Escape Angle — Does It Matter?

The most common picking motions all produce some type of escape ( ), where the pick pulls away from the guitar body during at least a portion of its travel. Does the angle of the escape matter? It can! NBA players shoot foul shots with an arc because approaching the hoop from above makes it a larger target. Similarly, approaching the target string from “above“ — i.e. using an escape more perpendicular to the body — makes it easier to hit. Many USX picking styles ( ), most famously Gypsy jazz, take advantage of this mechanical phenomenon to equalize the difficulty difference between inside and outside picking, especially across larger distances. Note that your escape angle is not determined by the slant of the pick. It is dictated by the type of joint motion you use for picking. So you can’t just arbitrarily use more or less escape. In the case of the most common picking motions, the escape is typically changed by simply switching to a different type of joint motion, including making whatever form changes are necessary for that motion to work correctly.