Crosspicking on the Acoustic Guitar in Bluegrass and Old-Time Music

Crosspicking is a technique in which the flatpick is used to pick a group of strings in a pattern that repeats. Typically, three pitches are played repeatedly against a four-pulse rhythm so there is a continual shifting of the pitches and of the accented pulse. The result is something similar to a banjo roll, with notes seeming to come from everywhere. Micky Cochran put it like this: "Crosspicking bombards the listener with a barrage of notes. As is similar to bluegrass banjo, crosspicking guitar doesn t seem to pause for a breather. A continuous succession of notes pours forth establishing the melody while filling in all of the spaces with harmony notes. Not only does the guitar support itself, with spaces filled harmonically, but crosspicking technique works effectively for supporting other lead instruments and vocals." George Shuffler, who spent 18 years as a member of the Stanley Brothers in the 1950 s and 1960 s, is said to be the pioneer of crosspicking. The crosspicking technique has been mastered by guitarists like Doc Watson, Clarence White, Dan Crary, Norman Blake and Tony Rice. Crosspicking can be used with two open strings against a single string upon which you are playing melody notes on the frets. You can throw a crosspicking pattern in here and there, mixing it in with your other flatpicking techniques. Let s try a crosspicking exercise. We ll use all open strings for this, the D, G and B strings. For the strokes, I ll represent the down strokes (the pick motions away from your face) with the letter "d" and the upstrokes (the pick motions toward your face) with the letter "u." George Shuffler crosspicks with a pattern of two down strokes followed by one upstroke. Pick each individual string in this repetitive pattern: DGB DGB DGB DGB DGB DGB DGB DGB DGB Play the D string with a down stroke, the G string with a down stroke, and the B string with an up stroke, like this: ddu ddu ddu ddu ddu ddu ddu ddu ddu But remember, crosspicking is a pattern of three pitches played repeatedly against a four-pulse rhythm, so in common time (4 beats to the measure, each quarter note receiving one beat), the pattern would look this when each string picked is a quarter note with four quarter notes per measure: DGBD - GBDG - BDGB - DGBD - GBDG - BDGB - DGBG The picking pattern would be: ddud - dudd - uddu - ddud - dudd - uddu - ddud Now let s try something that will probably be a bit challenging. I learned this from one of Steve Kaufman s instructional videos. Crosspick the repeated pattern of DGB, but instead of using the typical "ddu" stroking, play with alternating up and down strokes, just like if you were picking out a fiddle tune. So, although you are playing the repeated pattern of the three strings, your stroke pattern is: dudu - dudu - dudu - dudu - dudu - dudu - dudu - dudu - dudu It will not be easy at first to keep the pattern of the three strings going with the alternating pick motion, but think of your forearm as a pendulum, swinging down, back and forth, to hit the top of each string. The upshot of this stroke pattern is that each note is cleaner, crisper, and makes more of a statement. I use both of these patterns, but I m trying to develop the latter and use it more often, because I think that overall it s the best. Have fun learning how to crosspick--it s a great weapon to have in your technique arsenal! Copyright © 2007 Lee Griffith. All rights reserved. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lee Griffith is an avid acoustic guitar player and a vintage instrument enthusiast. He invites you to receive a FREE REPORT on a revolutionary acoustic guitar lesson kit, along with his weekly newsletter via email. just click on http://optin.flatpickpost.com Check out Lee s blog, "The Flatpick Post" at http://flatpickpost.com