When I try to play in the style of Al Di Meola and use a pinky heel anchor, my picking motion always ends up being USX, and I can’t seem to get it to work as DSX.
Is there anything I can do to fix this?
Troy talked to Andy Wood about this. He doesn’t palm mute on his pinky heel. It’s more like the area between his pinky and thumb heels. Whether or not Al does this I don’t know but Andy’s way works.
Hard to say without a video but it could be because your using deviation and picking down into the string more towards the body but instead, you need to follow the wrist path and pick more across the strings
Troy talks about it here:
Yes, you need to anchor on the thumb side instead of the pinky side.
I struggle with this too. I dont know if my motions are correct in the first place though. Waiting for my first technique review. :))
Yes, you can fix this (i.e. switch to DSX) by completely changing the trajectory of your hand movement. You need to use the muscles / motion of scribbling really fast with a pen, or using an ergonomic mouse (as Troy has described it in videos).
With the form you’re using, you’re stuck in USX because you’re doing something like a 10-0-4 or 11-0-5 (-ish) hand / pick trajectory (using the clockface analogy). You need to keep the same form but switch to something like a 2-0-8 trajectory.
One way I’ve managed to understand and develop this new motion (it takes a little while to feel out the muscle coordination and get it happening/consistently reliable/smooth) is to do your USX picking motion on loop as fast as possible (or just kinda fast) and view the trajectory of your pick/hand/fingers as moving in the trajectory of one of the " / "of an X really fast, as seen from the perspective of your headstock looking towards the tailpiece. Now keep everything the same but just switch to scribbling the other \ of the X really fast.
One caveat is that very-supinated forearm form will tend to give you garage spike problems with the pick being too downward-slanted. So You can reduce the supination a little bit to make the garage spikes less nasty while doing this supinated DSX picking motion.
Hope that helps.