Another way to play Jigs

So last week, I did a blog post on playing jigs with clawhammer banjo (here). This week I thought I'd do a followup post presenting a different (and super-creative!) approach to playing jigs shown to me by a fellow banjohangout member who goes by the name "slc." His approach involves a surprising tweak to our "rules of right hand stride" from last week so I'll start by reviewing those rules below:
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Rule 1 for maintaining right hand stride in jigs: The index finger of the right hand moves towards the strings on every 1, 1++, 2, and 2++ beat; the thumb never​ plays notes on these beat.

Rule 2 for maintaining right hand stride in jigs: The index finger is never used to play notes on 1+ or 2+ beats; these notes should be played with the thumb of the right hand, with a left hand pluck, or by hammer-ons/pull-offs from notes played on preceding beats.

Rule 2a) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is on a lower string than the preceding note (or if the preceding beat contains a brush, cluck, or ghost note) this note should be played with the thumb of the right hand.

Rule 2b) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is at a higher fret of the same string of the preceding note, this note should be played with a hammer on.

Rule 2c) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is at a lower fret of the same string of the preceding note, this note should be played with a pull off.

Rule 2d) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is on a higher string than the preceding note, this note should be played by plucking the string with the left hand.
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Again, these rules are based on online advice from Ken Perlman and Mike Iverson, amongst others; also the rules assume that you count jigs as One-and-a, two-and-a, which I notate as 1 + +, 2 + +.

This is the current approach I've been using to play jigs and so far its going pretty well. I've been working on "the Irish Washerwoman" since last week - I've mostly worked out the B part and I've gotten fairly comfortable with the jig feel. However, the necessity of playing two down-strokes with the index finger in a row (on 1++/2++ beats and the 2/1 beats that follow) puts a speed limit on this technique - even at a reasonable pace, I can't help but feeling that my hand is doing just a bit more work than it needs to. Instinctively, it feels like there must be some way to have down-strokes on the 1/2 beats and nowhere else - enter the aforementioned "other" jig technique as shown by banjohangout user "slc."

Before I dissect this technique (hereafter the "slc-method"), let me show you an example. Note that I got his permission to talk about this on my blog via email and I actually requested that he record this tune ("Coleraine's Jig").

Banjohangout user "slc" showing his awesome jig technique with "Coleraine's Jig" in A minor.

Note that Mike Iverson actually has a tab for this tune on his site As you can see, he's playing at a pretty good speed and he looks relaxed - I'm betting he could go a lot faster - pretty great right?

So, whats going on here? Well, the technique demonstrated above is likely to scare off the clawhammer purists because it involves (gasp!) up-picks! To play jigs in the slc-method, one simply re-define's right hand stride a bit by breaking rule 1 in half:
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Rule 1a for maintaining right hand stride in jigs: The index finger of the right hand moves towards the strings on every 1 and 2 beat; the thumb never​ plays notes on these beats.

Rule 1b for maintaining right hand stride in jigs: The right hand moves away from the strings (upward) on every 1++ and 2++ beat and the middle finger is used to pluck (by up-picking) any notes on these beats; the thumb never​ plays notes on these beats.
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Again, what a hugely elegant solution - you're using both the down stroke and the resulting upstroke to get notes! Note that slc actually down picks with his middle finger, so he up-picks with his index finger (backwards from what I've done). I suppose one could up-pick and down-pick with the same finger....I've always found up-picking with a nail to feel strange - I know guitarists do this but I really don't know how they stand it.

I should mention that another clawhammer player named Steve Baughman also experiments with up-picking in an Irish context: he calls this technique "the frisco flick" and he essentially plays triplets peppered through Irish reels using the "down-pick, thumb, up-pick" pattern similar to what is used in the slc-method. Steve's playing is super clean (on clawhammer guitar too) and I would recommend checking out his youtube videos as well - I would post one here but I didn't ask Steve first.

Anyways, I've been trying out the slc-method myself and as for now it still feels a bit awkward - not sure if I'm going to convert all of my jigs yet (okay I've only really got 2 so far...) but this is a ton of fun! Thanks to slc for giving me the go-ahead here (and recording "Coleraine's" - love your playing!