Widdly Widdly Widdly Widdly Part II - Biomechanics

Widdly Widdly Widdly Widdly Part 2

So, after the last blog I thought I’d post some of my thoughts about actually playing fast – Troy Grady of Cracking the Code was kind enough to read the last post and offer his thoughts – one of which was that loud fast rock guitar is back in vogue again in the US – at least to the extent that Avenged Sevenfold are selling heaps of albums. We had Dragonforce in the UK a few years back….

So, what advice for guitarists working on speed? Well, bearing in mind that I am not Rusty Cooley or Stochelo Rosenberg, here are my thoughts. For my part, speed is a very real consideration for a guitar player wishing to develop their playing as a gypsy jazz lead guitarist. This is a virtuosic style, and not just because of the improvisation. Here’s an example of what an accomplished gypsy jazz guitar player might reasonably expected to cope with (as opposed to the extreme end of the envelope technically.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlxTJewuW0c

I am on my way to executing this piece at this tempo, and will post a video when I am happy with it. Working on this and other fast and fancy material has led me to this conclusion:

Speed/‘Technique’  = Good Biomechanics + Accurate Subdivision

OK into the specifics - this will get super nerdy very quick, but if you are the kind of person who wants to play super fast on the guitar I doubt this will put you off.

Good Biomechanics

Biomechanics is a fancy word to refer to the way you play the instrument – I’ll adopt it from Troys’s website as I think it is specific and clear as a term. We could use the term technique, but technique often gets confused with the result – fast, fluid playing, something I call ‘technique’ in quotes.

In fact it is possible to have great ‘technique’ in this sense and bad biomechanics – a classic example would by Yngwie Malmsteen in the ‘80s. He managed to give himself career threatening Carpal Tunnel syndrome. This points to something wrong with the way he played – gypsy jazz and flamenco guitarists, for example, can manage similar speed and articulation with acoustic instruments and play this way for years and years with no problems.

Biomechanics for pick technique can be broken down into two elements – the kind of stroke you are making and how you make it. The first (economy, alternate, cross picking etc) are much more discussed and understood than the latter so I won’t talk about them here: you can google them! IMHO all these picking patterns are all available (more or less) with the right biomechanics. If the second element is not mastered, however, the student will always struggle.

A great article on the second point can be found here. This was written by Tuck Andress and is required reading for anyone serious about developing their pick technique. However, it is also a little confusingly written and doesn’t include gypsy jazz technique, so I will add my own thoughts.

Rather than go too much into specifics, I will cover some schools of thought that 'do the work for you.' Setting aside the details of when you do an upstroke or a downstroke, there are to my knowledge four clear and well described schools of picking in common use (Andress covers more). 

Considerations

• Floating or anchored - is the wrist or hand touching the top of the guitar? If not, it is a floating technique, if it is, it's anchored.
• Pick grip - trad (pick wedged in fist against thumb), lazy (fore finger pad against the thumb), or something else?
• Wrist angle - straight wrist and arm, or bent ('broken'?)
• Where does the pick motion come from - arm, wrist or fingers? How does the wrist move? How does the arm move? What moves it?
• Position – where is the arm?
• Free strokes or rest strokes? Mose guitarists use free strokes. Rest strokes - where the pick comes into contact with the next string after plucking, offers power and positional awareness, which helps with accuracy. (Andress seems not to have considered this in this essay.)
• Teaching materials - how much information is there on the biomechanics?

1. Trad or BMG technique. Andress refers to this as standard style. This was a standard approach for guitarists learning in the 50s and 60s as it was the technique taught in ‘Banjo, Mandolin, Guitar’ or BMG magazine. As used by Steve Morse and Robert Fripp.
2. Electric pick technique. Standard style variation 2 according to Andress. for most electric players. Used by Al Di Meola, Steve Vai and Julian Lage.
3. George Benson technique. A common approach now in jazz land, largely thanks to Andress. Used by Benson (of course), Carlos Santana, Sheryl Bailey and Adam Rogers.
4. ‘Gypsy’ or Oud picking. Standard style variation 1, with rest strokes. Andress seems unaware of the magic ingredient - rest stroke picking - that made this style so reliable and accurate for Django and Joe Pass. Approach mostly associated with gypsy jazz players today. Used invariably by gypsy jazz players and many early jazz players such as Eddie Lang and George Van Eps.

Quick summary in a table:

School	Float or anchored?	Grip	Wrist	Motion	Position	Free or Rest?
1 Trad/BMG	Float	Trad	Straight	Forearm, muscular Rotation of wrist	Arm above strings	Always Free
2 Electric	Anchored (usually above bridge)	Trad or Lazy	Straight	Wrist (side-to-side), fingers	Arm above strings	Almost always Free
3 Benson	Float	Lazy	Bent	Anything, including characteristic oscillation of wrist	Arm usually quite low, arm rotated outward from guitar.	Either, usually Free
4 Gypsy	Float – some light contact with strings and top	Slightly lazy trad – thumb crosses forefinger in an ‘X’	45 degree bend (Joe Pass used a flatter wrist)	Rotation of wrist, Forearm weight for downstrokes	Arm comes in behind tailpiece – 'in the middle.' (Joe uses a variant here too)	Always rest on down strokes

All of these techniques have advantages and disadvantages, apart from the first, which seems to me to have only disadvantages:

	Advantages	Disadvantages
1) Trad or BMG picking	·      ? ·      Good for those who find music easy, and need a challenge.	·      Really difficult to master. ·      Not crazy about the sound it produces. ·      Everything that can be done this way can be more easily achieved using a different style. ·      Problems with tensing up? Possible tendonitis?
2) Electric picking	·      Control over distorted/loud guitar. ·      Palm muting easily available.	·      Many players have a tense right hand and struggle with fast playing. Poorly understood biomechanics. ·      String skipping of any kind is a problem (e.g. alternate picking arpeggios etc.) ·      Weakest style for acoustic volume and tone, so a poor choice for acoustic playing. Julian Lage gets away with it through witchcraft of some type.
3) Benson picking	·      Very flexible. ·      Good tone and projection. ·      Just listen to George Benson!	·      Few – less tone than Gypsy picking perhaps, but I do know at least one acoustic player, Martin Wheatley, who uses a variant of this approach, and he has no trouble projecting and playing fast.
4) ‘Gypsy’ or Oud picking	·      Absolute relaxation. ·      Unsurpassed power and projection on acoustic guitar. ·      Reliable positioning of hand – unlike 1) because we are using rest strokes and knuckles/fingers to sense where we are. ·      And – consequently, superchops! ·      Well understood and taught in recent years.	·      Not suitable for electric playing – e.g. see Birelli Lagrene, playing fusion here, where he modifies his approach to something more like style 2). Andreas Oberg uses a straight wrist variant on both acoustic and electric sometimes using (eek) style 1. His video is helpful and clear by the way.

You may need to master two or more styles.

Teaching wise, these are my thoughts on the styles:

1) Why do that to yourself?

2) Troy looks like one of the few to be thinking about this biomechanically. Website here, but little info on specifics just yet.

3) A fair bit of info - Andress is a good start. Here's a good video.

4) Loads of info - I can personally recommend these teaching videos, for example.

Your aim here is to play everything with as little effort as possible. My own belief is that Gypsy picking, with a little application, is the actually easiest to master of all the schools. There is a wealth of information on it, clear tutorials and there are dozens in London alone who play this way with aplomb. How hard can it be? :-) I learned the basic picking style in a matter of months, though I am continuing to refine it, and my teaching of it. My feeling is also that by learning the gypsy style you can relax into a fast and accurate type 2 picking without too much hassle. 

I might have a proper go at learning Benson picking, just to see how hard/easy it is. Interestingly, the picking patterns seem the same as those normally used for gypsy picking - i.e. heavy on the downstrokes and not alternate.

Bear in mind gypsy picking here is not referring to the whole 'start a string with a downstroke' thing - you can use gypsy right hand with any picking pattern. That said, it is really, really worth practicing the traditional style.

Part 3 will cover subdivision…. I will also post some self analysis of my own playing of when things don’t quite work and why I think this is so.