"Half gypsy" picking

Jazzaferri

Charles a few years ago ...I made the decision to change to rest stroke picking.....I spent a year a few hours a day feeling like a hamfist but I persevered and boy am I ever glad I did....changed my phrasing and my tone improved significantly. It has taken me til now to get back to speed...but I also started plying sax gain two and a half years ago which had a major impact on my guitar practice time

Maybe an hour a day average over two and a half years and now I cant alternate worth s*** but I can gypsy pick.

Dennis, thanks for that....amazing to get a lot of power out of alternate.

Charles Meadows

Working on Manege with full Gypsy technique tonite. It does sound better this way! But it takes a lot of conctration not to slip back into alternate!

Steveareno

When I watched Denis' YouTube post of Ewan I thought this must be a joke, but I guess it's for real. I just don't get the super fast alternate-picking, shredding style. He's a good player, but when players pick too fast in that style it seems to lose flow. There are exceptions, like Albert Lee who sounds relaxed, now matter how fast he plays. I've recently been drawn back a little into bluegrass and flatpicking, which has a lot of fast alternate picking and feels strange to me. I've always fallen into using mainly downstrokes with the pick resting on the lowest string (closest to my feet) as I play across the board. It just feels more natural and sounds better to me. Occasionally I'll throw in an up stroke when it feels right. Guess I'm mixing it up in a "half gypsy" style?
Swang on,

Jazzaferri

Charles Meadows wrote:

Working on Manege with full Gypsy technique tonite. It does sound better this way! But it takes a lot of conctration not to slip back into alternate!

I spent a few months picking everything downstroke and that really seemed to help break the pattern.

I was slow as molasses at first but now can pick about 240-250 downstrokes per minute. Seems ok until I watch Stochelo and then I am glad that sax is my main instrument.....i can almost keep up with him on that for short periods.