social/reddit

Oh cool, something I’m qualified to respond to, having gone through exactly this process a few years ago. Let me answer each question individually.

1. Alternate picking doesn’t mess up rest stroke necessarily, but as I transitioned I became less “primed” at the pure-rest-stroke, and so some phrases that are more pure-rest-stroke oriented don’t come out as often or as easily in my improvisation. If I need to, I can always execute them with focus, but they’re not “on the tip of my tongue” so to speak.
2. As long as you’re playing a lot, you definitely don’t have to relearn everything. However, as you keep playing the lines that you know, you’ll find that some parts will seem to make more sense with one or the other picking style. It happened pretty naturally for me (didn’t require much thought). Also, I found that intentionally re-figuring some lines that I know, but using alternate picking instead, helped me commit more to the transition.
3. For me, I was playing semi-professionally (gigging 4+ times per month), and it took maybe a year or two to get to a point where I felt mostly okay about it. To be honest I still feel like it trips me up sometimes, but I’ve settled on feeling like it’s worth it.
4. I don’t have any input into this because I don’t do economy picking - I only ever do downward rest strokes, never up.
5. Remember that for gypsy jazz specifically, especially if you’re playing acoustically at volume, the “rest stroke” part is a necessary but not sufficient technique. You could be rest-stroking but still without the sufficient force to get the “gypsy sound”. It’s important that you are using the forearm-rotation motion to pluck, as opposed to the wrist/ulnar-deviation motion often associated with alternate picking. If you want to alternate pick on a gypsy jazz guitar, and maintain the volume, tone, and attack, then you should still be using forearm-rotation for the upstrokes and downstrokes. If you don’t maintain this style of motion, you risk the alternate picking sounding weak and plinky (particularly the upstrokes).