upstroke picking, Romane

BluesBop Harry

Jazzaferri wrote:

Thanks for the insightful post Harry..... the You tube ref I found very useful.

Glad to help.
The really cool advantage of GP is you get more volume and tone out per energy in. All it takes is gravity and the weight and natural movement of your hand and wrist to trigger a full bodied note out of your guitar. Almost no effort at all.
The downside is that consecutive string changes from high to low are a lot harder to play fast than with a backward sweep.

For fast descending consecutive downstrokes the bounce is the key: by the time the pick hits the string the wrist should already be on it's way bouncing up. See, the movement for a downstroke isn't over after resting on the next string... the hand goes back again to prepare for the next stroke. Your wrist should do this naturally when relaxed.
For accuracy, adjust your angle so you're picking into the top of the guitar. When you get it right it's almost difficult to miss.
Best of luck and don't despair you'll get the handle of it soon and it will be worth it.

Jazzaferri

On top of all this great advice and the DVD's my bandmate just dug up his virginal copy of Gypsy picking by Michael Horowitz.

Now I have it all .... except the hours and hours of practice. At least I don't have as big a change as Michael described in his book :shock: .

I figure I should be pretty much there by DFNW .... as long as the pace doesn't get over 60 bpm

Seriously thanks all for your insights and support and again thanks to Hennox for starting this thread ... i hope you got something from it too amigo.

rafapak

I think there is high possibility that Dennis is right. It seems that many gypsies just can't do alternate picking. Maybe alternate picking doesn't work on gj but I think that they never had any chance to check it since they can't do alternate picking. I think we should ask di meola or mclaughlin to play on gypsy guitar and check if alternate picking works as far as gj is concerned

rafapak

dennis wrote:

if it makes anyone feel better, some of the gypsies that i've worked with (i'm not gonna name names) can't alternate pick to serve their lives, when i showed them that it was possible to start a new string with an upstroke, they flipped hahaha they couldn't even play a simple alternate picking line without messing up....

so it goes to show that any technique is as easy/hard as you want it to be....

stephane wrembel has a great saying : "nothing is hard; just unfamiliar"...

yes, it seems you are right . they can't alternate pick and that's why they play what they can play. maybe we should ask mclaughlin or al di meola to play play gypsy jazz on gypsy guitars and check if alternate picking would work in gj