What Kind of Picker Are You - Economy or Alternate?

[ElectricVoodoo]

Both, but to this day, I continue to struggle with alternate picking at higher speeds.

 

[errrrrl]

Where's the down pick only option ?

yup

 

[MistaGuitah]

I have been mostly a economy, even though I thought that I was alternate picking. I've been watching the Troy G videos and trying to improve. The closest that I can say my own picking style is, is Joe Stump. That video was like watching my self. My old guitar teacher said that I had Vinnie Moore's technique (I wish), in that I picked from the elbow.

In the last six months, I've worked on not planting my pinky, and strictly picking from the wrist. It has helped immensely on the alternate stuff, but I still revert back to elbow on the really fast stuff.

Yep, same here. Joe Stump is pretty much the model of picking mechanics I follow.

 

[rstites]

I had to go look up economy picking, but I guess that's mostly what I do. I don't really think about it, but just go with whatever works for the passage I'm playing. I don't feel all that dogmatic about picking style. Sometimes, I sweep, sometimes I alternate an entire passage, other times I change things up throughout. At this point, I don't really consciously think about it.

 

[MistaGuitah]

I can't say that I completely sold out on economy picking at this point because I still practice my alternate picking technique every day. This seems necessary until I get another solid year of economy muscle memory. What happened before was I tinkered with economy picking for a couple of years, then went all in 100% for another year, but found that I lost articulation and timing because it was an abrupt transition.

The speed and ease of economy picking make it easy to adopt, but the mechanics of it have to be approached carefully. In alternate picking, pick strokes are uniform, but economy picking requires a leading extension of the pick stroke in string crossing. If your alternate picking articulation isn't emphasized, then your outside picking will not be as efficient as your inside picking. This is because inside picking is easier with economy picking since the transitions kind of push right through and sort of almost rests on the next string, whereas alternate picking crosses strings with outside picking every other string.

This is not the case for a lot of people who seem to have natural right-hand fluidity overall. Other people, like myself who use more of a side-to-side rotation of the wrist as opposed to an up-down wrist movement have a harder time economy picking with articulation since the up-down wrist movement and index-thumb movement lend better to economy picking because of the smaller inside picking movements they're capable of. This sounds complicated but it took a lot of practice, frustration, and hours of watching economy pickers like Joe Stump and Rick Graham to figure out. This same aspect of mechanics is also why some players like Eric Johnson and Yngwie use unique techniques to cross strings. Yngwie uses a lot of index-thumb movement and Eric rotates his wrist, so Yngwie uses pull-off's and slides to be able to change strings always on a downstroke while Eric utilizes some economy picking on downstrokes. Doug Rappaport has a video specifically addressing Eric's technique.

Anyway it's interesting, but if guitar was easy to master then everyone would be doing it... Wait, unless you start them young like the million youtube kids nowdays that just blows everyone else away.

 

[Rex Rocker]

Where's the down pick only option ?

+1

 

[MistaGuitah]

Where's the down pick only option ?

+1

You'd have to ask James Hetfield about that.

 

[SoooRad]

I do a lot of alternate, and a lot of hybrid. Probably from Playing as much acoustic and electric in the early days

 

[thegame]

Nose

 

[psychodave]

Economy as much as possible. I’m left handed and play righty, so fretting comes easy and picking was always a challenge. I try to minimize picking as much as possible without playing much legato.

 

[alan67]

Nose

Dammit, I was gonna say that

 

[Tone Monster]

How about not worth a fuck option/Hetfield wanna be?

 

[ke2]

Extremely un-economical. It's possibly my biggest weakness as a player. I'm too ham-fisted.

 

[dstroud]

im an alt picker guy. i will do a sweep arpeggio if its 3 strings of more, but mostly alt.

 

[mdc1mdc11]

alternative, economy, and hybrid (more of this recently). Use everything you can to improve including legato. Nothing worse than a boring static sound.

 

[Metlupass2]

I'm a really good nose picker

 

[skullfxr]

You could say that I am an ecomonical alternative picker. Lol