i lose track in these threads so easily. Sorry about that
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Not that I know, but there certainly is of Remy, who also played with Paul.
Watching Remy is actually very useful, and he mentions Troy in his more recent videos - it seems like he tries to incorporate the magnet style view of his playing and that let me realize I might make some real progress (at least, something concrete and new to try) by finding a comfortable spot where my palm hangs over the top of the bridge and is counter balanced by my forearm, and working that consciously into my string tracking.
That’s what Remy talks about in the video I linked above, and it’s interesting because he specifically says he does it to overcome the lack of motion range Andy complains about staying anchored in one spot.
I thought Remy just says he observed Paul Gilbert anchors his pinky to the bridge and doesnt move it but lets the wrist move?
I think anchor is a strong word. He lets it rest there, and it may help with his muting somewhat, but it’s not as ridgedly glued to one area as remy is showing at least not all the time. It’s also the reason Paul doesn’t have his volume knob there as well, and has it located where the tone control usually is, and nothing in that space. None of his guitar setup is an accident.
Right he is still saying to move the hand across the six strings but he used that statement to illustrate that pauls wrist movement isnt that large because his pinky really stays still
I actually find this to be a problem in my playing since adopting the supinated 902 style - bumping into the volume knob is super annoying and messes things up a bit.
As far as anchoring, I think maybe the term “reference point” is better - he’s resting his forearm on the body and his palm on the bridge. There’s probably some amount of pressure, so it is anchored, but it’s movable - maybe with a motion from the elbow or shoulder primarily.
EDIT:
I think there’s something interesting going on when I play with how much pressure is on the forearm anchor point vs the palm, I think there’s kind of a Goldilocks zone where I use just enough pressure on my forearm point so it does become an anchor and lets my palm lift up. Apparently pressing down with my palm has been creating tension in my wrist movement because it feel much more relaxed.
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I think this is some real forward progress for me, not totally clean or anything but it’s just a randomly chosen symmetrical pattern in groups of 9 and then random other patterns I try to keep going for a while and keep it somewhat fluid.
Typically, if I play something across all the strings like this I always really tense up my right arm unless I get “lucky” (meaning I wasn’t clear what adjustment was allowing me to do that). I can do descending sixes fine, but I’m getting a lot of tension by the end.
The adjustment I made is this - I’m kind of using my forearm as a fulcrum on the top of the body, just enough to take away some of the pressure of my palm anchor, then also resting the pinky side of the palm on the bridge as I’ve been doing, but that fulcrum maneuver feels like it does two things:
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I’m much more situated to track the strings, because there isn’t as much force anchoring my palm in one spot, so less muscle tension needed to move up and down.
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Apparently either the force or muscle tension from holding my palm against the guitar was causing the tension to spread to my wrist, or holding my wrist there was actually blocking part of the wrist range of motion so it wasn’t moving freely without tension. Either way, I was anchoring too hard with my palm, I got the idea in my head that I should put little to no pressure on the body of the guitar from my forearm during some of my sweeping experimentation, in that case, it works fine, but wrist movement being restricted would not be terribly noticeable.
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