Test Drive Van Halen-Style Wrist Motion!

NOTE: This lesson is about Eddie's *wrist* technique, i.e. hand motion, not his wonderful rotating forearm motion technique! We cover that in a separate lesson in the Pickslanting Primer. Sorry for the confusion.

[troygrady]

Still not ready to talk about HIM in the past tense.

[BigPhi]

Anyone else just randomly flailing their right hand in the air right now?

[tim]

This guy is the bomb for teaching speed! This technique really clicked with me and the trick to get the feel by scratching against a table was something I hadn’t even considered before. My goal is to play the Bark at the Moon solo and this has just unlocked getting up to speed for me.

[MileHighGrowler]

I love seeing these different methods. When I first started watching these videos of different styles I thought "riiight, so all I've learned is that you can make it work for you a lot of different ways. There is no one way." But as I spent more time with these and played around with them, I've realized that while it's true there are many ways to skin the proverbial cat, most of us learned one way and never even thought to TRY a different method, no matter how silly it seemed or looked. So thanks for inspiration to break outside the box and continue making the right hand picking method a journey!

[nitishnadarajan]

Your research and ways of explaining are unparalleled.
Bow down to you.

[timhouse]

Live Without A Net! On repeat through my childhood :) Love Eddies tone and playing on that

[МаксимХайрун]

Troy, i wonder how old were you, when you started playing guitar? An interesting thing i've noticed throughout your videos is that you are able to learn basically all the motions that you show us and push them to a level of mastery. And this fact is extremely inspiring, because you're able to master these new complicated motions at a reasonably mature age. This also leads to a question how old were you, when you got your basic shreddy speedy chops? Hope, my English is not too bad :)

[xeroblade]

Your analysis is out of this world. It's like watching a genius, analyze another genius, and making it feel much more understandable for us viewers. The next step, though, is for us to put all the learnings to action. 😁👌

[mandanglelow]

I think if Eddie were here he would say, do it in whatever way gets you to where you want to go. His whole thing was doing things his way. It's like the old adage that says "If you take the same road every day you'll never get to a different destination".

[mariamarin]

Absolutely revolutionary!!! a genuis! a virtuoso! a game changer!! Technically the most innovator!! Mr Eddie Van Halen!
Thank you for give us this important master class of one of his techniques, !!

[dougarnold]

Thanks.

When I was a young guitar player back in the eighties I suspected there was something about his picking technique that made him sound so good...but I never sorted out the details.
I love YT vids like this. Nowadays, all the guitar players are putting this stuff together. 👍

[georgebintner]

Eddie used his middle finger and thump to pick so his index finger could do hammer on etc. I saw him live at the stage many times being 60 now he was number 1 for me

[TrojanBus]

Amazing wrist technique at 5mins, 43. where Eddie reaches for his cigarette.

[thenerdybowtie]

another great video. I started really taking guitar seriously about a year ago, and your videos have definitely sped up the process of learning these much harder licks

[SomethingImpromptu]

I really do have a tremendous amount of respect for the fact that you’d devote yourself to systematizing our understanding of picking technique. ✌️

[bradpresson]

Finally a follow up video to this. Thank you so much, Troy!

[MrRickPanick]

Finally, someone on YouTube that is showing the correct way it’s done! Thank you, man!

[frishdaw]

Was just looking at your last upload and wondering when we’d see another. Great stuff

[tillschulz]

Most amazing stuff as always; improved hugely as a player and guitar teacher, thanks to this channel.

[TarnTarn-zvcp]

Troy, your vids are just awsome, you and your unique lessons/guests/ camera angles have brought playing on no end, thanks bro.