Picking from the elbow

[blackjack]

Some people including MAB have said its fine to pick using your elbow instead of your wrist. Here is why I believe it's impossible to alternate pick cleanly using only elbow:

Suppose you are playing a lick where the first note is on the G string and the second note of the lick is on the B string. Alternate picking is downstroke, upstroke, downstroke, upstroke, etc. If you play the first note of that lick with a downstroke and you're using your elbow only to move the pick, how are you going to make the pick rise above the B string when you are crossing over it to prepare for the upstroke on the B string? Because unlike the wrist, you can't move your elbow in an upwards motion while also moving it in a lateral motion because of how the elbow joint is constructed - you can't move it upwards and laterally at the same time.

[Carlos Lobo]

You're absolutely right on your analysis, but MAB didn't say you should use your elbow instead of your wrist. What he said was, and I quote:

"People ask: Do you play with your elbow or your wrist? Both. It's not one or the other. I have an extremely natural wrist motion. (...) Who cares if you use your elbow or your wrist? It's unimportant. The only thing that's important is to minimize the motion of your thumb and your index finger."

[blackjack]

Jan 5, 2015 16:10:16 GMT -6 Carlos Lobo said:

You're absolutely right on your analysis, but MAB didn't say you should use your elbow instead of your wrist. What he said was, and I quote:

"People ask: Do you play with your elbow or your wrist? Both. It's not one or the other. I have an extremely natural wrist motion. (...) Who cares if you use your elbow or your wrist? It's unimportant. The only thing that's important is to minimize the motion of your thumb and your index finger."

That's true. MAB said he uses both. I was explaining why if you do use elbow you're still going to need wrist or finger motion too. Some players believe in using only elbow and I simply dscribed how it would be impossibly to be perfectly clean using only elbow. If one were to use only elbow, the pick would not move in an upwards arc over the adjacent string but would instead bump into the string which is only desirable in economy or sweep picking where you aren't trying to move the pick over a string before striking it. These players that say they use only elbow are either creating unwanted string noise by bumping into the adjacent string, or they are using wrist or fingers along with elbow without noticing they are doing it. Because to think a player could play a fast run where he has to first move his forearm upwards high enough to clear the adjacent string, and then start moving the forearm laterally to cross over the adjacent string, is absurd. It would take so much extra time to make those two separate motions with the forearm (moving it at the elbow joint) that playing very fast would simply be impossible.

[blackjack]

BTW, back when Chris Impellitteri was playing his absolute fastest (although somewhat sloppy) did he claim to be using elbow, wrist or both? How about Rusty Cooley? Does he claim to use elbow, wrist, or both?

[Carlos Lobo]

That's a good question. To be honest, I never payed much attention if I use elbow, wrist or both until everybody started talking about it. And I didn't pay attention to it because if what I was doing worked, why bother wasting time studying my movements just out of curiosity? I don't know what all those guitarists claim. To me, you're absolutely right. You just can't play fast only using your elbow. I actually just tried it and I found myself using my wrist unintentionally, because I'm used to doing that. Maybe some guitarists make some statements about the way they play and they don't realize that they are actually not doing what they say they are doing.