How Important is Picking Direction?

[ottobahn]

I took lessons from a Berkeley grad a few years ago. He would write out tabs for me to practice and would include little picking direction symbols that indicate whether I am supposed to stroke upwards or downwards.

 

Much of it was counter-intuitive to me: and made difficult passages significantly more difficult. I also questioned the importance of following his picking directions. I discontinued lessons for monetary reasons and never resumed.

 

Do any of you guitar teachers put upstroke and downstroke symbols on the tabs you assign your students? If so, are you a firm believer in the importance of following them precisely?

[c+t in b]

its more for being able to keep time while picking. a 4/4 passage that is all eighth notes, should be played

 

1+2+3+4+

DUDUDUDU

 

Everything else is a derivation of that. 16th notes would be like this

 

1e+a 2e+a 3e+a 4e+a

DUdu DUdu DUdu DUdu

[Poparad]

As posted above, picking largely has to the with the rhythm of the notes. The idea is to always keep your hand moving in time with the music, and to pick the notes when they occur with an up or a down, depending on their place in the beat.

 

When you're playing single notes (as opposed to strumming chords), sometimes awkward string changes merit making exceptions to this rule, but a vast majority of the time it's best to always alternate in time with the music. The excepting cases are are really only when you're playing very fast groups of notes without any pauses (or at least with very few), and lots of string changes, or at least some large string changes.

[jeremy_green]

It depends what the part is. If the intention of the line is to practice picking then yes definitely. If it is just a line again it depends on the feel you are after. Many times I use the pick for accents with the rest of the notes being hammered or pulled to create different textures.

 

Sometimes you NEED to pick the pattern a certain way for the utmost conservation of movement.

 

Picking is a very personal thing ... although most of the time I alternate pick pretty strictly. I never put it on a students page unless it is a critical aspect of learning the line

 

Make sense?

[Alex_DeLarge]

I try to mantain alternate picking as much as possible, but some patterns make it hard to do.

[1001gear]

At the finer levels of performance, players often distinguish strictly between all kinds of options; fingerings, bowing, sticking, breathing, etc, etc...
Reason being, almost any difference will almost always generate an audible difference. Piano and string lessons usually get on this from day one.

[TrickyBoy]

For me it totally depends. Take a song like Master of Puppets by Metallica. I pick the opening riff ddu ddu ddu. Or Wasted by Def Leppard (from On Through The Night for those of you in the cheap seats) - same picking pattern ddu ddu. Ramones rhythm stuff only sounds right picked all down. etc. etc.

If you had a Berkeley teacher providing you a specific picking pattern, my initial response is DO IT. There's definitely a method to the madness. But in general, picking is definitely a feel thing.

[ottobahn]

I mostly alternate pick. What I think he was trying teach me was conservation of movement between strings.

 

What always tripped me up is the fact that I had to up-stroke if the next note was on the string above and down-stroke if it was on the string below. Of course, the following stroke would be down and up, respectively.

 

I always found it difficult to think that quickly about everything I am doing while I am playing enough that I could plan an up or down stroke when switching to another string--while keeping rhythm and while mixing in hammer-ons and pull-offs.

 

I'm admittedly not all that disciplined.

[c+t in b]

I mostly alternate pick. What I think he was trying teach me was conservation of movement between strings. What always tripped me up is the fact that I had to up-stroke if the next note was on the string above and down-stroke if it was on the string below. Of course, the following stroke would be down and up, respectively.

 

 

hmm... was he trying to teach you economy picking? that certainly isn't the "berklee way" as it is now

 

economy picking has its +'s and -'s. i only use it when its absolute necessary. for everything else its alt picking

[jonfinn]

This is an example of a piece I use where I've got picking motions indicated.
Pick direction is meaningful for certain effects and/or techniques.

Typically i ask the student to learn it exactly. Of course they can make changes if it's warranted.

I'm not a fan of the "my way or the highway" approach, but it's really good for your musical depth to push your limits to really find the right way to play something.

To answer your question: in many cases, pick direction makes almost no difference. But if you seek to master the instrument, I think it's about being thorough enough. It really depends on what you're trying to do.

[Space Pickle]

Don't think it really matters. Just pick whatever way sounds the best.

I like to sweep when crossing strings ("economy picking", although I never heard that term until I started reading guitar forums) and alt-pick when on the same string but slur onto the downbeat. For double-time I like to pick once per string.

[Li Shenron]

When my first guitar teacher started teaching me to play solos (blues/rock style), he used tab books that indeed explicitly showed where to uppick and where to downpick. I think it was a great thing when teaching a beginner. Those transcriptions did not tell you to alternate all the time. A lot of classic pentatonic phrases (esp. with bending and legatos mixed in) require you something different than alternate picking.

The point is, the "best" picking solution depends on both the tone/dynamic you want to achieve, and on maximizing the comfort of playing it.

You may argue that if you're perfectly trained at delivering exactly the same sound with uppicks and downpicks, then you could just bother about comfort. However nobody really achieves perfect equivalence of results in both picking direction... you can easily train yourself to get the same sound when playing "normal" notes, but as soon as you include bending and artificial harmonics (of varying degrees), it's almost impossible, but this is not necessarily bad if you start using those fine differences as a conscious device to improve your expression.

The only really important thing about picking direction of each note, is that you are consistent between different playing of the same song, i.e. when you play a certain song you should make sure you do always the same picking of your choice. Doing the contrary i.e. leave picking "open" to do whatever comes on the spot, means to have less control and carries a high risk of mistakes.