16th note alternate picked rhythms

Eclipse II

I’ve always struggled playing 16th note rhythm phrases that are alternate picked. 

Essentially my pick gets stuck on the upstroke at some point. I find it worse if I’m playing the open A in 16ths. 

Has as anyone else had this problem? How did you overcome it?

Dinosaur David B

You mean stuff like Randy's I Don't Know rhythm?

You doing downward pick slanting?

Eclipse II

Yeah exactly like that. I’ve actually only recently adjusted my pick angle as I discovered that I was an upward pick slanter. 

Still getting stuck though. 

Do you rotate the pick at all so that either the front or rear edge of the pick hit the string?

Dinosaur David B

Troy Grady is the Yoda of pick mechanics. I don't know if this is directly applicable to rhythm work, but you might want to watch this, because it discusses things like the pick getting stuck:



and the whole Cracking the Code series is amazing. 

EugenicScum

I can mostly do this because of having to play this riff that was in my head which became one of my band's songs (  1 minute+ for the faster rhythm part)

I couldn't do it consistently for a few weeks, but then I stuck to the metronome and slowly built up my right hand stamina. In fact we unintentionally played it much faster live and didn't make a single mistake.

Eclipse II

I’ve changed picks to see if that makes a difference and it did. I used to always play with 2mm Jim Dunlop’s but have switched back to Petrucci Jazz IIIs and I’m finding that these combined with DWPS are helping me get stuck less in the strings 

Dr Nick

I prefer it when the tip of the pick is slightly worn down. 

Andy G

I would strongly recommend two-way pick slanting to nail this **Edit - sorry - I saw you already mentioned that you were doing that .

Being able to rotate the angle of the pick so you can hop over the string for the next logical pickstroke without clattering through the string is really important, especially for rhythms. A lot of lead players use economy picking, or they crash right through the string so fast you barely notice it (aka swiping) but neither of these techniques work so well for rhythm playing.