Upstroke

NylonDave

mmaddox wrote: »

I am a classical player and understand rest strokes, but the angle and motion of upstrokes has me puzzled. If you angle the pick to strike upstrokes at a 45 degree angle away from the sound hole pointing down, it seems this would be a lot of wrist action, especially in tremelo. I am a newbie and this might seem uninformed, but that is my question.

Here goes nothing..

Imagine you are turning a door knob clockwise with your right hand. that is the motion we are looking for. The body works well in arcs and spirals and poorly in straight lines.

Take that basic idea of that rotation and refine it thus. If you bend your wrist a little (don't worry about this being wrong, a bent wrist only causes problems when fixed or stiff ) then imagine a line from the thumb/plectrum to the elbow joint. On this line you will find the virtual centre of gravity/rotation of the arm when you are doing tremolo.

If you can play with as much rotation as possible and as little sawing/up down as is necessary then you will be mechanically efficient as there is very very little net work done. Check out Eddie Van Halen playing tremolo, or Joscho or a Flamenco guitarist playing abanico or a balalika player or ud player or anything but someone who learned to pick from eighties rock magazines.

It is the same for rhythm and single strings.
You can do it all with your thumb playing rest strokes and adding only the minimum of upstrokes to make your lines achievable.


On the other hand you can always muddle through with your classical technique and maybe steal something back from the pick guys, don't know why they should be bossin' over us.

(still uploading at 13.23 gmt, give it an hour )

rgrice

@mmaddox probably developed his own style after waiting for some advice or just quit GJ.

whancock

Wow, that video is a revelation. I'm just getting going with the rest stroke, and am following a lot of Joscho's videos. I never realized until I saw it this way the 45 degree pick angle. It actually makes the rest strokes make more sense to me. Michael, I just got your book this week, so I've only breezed through it - it's not that I'm not listening to you...