Hi everybody ,
I’m having trouble with alternate picking on the E lower string.
I often miss the string even if I play slowly, more than the others strings.
I have found some posts about that but didn’t find solutions.
Would you have any advice about this problem ?
I’m working on Cupid’s Dead at the moment, it’s hard for me 
Thank you very much.
And thx Troy for your work, it’ great.
Sorry no advise but I have the same experience. Especially when palm muting as my wrist is much more flexed which creates a weird angle for the hand. For me experimenting with slant and edge angles have been helpful. But the angles that work are still far from burnt in i muscle memory enough.
RE: I realised that it’s not the wrist that is flexed, but the wrist that is deviated more towards the radius bone. I’m not sure why this is harder though. It might be something else that is the problem.
Are you using UWPS or DWPS? To me a slight UWPS with leading edge picking tends to be easier especially when palm muting. If you are using DWPS you are going to want to palm mute with the part of your palm that is nearest to your wrist. This might take a while if you are used to palm muting with the center of the palm
For me the opposite works! I tend to find UWPS more comfortable in most situations, but on the low E I prefer DWPS because it allows me to rest stroke on the A string - this in turn makes me feel more in control of the picking movement.
Normally with UWPS I would rest stroke on the upstroke, but obviously this is not an option on the low E, and I don’t like the feeling of picking in the air on both sides.
Yes this is exactly it, at least for me. This feels weird but it’s the way I want it. If you look at Gilbert, his palm is stationary and string tracking is done only with wrist deviation. The arm never slides. It looks super efficient and minimise the possible variants when string tracking. But this means that you’re gonna have that kind of palm resting setup that becomes harder when playing low E. Gilberts hand are so big that I guess he doesn’t have this problem.
And what about Nuno Bettencourt ?
I would like to copy his technique because for me he is the king of palm mute, but I don’t understand how he does.
Nuno is a beast! From what I have seen in youtube videos, he seems to use DWPS almost exclusively, so it is probably a good idea to work on that technique if you want to imitate his style.
Nuno is an awesome player with mostly DWPS. He Crosspicking most of the time and uses frequently legato. On the low strings his palm muted legato sounds like fully picked lines. Watch Ben Ellers YouTube lesson on He-Man Woman Hater for more details. I guess you should work on your placement of the picking hand and stringtracking for the low E problem…
I know that problem too.
To me it’s mostly about pick attack, the pick angle changes when you have a cycle motion to track strings.
Mostly you redcue attack on lower strings and that changes the string resistance.
The proper solution would be adjusting the attack - usually by angling the thumb.
I personally as professional hobby player 
just use a fat round picks that basically doesn’t care about attack (but has less tonal options)
It’s probably a string tracking issue compounded with the thicker strings being harder to get over (at least they feel that way to me). I have a bit harder time playing fast on thicker strings also. Two things help a bit. Try doing circular exercise on just the E and A strings, and single string exercises also. Try the same exercises with a ridiculously thick training pick which will force you to not bite in very deep with the pick. If I use one for like 5 mins, then go back to a normal pick it is noticeably easier.
Thx for the tips, I will try.
Post a vid of you playing the low E.
It’s likely either your muscles not being trained enough to move freely in that range of motion.
Or you’re not anchoring in a way that gives you constant reference points etc…
What helped me is stringtracking and placing the middle and or index finger under the high E string (in a loose way) when going to pick the lower strings with DWPS; Like Martin Miller does. You have more control and it minimizes the movement of the pick.