Stochelo Picking Technique

swingmitchg

Hey guys,

I just joined the Rosenberg Academy and checked out the technique videos. Stochelo says that he uses free picking strokes not rest strokes when doing consecutive downstrokes in a row. Say going from 1 note on the e string to 1 on the b string then 1 on the g string. I thought that when doing downstrokes you do rest strokes the whole time? I am confused. Anybody know if this is just something that he does in his own style or is this typical?

Thanks!

Ahab

It's so you can get the speed. You just need to "bounce" the pick off the string so that you have it primed for the next string. If you dig in and rest the pick in the string you have to travel twice the distance to get to the string down below. As you practice this technique you will become more fluent, but it's a hard one to master, so keep at it! Michael Horowitz's book Gypsy Picking available from this website has lots of picking exercises to get you going. I would also recommend that you try and learn some waltzes like Django's Waltz for example, as they are a very good way of learning the gypsy picking technique, as well as being beautiful pieces of music of course. Another good study piece for this technique would be Django's famous solo in his version of I'll See You In My Dreams where this technique is used a lot. Hope this helps.