Jake Eddy's Awesome Double Escape Technique
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- Опубліковано 26 лют 2022
- Here's a clip of our upcoming talk with the awesome Jake Eddy ( / thejakeeddy ). In this short excerpt from the fiddle tune "Billy In The Low Ground", we're taking a look at Jake's double escape picking motion. When beginners try to learn this motion, they usually consciously try to force the pick into a U-shaped path. This creates an exaggerated bouncy motion that causes arm tension and can't go fast: stringhopping. Instead, when done correctly, you can see just how shallow and flat the semicircle is, barely lifting above the strings at each end of the motion. Understanding what really happens when technique is executed correctly by experts is why sitting down with great players like Jake is such an important learning opportunity for the rest of us. Thanks Jake!
Wow!!! That is a killer technique!! 😱
Man, i am so glad i came across your channel. If i stick with your lessons I'm going to be a hell of a picker by this time next year. Thank you for your lessons brother!
Great stuff as always
Cool seeing you here Jake!!!
Hi Troy, love your stuff. Can you clarify what makes this "not stringhopping"? I understood the explanation for Andy Wood- that he supinates and uses extension only on the downstroke so that the upstroke is pure deviation and gives the extension muscles time to rest. However, it looks like Jake is using the extension muscles on both strokes. It doesn't seem like there's any rotation in the forearm, but maybe his sleeve obscures it. So is it just that his semicircle is so shallow that the muscles don't need to work as hard?
I literally don't understand what the technique being shown is l. It just looks like normal picking.
No problem! The term "alternate picking", which lots of players are familiar with, just refers to any picking motion that moves back and forth. What is lesser known is that there are different types of alternate picking motions, and not all of them can play all phrases. If the pick makes a diagonal motion when viewed up close, or a semicircular one, determines which types of phrases you can play with that motion. Jake's motion is the semicircular one, which we call "double escape". By contrast, Eric Johnson uses one of the diagonal ones, which we call "upstroke escape". You can read about the different types of "escape motion" here ( troygrady.com/primer/picking-motion/escape-motion/ ).
Yep--you and me both.
@@troygrady thanks Troy!
Ah man. The pin of shame! lol
@@ytmndan Ha! Sorry, I can unpin. Just figured a lot of folks will have the same question.
I now have a name for what I've been working on! I've been trying to do this with my picking over the last couple of years.
Me too. I've been calling it "strumming on one string".
Jeff Loomis used the same technique. Watch his instructional videos from 12-13 years ago and when he plays slowly he does the double escape motion.
Nice
Hi Troy! Another great vid! Would Joe Bonamassa be a double escape player? His lines dont really favor a down or up slant; does he float above the plane of strings like this, in a semicircle?
Joe looks like a primary downstroke escape player, which is why you mostly see him do fast pentatonics starting on an upstroke. Yes, he occasionally makes upstroke string changes, by temporarily throwing in some other motion here and there. But I have not seen him do continous double escape motion for whole phrases, and I haven't seen him do continuous upstroke escape motion for whole phrases. He's just mixing his primary escape with an occasional helper motion of another type. Note also that the "slant" is not really what we're looking at here. Jake appears to have a slight upward pickslant, but his motion is double escape. It's the motion that influences the lines players choose to play, whether or not they're aware of it.
@@troygrady Thank you! I haven't checked in on your amazing lessons in a while, and the Yngwie and EJ lessons I bought from your site still keep me busy (and are. in my opinion the best tuition on picking EVER); so the new terms like "double escape" are new to me and will definitely research some more! Again, thanks for the comprehensive response Troy! God bless and stay safe!
Gnarly.
Maybe that's what I do without thinking about it. I tried both up und down slanting, but I don't like to construct licks on a rigid picking style. Does it make sense to change a lick that sounds good only to have an odd or even number of notes per string only to make it easier to pick?
It is a misconception about improvisation that certain picking styles are "rigid" and you have to "construct" phrases to fit them. Yngwie didn't plan out his phrases, and has no awareness of favoring certain lines over others, even though that is what he does. The process is automatic, like language. You follow complex grammatical rules when you speak, but you do it automatically. And even though other languages may have more flexibility or more vocabulary than your native language (whatever it is), most people have no feeling of being limited in what they can say in their native language.
I call that the little bounce technique (its actually a tight arc) and quite a few flat pickers do it. I naturally gravitated to this in my playing also but didnt even realize it. I just could feel it freed me up moving between the strings. Never really analyzed it. I think this happens to many players the more time they play and need to play fast by process of time they figure things out.
I think Trey Hensley uses this too. It’s like he’s floating around bouncing on the strings.
Благодарю вас за трансляцию прекрасной техники игры на гитаре.
No problem. Thanks for watching!
Your bridge's nut had a convex shape, but my yamaha cx40 had a straight shape. Is that influence to this technique?
Does he have his index finger + pick simultaneously touching the string on every stroke? The sound is interesting, really.
Index finger could be a depth gage to keep him from digging in too deep, also to feel and keep the arc of the pickstoke centered directly above the string...I've experimented with this type of stroke.
Is flat picking, flat hybrid picking & double escape all the same thing?
Flat picking is a general term which just means using a guitar pick instead of your fingers. It's usually used to differentiate between styles of acoustic guitar, especially bluegrass. "Hybrid picking" is a catch-all term meaning any use of pick and fingers together. Double escape is a specific type of alternate picking motion you do with a pick where the pick follows a semicircular motion path. It's most commonly used in bluegrass guitar and classical mandolin. You can read about it here ( troygrady.com/primer/picking-motion/dbx-motion/ ).
@@troygradyExplained perfectly, Thanks 😊
I’m checking out the website very nice 👍
it looks like 2 way pickslanting but on one string, full wrist engaged
Dang !☠️☠️☠️🖖
I've JUST gotten barre chords regylarly consistent ... Now my head is battered ...
- awesome
- yeah
He knows
Thia sounds like he's playing extra notes unecessary to keep the technique right????
So if he was to approach a steve vai song ... Would he add his own notes just so his rythymn can be employed?
0:25 I know I've mentioned this before Mr. Grady - probably once too often :) - but I really would like to see what these slow-downed clips would look like if they had initially been filmed at 60fps.
These clips were filmed at 120fps, so they would look choppy if filmed at 60fps. You're getting a much, much smoother slow motion view of things because of the high frame rate we use in our interviews.
@@troygrady um? ..I don't understand why you have then uploaded them at youtubes standard 30fps (for North America) and 25fps for Europe.
Am I missing some technical point?
Anyway, thanks for all the great research and teaching material you've put up, it really has been a huge help.
120 frames per second, played at 25% speed, like in our videos, is 30 frames per second. When you watch the slow motion sections of our video, you are seeing 30 frames per second played at 30 frames per second - in other words, all the frames we recorded, no more no less. It wouldn't look any smoother at 60fps because there is no more detail to reveal. Final Cut would just export two of every frame, to fill up the remaining empty 30 frames in each second.
@@troygrady Ah, yes! I understand now. So then, to fully utilize youtube's 60fps option one; whilst using slow motion, would need to initially film at 240fps?
Just an Idea, Troy :) Thanks again for your reply
Interesting how he perches entirely on the fleshy "chicken drumstick" of the thumb joint the whole time. No palm blade contact.
This is the "pronated forearm" style of wrist motion, used by Jake, Molly Tuttle, and David Grier. It's one of the "big three" forms of wrist technique, and occurs commonly in bluegrass.
Troy, have you checked out the right hand technique of Stochelo Rosenberg? In this line starting at around 1:17 (ua-cam.com/video/GwhlBOYw2Ms/v-deo.html) he plays 13 notes across four strings but only uses 3 upstrokes to achieve it. Stochelo is a "upstroke escape" player but his ability to uses consecutive downstrokes when going to lower strings (i.g. from B to G strings) and using two downstrokes on the same string when playing ascending phrases is probably the cleanest and most efficient I have ever seen.
I love the Gypsy players, and we've interviewed Joscho Stephan who is a awesome. They are great at double downstrokes but this example shows the limitations. This is a common 212 diminished fingering, and if you try to do this with Gypsy technique, there is only one moment in the line where you actually have to do two actually independent consecutive downstrokes - from the B string to the G string while descending, since the B string only has one note on it. In this case only the B string note sounds, the fourth note on the G isn't being hit here. i.e. The second downstroke isn't happening. If he took this a little bit slower, or maybe tried it a few more times, he'd probably get it. Again, because these guys are great. But Gypsy technique is best for things like the ascending side of this line, which is sweeping. You can do that as fast as you like, with very low errors. Double independent downstrokes will always be problematic at these speeds.
@@troygrady This line from 0:39 - 0:42 (ua-cam.com/video/Vik8P_od3JA/v-deo.html) better illustrates what I was trying to point out in my last comment. Stochelo uses two consecutive downstrokes for the two notes on the D string and right away he does two consecutive downstrokes again for the two notes on the G string when ascending on the diminished arpeggio. I have noticed that only 3 GJ guitarists use this technique: Stochelo, his brother Mozes Rosenberg, and Rocky Gresset. Lots of the other GJ guitarists would alternate pick the notes on the G & D string on the ascending diminished arpeggio. He also uses consecutive downstrokes going from the G to D strings on the descending Bb7 arpeggio before the diminished arpeggio.
@@GianCompuesto Right, I see that. It's basically downstroke sweeping all the time, whenever possible. One sweep ends on a downstroke, next sweep starts on a downstroke, even if it means I have to do two downstrokes in a row. We like to think of Django as being the source of this, but there was a lot of this going on in early 20th century guitar, with players like Eddie Lang and Nick Lucas. The Gypsies just kept doing it. Here's some good footage of Nick Lucas from later on in the '60s, but he's basically doing what you're pointing out, ending one line on a downstroke, then starting over with a downstroke on the same string ( ua-cam.com/video/P3xfSaZU8HY/v-deo.html ).
@@GianCompuesto If you're interested, here's a much longer write up of all these types of downstroke-economy elements, from EJ and Yngwie, to Joscho, to Nick Lucas, George Benson, and even Wes Montgomery, who was also a downstroke economized player, just with this thumb ( troygrady.com/primer/picking-motion/dwps-economy/ ).
@@troygrady Thanks for the Nick Lucas clip. Very cool to see that in a non-GJ context. What amazes me is the speed and ease at which Stochelo pulls off the technique. I have been working on a similar line for weeks now and I am not even close to 75% of the speed. I imagine that one reason for doing this is that by playing downstrokes it helps the sound project more on an acoustic guitar compared to an upstroke.
Thick strings! Damn those 13s?
Yes! We talked about this, he actively dislikes running 12s.
Is that because the thicker strings help push the pick back up with his motion?
Want to really be impressed? Watch this at double speed
I'm guessing there is a neurological reason .. but why .. is it difficult to slow something down once you can play it fast?? .. a video on the subject would be interesting.
To be honest, I haven't noticed this. In our experience working with players on our forum, we have gotten the best results by having them experiment until they find a picking motion they can do quickly and easily first. Once they have that, they can slow it down a little and work on accuracy. The slowing down part isn't usually a problem. This approach produces much better results than trying to go really slow and get all the notes right, since going slow doesn't really guarantee that your technique is actually correct.
Thanks for your insight Troy .. your "starting with speed' approach has helped me a ton .. but for instance .. I've often noticed a player like George Lynch is unable to slow down what he's doing and teach it .. I'm guessing that it's because slowing down requires a different technique .. as you say.
That's the only way i do it. Flat picking .
Don’t get me wrong Jake eddy is an incredible flatpicker and I’m not saying that I can play as fast or well as him… But isn’t this just picking?
There is no such thing as "just" picking. There are actually different categories of alternate picking motions - different shapes that the pick will trace in the air, depending on the joint motion you choose. In Cracking the Code (our channel) we call this phenomenon "escape motion". Here's a free explainer on the different types of alternate picking ( troygrady.com/primer/reference/escape-motion-reference/ ), including some nice shots of players like Molly Tuttle who we have interviewed and filmed. Techncially, all escape motions are "alternate picking", because they all go down and up. But they don't all follow the same path, and this influences their string switching capability. This means that not all escape motions can play all phrases, and not all great players use the same escape motions. This is one of the things that accounts for the apparent divergence in skill between different players. It's why, for example, Molly Tuttle does more high-speed roll patterns than other players - because of her double escape motion. It's complicated!
hey Troy, ever herd of Roy Marchbank? He leaves Vai, Satriani and all the rest in the dust!
His Speed will have your jaw on the floor for MONTHS!!! Seriously, go check him out!
I know you don't mean any disrespective to Satch and Vai, because it's a common turn of phrase. But if I'm being honest, I wish we could step back from the "so-and-so beats so-and-so" mindset a little. I love looking at amazing technique because it's inspiring. But thinking of it like a competition is kind of a downer for me. Great music can be made at all technical levels. It doesn't take impossible chops to play anything on "Surfing With The Alien", but we're all still enjoying it 35 years later.
@@troygrady dude, seriously, I don't mean any disrespect to any of those guys, I love all, but you gotta see this guy's picking technique, it's like hyperspeed! I thought it was sped up when I 1st seen it, then I skyped with him, it's real and it's legit. Look him up
Sorry, yes I know Roy. His picking motion is cool.
These looks like dans dead strings ahahha
I feel you just cant play good grass guitar unless you have a fat country boy hand