Antigravity: MAB vs Gilbert DBX/double pick-slanting

Greetings. I’ve been watching the Antigravity series and some of the talking the code stuff, where Troy discusses the mechanics of these two players, in the MAB mechanics, he is mainly a DSX player when he does descending phrases, so it’s very noticeable how he rotates the wrist to be able to get an upstroke escape when doing ascending phrases. So does he switch to a DBX system at that point? Is that rotation movement that he does and that Troy mentions part of a DBX escape motion system? Is it an upward pickslant that makes this motion much more noticeable even at fast speeds? Is it only a wrist motion to be able to get that brief upstroke escape?

And now for Gilbert, he is discussed as having basically a zero degree pickslant, which would allow him to again, do DBX, but much less noticeably than MAB, infact, it’s impossible to see pretty much, except with the magnet and slow motion right? But we know he also has some sort of DSX mode when he does the classic Gilbert exercise. So basically a DBX motion is a must for three notes per string alternate picking playing? Both these players seem to have a DBX mode which allows them to do this three note per string, or an uneven number of notes per string alternate picking playing.

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I don’t think Paul Gilbert or MAB use DBX. They both use DSX with either swiping or a helper motion:

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Oh amazing! I missed this! Thank you very much, this explains it very clearly.

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Paul swipes, he’s incredibly good at muting strings with his fret hand. There is a video of Anton Oparin doing Paul’s way vs his and he’s really good at recreating the little “chkk” sound Paul has that sounds like aggressive picking, but is in fact the swiping, with the index finger touching the lower string to mute.

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Yep, all true. There are some patterns where Paul doesn’t swipe though, which is interesting. Troy details his mixed approach here:

Yeah I use to be more hard line on thinking Paul swiped everything but I think it’s more of a mixed bag with him always going for the clean escape and sometimes missing it. This seems super clean to me for example but it’s uses the same escapes he would need for the Paul Gilbert lick that we all think he swipes:

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Oh very interesting I’ve been naturally gravitating to this pinky heel anchor point I’m gonna play around with that some more, thanks guys great answers!

No problem. Last reference I’ll throw out is the newly updated Wrist section in the Primer. It has some great resources on doing any escape from a collection of setups that are all very similar.

Thank you, for me I havent been able to find a reliable USX or DBX motion from that anchor, but I might find it with the Stern motion, as I was working on that wrist motion section, I found mysef naturally gravitating towards the pinky pad anchor. So I’m gonna play with that a little bit. That forearm helper motion I think it’s a pretty neat discovery aswell.

It’s also worth noting that when he uses the mojo mojo setup he has - that hides a ton of issues from swiping. Both low notes and high notes have fake “meat hits” compared to actual hard picking, the low notes have a lovely crunch style scuff sound the high notes have a pick edge chirp style sound.

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What’s this mojo mojo setup? Is that his legato mixed with alternate picking?

mojo mojo pedal - search on you tube. He uses it into a clean amp.

Agreed, Paul likes a very aggressive pick attack; it’s not like he’s cheating, when he wants the “thwack!” it’s there but I think he can just dial it out if he wants.

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he def can! Check this clip out; seems like he is doing some sort of Morsey 3 finger grip right? Very light touch with legato