arm position he’s using, it is this very specific slightly diagonal “2 o’clock” wrist motion that he chooses.
Why Primary Motion?
Why have a primary motion at all? Why not just learn a bunch of different motions and use them as needed? The reason is complexity. The sheer number of variables presented by playing a guitar with a pick is what motor learning researchers call the “degrees of freedom” problem. Put simply, each joint in your picking arm is connected to the next one, resulting in practically infinite motion possibilities by the time you get down to the fingers that are holding the pick. Those are the degrees of freedom.
To learn a picking motion, your body has to sort through all these different ways of moving to find at least one method that it can reliably perform that gives you the result you want. Then you still have to spend the time it takes to master this complicated fine motor skill. To learn multiple motions, you’d have to repeat this process multiple times, only to arrive at several probably overlapping techniques. So you would still have to sort through those motions to determine when to use each one.
Instead, a much simpler approach is to choose a single motion, perhaps even the first one you discover, that satisfies the basic requirement of smooth, effortless picking, and get really good at that one. If certain phrases turn out sloppy or don’t feel smooth with that motion, your motor system may subconsciously try to tweak that motion in a way that works better — let’s say, by recruiting a helper motion for just that phrase. But this process takes time and effort. So sometimes, the simplest solution is just to avoid those problematic phrases entirely, and stick with ones that sound good with the motion you already have. This is how we think the tendency toward primary motion develops.
The wrist joint connects the forearm to the hand and allows 360 degrees of motion.
Perhaps the single most common motion mechanic in picking technique is wrist motion. One of the reasons for its popularity is its 360-degree motion capability, allowing it to create any escape type: USX, DSX, or DBX.
The wrist can function alone or in concert with other joints, like the forearm or the elbow, to create even more variations. Even if pure wrist motion isn’t your primary motion mechanic, there’s a good chance you still use it in some capacity.
Wrist Motion
The most visually distinctive characteristic of wrist motion is that when viewed from audience perspective, only the hand appears to move, while everything above that point, from the watch band area all the way to the shoulder, remains mostly still. Andy Wood’s DSX wrist motion is a great example of this:
It may be tempting to imagine that Andy’s forearm and upper arm are locked in place, but a more accurate description is simply that they aren’t moving. The muscles doing the work are only moving the hand back and forth. Andy’s technique is similar to the techniques of Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paul Gilbert in this respect, who appear to generate most of their picking motion from the hand and not the arm.
Axes of Operation
When you use wrist motion, the forearm joint doesn’t move during picking, but its position still influences which of the wrist’s 360 possible degrees of motion you choose. The end result in all cases will be that the hand moves while the rest of the arm doesn’t. But that hand motion may be different based on which way the forearm is rotated.
For example, Steve Morse uses what we call a supinated forearm position, resting the pinky side of the arm on the guitar body, and exposing the underside of the forearm to our view:
At the other end of the forearm spectrum we have pronation, where the forearm is rotated in the opposite direction, so that the thumb side of the hand contacts the guitar and the pinky side lifts off the strings. Here’s bluegrass great David Grier’s pronated setup:
David’s pronated form is super obvious here, creating an air gap beneath the pinky. This is the inverse of the way Steve orients his arm.
Now here’s the tricky part. What if we asked both players to make a DSX wrist motion from their respective positions? Here’s what that actually looks like:
Amazingly, they can do it. But look at how different the motion looks. David is essentially making a deviation wrist motion, which is a side-to-side motion of the wrist, from the thumb to the pinky. But because David’s arm is pronated, the deviation motion doesn’t really move side to side any longer, but up in the air. This is how he generates the downstroke escape.
Steve is a totally different story. He can’t use David’s deviation motion because the pinky side of his hand is tilted toward the guitar — he’d hit the body. Instead, he has to use an extension wrist motion. This is the motion that moves the wrist toward the knuckles, like you would when revving a motorcycle. This is a different wrist motion entirely, 90 degrees away from the motion that David is making. And yet, watching from strings perspective, the end result is the same: a diagonal picking motion where downstrokes escape.
So wrist motion isn’t one technique, it’s many techniques in one. The specific direction of wrist motion you choose depends on which way the forearm is oriented, and which way you want the pick to escape given that orientation.
Shallow Escape
No matter which arm position you start with, wrist motions usually generate a shallow escape path between 10 and 15 degrees. For example, unlike the curved path created by USX forearm motion, Mike Stern’s USX wrist motion appears to move almost parallel to the strings in Magnet perspective:
Andy Wood’s DSX wrist motion is similarly flat, generating a 10 to 15 degree escape, just on downstrokes instead of upstrokes:
Even though Andy’s escape is the inverse of Mike’s, both motions are so close to parallel to the strings that it’s hard to spot the difference without closeup video like this.
Pickslanting
Because of this nearly parallel orientation, you might not always see any pickslanting when you look at wrist players up close. For example, when you look at Andy’s DSX form, it’s hard to determine which way the pick is slanted, if at all:
One of the reasons for this of course is that Andy is using an escape of only ten degrees. So any pickslanting would be slight to begin with. But in addition to that, Andy is using edge picking, which can assist in smoothing out the motion even if he holds the pick perfectly vertically, as he appears to be doing here.
So when the escape is shallow, you can avoid the garage spikes problem with very little pickslanting if you throw in some edge picking. This trick also works in reverse, letting you perform Mike Stern-style ten-degree USX motion with almost no pickslant at all:
Conversely, if you use a more vertical escape angle, and especially if you use very little edge picking, you will need to dial in some pickslanting to correct for the attack. In this respect, David Grier’s form is obvious. Thanks to his pronated forearm, David’s deviation wrist motion escapes at around 30 degrees. And he uses almost no edge picking at all, preferring to play the pick flat against the string. So he requires an equal amount of upward pickslanting, about 30 degrees, to ensure smoothness:
So looking for a pickslant is not a reliable way of knowing what kind of wrist motion a player is making. We saw this with elbow motion, and the same is true again with wrist motion. If you do see pickslanting, that is often a good indicator of escape motion. But if you don’t see pickslanting, that doesn’t really tell you anything, since most wrist players use motions with shallow escape.
DBX Motion
USX and DSX motions like Mike’s, Andy’s, and David’s are single escape, so they move along a diagonal where only one pickstroke escapes. But the wrist can also generate curved DBX motions where both pickstrokes escape, and it can do it with no assistance from other joints.
The amazing Molly Tuttle uses a pronated form similar to what David uses, except this time, she uses the wrist to generate a double escape picking motion:
Molly’s motion escapes at each end of the picking motion, but not by much. As with other wrist motions we’ve looked at, the escape is shallow, maybe only 10 or 15 degrees. In a sense, you can think of Molly’s DBX motion as simply the escape part of Andy’s downstroke glued together with the escape part of Mike’s upstroke. Neither of those motions escapes the strings by very much, so even when stitched together to create Molly’s motion, it’s really not obvious that the motion is curved until you slow it down and watch for the escapes.
In general, when you don’t see any motion in the forearm or upper arm, and only motion in the hand, then it’s a good bet you’re looking at some form of wrist motion. If you can recognize the subtle differences in form that we’ve looked at here, then you may be able to guess which escape type you’re seeing, even without close-up video. Of course, knowing what phrase someone is playing also helps. If you hear arpeggio picking patterns like Molly’s, and you don’t see any motion in her forearm, you can be pretty sure that a double escape wrist motion is what’s responsible.
The forearm joint generates a curved picking motion by spinning the forearm on its axis.
Elbow motion moves the entire forearm and hand back and forth, but it’s not the only motion mechanic to do so. The forearm joint also does this, just in a different plane, through a process of rotational motion:
Even though joints like the elbow trace a curved path when they move, we reserve the term “rotation” for forearm motion because it actually causes the arm to spin along its axis.
USX Motion
One of the most famous examples of a purely rotational forearm motion mechanic is Eddie Van Halen’s famous tremolo technique:
In Eddie’s technique, the arm and hand are seemingly fused together, spinning in space as one unit. This is a textbook depiction of forearm joint rotation.
It’s hard to see from this perspective, but Eddie’s forearm rotation is actually a USX motion, where downstrokes move toward the body of the guitar, and upstrokes move away from it, into the escape zone. If we switch the camera angle, this becomes much clearer:
The escape trajectory of Eddie’s forearm motion is super obvious here, with upstrokes pulling way up into the air above the strings. So is the downward pickslant this motion requires:
Eddie’s forearm motion is curved, but it’s not DBX because only the upstroke actually escapes the strings. When it does this, the escape angle is more vertical, making it easy to see. So is the downward pickslant, which is greatest at the top of the upstroke thanks to the fact that the arm is rotating.
This curved motion path, which lifts up and out of the strings in almost vertical fashion, is maintained even when we straighten out the wrist and perform the motion while resting on the bridge. Here’s metal professor Joe Stump’s forearm-driven picking motion:
Technically, there may be a way to orient the forearm so that it produces a motion other than USX. But even if it’s possible, it’s not common. In this respect, the forearm joint is similar to the elbow in that, when it operates on its own, it is mainly capable of only one type of escape motion — in this case, USX.
Forearm-Wrist Motion
Eddie Van Halen’s flying tremolo is a textbook example of the forearm operating independently, but some of the most common forearm mechanics in picking are actually blends that include the forearm and wrist working together.
The most famous of these is the Gypsy picking technique, which utilizes a flexed or bent wrist orientation with a 35-degree downward pickslant. Here’s what Joscho Stephan’s form looks like up close:
Because the wrist flex positions the pick farther away from the point of rotation, Joscho’s technique generates a wide gently curved motion path:
Although this motion path still exhibits the characteristic curvature of USX forearm motion, that curvature is now flatter thanks to the introduction of wrist motion. The overall path is closer to a straight line, just on a tilt:
Specifically, in forearm-wrist blended motion, the forearm joint is responsible for the picking motion from the top of the upstroke until the moment when the pick hits string. That’s why this portion of the motion path is curved. If you look at at the forearm during this part of the motion, you can actually see it turning:
But once the pick hits the string, it’s a different story. The motion flattens out, and the pick simply travels forward until it hits, or rest strokes against the next string. If you look at the forearm while this happens, you’ll notice that it’s no longer moving. So the forearm joint isn’t responsible for this part of the motion path — the wrist is. This cooperation, or coupling between the two joints is seamless, and hard to feel, even when you’re the one doing it.
When you view a motion down the strings, and you can see the forearm moving sometimes and not others, and part of the motion path looks curved while another part looks straight, those are good clues that you may be looking at a blend of forearm and wrist motion.
The elbow is probably the simplest of all the motion mechanics. It’s just a hinge that moves in two directions, flexion and extension.
It’s powered by the muscles in the upper arm including the biceps for flexion, and the triceps for extension:
Elbow Form
Setting up for elbow motion usually involves one of two distinct forms that you can learn to recognize, even from a distance. Brendon Small uses the straight form, where the forearm rests on the guitar body, and the forearm and wrist point in the same direction:
Picking pioneer Steve Morse also has an elbow technique for which he uses the straight form. Both Steve’s form and Brendon’s form use a pronated forearm, where the thumb side of the forearm makes contact with the guitar body more so than the pinky side:
From this camera angle, you can see the slight shadow beneath Steve’s arm. That’s the pronated orientation causing a very slight air gap on the pinky side of the arm.
Nylon string maestro Bill Hall uses the radial offset form, where the wrist bends slightly in the direction of thumb, in the radial direction. This makes the forearm and wrist look a little like a hockey stick:
Hyperpicker John Taylor also uses the radial offset form:
Elbow Motion
The defining characterstic of elbow motion is that the forearm and the hand move together as a unit:
Thanks to the way you have to reach over the guitar’s body while the shoulder remains behind it, this causes elbow motion to move slightly away from the guitar body on downstrokes. But you’d be very unlikely to notice this from the typical audience perspective, especially if you didn’t know it was happening.
Instead, when you view elbow motion from Magnet perspective, you’ll spot the angled path of DSX motion right away, where upstrokes point between the strings and downstrokes point into the escape zone:
Pickslanting
The escape trajectory is shallow, about 10 or 15 degrees relative to the strings. Very often you will find that elbow pairs with a similarly shallow upward pickslant. Here’s John Taylor’s 15-degree upward pickslant:
If edge picking is used and the grip is adjusted to accomodate this, there may be no appearance of pickslant at all. So try not to worry too much about looking for the slant of the pick to identify elbow motion. Instead, observing the macro elements of the forearm and wrist moving together is the simplest way.
As for confirming the DSX motion path, closeup video works best for that. But familiarity with the phrase being played is also helpful. If every string change is a downstroke, that’s usually an indication that DSX motion is being used.
Other Motion Types
The elbow doesn’t have rotational capability like the shoulder joint, or multi-axis capability like the wrist, so it can’t change the way it moves to create other escape types. It is effectively a DSX-only motion mechanic. However, just because you see motion at the elbow joint doesn’t mean it’s the only joint that’s moving. Zakk Wylde and Tommy Emmanuel are both USX players who appear to use motion at the elbow joint, but we suspect that these are actually blends, with another joint such as the forearm or perhaps even the rotator cuff pitching in to create the upstroke escape.
Hyperpicking is a form of elbow motion with a distinct pattern of muscle activation capable of extremely fast motion.
In hyperpicking mode, named after the 1991 instructional video of the same name, the elbow can attain picking speeds in excess of 300 beats per minute sixteenth notes:
Our laboratory tests with hyperpicking master John Taylor at the Unversity of North Carolina resulted in the fastest human motion ever measured in a laboratory setting:
The secret ingredient of hyperpicking appears to be activation of the brachioradialis muscle, which is the bulge in John’s upper forearm obscured by medical tape. In hyperpicking technique, the brachioradialis is tensed along with the triceps, creating what players describe as a sense of vibration — or, as John likes to say, the “jiggle”. However unlike anatomical spasms, which are random, when measured via EMG, hyperpicking motion shows regular, uniform tradeoff between the contractions of these two muscle groups:
In other words, even if it may feel somewhat like an automatic vibration in actual practice, hyperpicking is actually a controlled joint motion. The regular nature of the motion is supported by John’s ability to synchronize it, measuring out uniform semiquavers even at extreme tempos where notes are no longer individually audible: