It looks and sounds a little bit like you might be getting stuck with the pick, (Garage spikes), when doing ascending sweeps. Does it feel like the pick is getting a bit stuck to you?
Just throwing it out there: if your goal is primarily to play ascending scales faster, a much shorter road, one that might work instantly, is just to play up down hammer for every string. Andy James does this a fair amount nowadays, and Andy Wood demonstrated it on mandolin in one of the vids here. I’m not trying to dissuade you from pursuing ascending economy, I just think it might be an uphill battle for how your hand is working right now and this could be a quicker solution.
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I do the opposite and I have no idea why. Or rather, I can do the opposite and don’t know how. I don’t recall ever working on it and considering how smooth it is, it seems weird to me that I can’t even come close to doing it ascending. I’m also not entirely sure it’s not something I started doing when I started playing again earlier this year. It’s hard to remember 15+ years back something I never payed attention to. My descending alternate isn’t nearly as relaxed as smooth as my ascending either, so maybe there’s something to consider there.
Thank you for the clip, it indeed looks like elbow motion to get the sweep economy picking. Could be another approach to try out, would you say you are using elbow extension to achieve it? I noticed for people that use elbow extension their hand kinda starts tracking a sort of diagonal line towards the fretboard as they ascend.
Being a DSX player for me the descending economy picking is much easier than the ascending, funny enough same with alternate picking. As you can see in my clip, on the alternate picking parts, I have to use secondary motion to do ascending alternate picking but when descending I kinda can get away with some swiping so it’s not as complicated, my brain doesn’t have to work nearly as hard. But I think you have found a good solution here with economy picking ascending runs for the most part, that’s kinda what I’m looking for at the moment. I couldn’t quite get it from your clip, I noticed you also descended a bit before ascending again, how exactly did you do that, I can’t really see it, is it again DSX string change for the descending part, then how do you approach going back to ascending after that?
it could be, thanks maybe I was pushing too hard down trying to force the sweep, maybe it also has to do with my motion change to make it a trapped motion, but how would you approach solving this garage spikes issue?
This is actually pretty good advice, like a reverse Yngwie kind of thing. It would certainly change the sound a bit but I think most people won’t notice it anyway. But at least in regards to playing live and covers this could definitely be a very reliable way of approaching this, specially since my secondary motion is not that reliable atm, and for some of these covers I do need some serious speed going on. Thank you this is definitely something to add to the toolbox. Like you said pretty quickly too, just gotta work on the coordination a little bit to get used to it. I say maybe this could be even faster than the metronomic rock dsx solution, but each one has it’s advantages of course, the metronomic rock would maybe sound just a bit more aggressive.
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i just don’t like the line of thought that it always has to be downstroke, upstroke, pull off, maybe during extreme shred instances where it is better to just use one tactic. i think knowing and being able to do both ‘down stroke, upstroke, pull off/hammer’, and ‘downstroke, pull off/hammer on, upstroke’ will take you much further as well as your playing will sound much cleaner with better articulation during phrasing. but i have only come across this style of training with gypsy jazz rest stroke where they will do both of these kind of fragments, simply because the rest stroke helps with the timing of the trickier one. but again during a 3nps scale run probably down, up, pull off/hammer on would sound better than the other.
Yes I think i’ve seen some guys that play more aggressive styles like metal, use the downstroke, upstroke, pull off/hammer on type of combination, the other one is definitely a lot more rare for metal soloing, maybe tends to sound a bit more “legatoish” which is why some people might avoid it if they are looking to get a more aggressive sound, since in the first one you have two pick attacks in a row but the other one they are separated by a different articulation, probably a bit harder to coordinate aswell, but in terms of getting speed, it should be about the same. I think also comfort might play a part here, what comes more natural depending on a phrase, yeah maybe for straight up scalar playing option 1 is a more obvious choice, but the other one could work for other stuff aswell
they are both legato’ish, depends on where you are on beat if it will fool the ear.if that pull off falls on the beat, or where an accent (this is where compression will help tremendously as long as you are whipping that upstroke loud enough when the time is right) would help project the phrase, it will be harder to hide the legato sound of either fragment. if compression is used this becomes harder to discern for either fragment as long as that pull off doesn’t fall on the beat, well and if you are cruising fast enough, and if your wall of marshall plexi’s are dialed at 11. 
Not that I’d fault anyone for not reading my long-ass posts lol! But I did sort of mention this here 
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Yeah, but I gave specific instructions. Therefore… WINNER!
accepts prestigious award and signs autographs
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Well you’ve got me there! lol
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Yes thank you guys, for the time being I think this approach will be good to have, it’s another option besides secondary alternate picking motion that will come in handy for scalar playing, and actually make it easier I believe . At least until I can find a way to economy pick it.
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I am a DSX player, and economy picking, particularly on ascending 3nps came pretty easily. I must say though, that pickslanting with sweeping helps the same way it does with swiping if that makes any sense?
I have a pretty neutral pickslant most of the time, BUT when I am doing a sweep/economy type 3nps thing; I kind of slant it in the direction it needs to go.
The Cracking the Code Frank Gambale series is OFF THE HOOK as far as explaining that sort of thing; I had great success with a pistol grip, and a big triangle Dunlop pick same as Frank…
There are other ways to achieve a simple scale; check out Troy’s Antigravity Seminar. And actually Volcano has an excellent bit on Yngwies ascending 3nps strategy! Awesome. Also you could do pick-pick-hammer or pick-pick-pull off (I do this - it works well, because even NPS works, and I spent a lot of time working on a very quick 2nps with DSX!) There’s also hybrid picking which is extremely powerful as well.
I hope that helps!
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Thanks a lot man! I did not considered that maybe I need a bigger pick than my Jazz 3 and maybe a bit more slant. I’ve seen some picks that are exactly like a bigger version of the regular smaller jazz 3s
I’d start with the Eric Johnson or John Petrucci Jazz, they are slightly larger than the standard Jazz III but not as huge as the Jazz III XL
thank you! I actually was looking for this
It sounds like you haven’t seen Metronomic Rock! This is Tommo’s compendium of all the DSX tricks, with tons of examples you can try to make common fretboard shapes work out smoothly:
More generally, yes, you’re a DSX player and you’re doing some nice looking 2wps in your ascending scale. I see no reason to change that if it’s working. In this case what you’re trying to do is downstroke sweeping using wrist motion and it’s not working because of garage spikes. You’re swiching the arm position but you don’t have dwps.
For the most versatility with two-way economy, you ideally want two alternate picking motions, one for each form, with the ability to do continuous tremolo with smooth attack in both forms. Without that, one side of your two-way economy will have fewer options compared to the other side. Among players we’ve interviewd, Oz Noy uses both alternate picking motions, and I think Jimmy Bruno does as well.
Note that not all two-way economy players do this — Frank Gambale doesn’t, for example. His tremolo is exclusively DSX. So any fast pure alternate he does is DSX and he organizes his lines accordingly. He also generally avoids the kinds of economy patterns you’d find in the vocabulary of players like Yngwie, Eric Johnson and George Benson, because those require USX alternate picking.
I mention the dual alternate picking approach only because it’s a good way to verify that the attack is working. If you can get alternate USX to be smooth, then downstroke sweeps will also be smooth. Then you can do all your Yngwie / Eric Johnson patterns in addition to your Metronomic Rock-style patterns. However, this takes time, trial and error, and it might simply not be necessary if you’re happy with Metronomic Rock approach already.
Lots of options here. Your DSX / 2wps looks great so far!
Oh thanks so much Troy! This definitely explains why my ascending economy picking has always felt unnatural. I recently developed 2wps thanks to Primer and your observations just made me realize I’m not too confident with it yet which is why I was looking for an alternative but glad to know it’s looking good, for sure it will continue to get better and more reliable over time, I guess I just wasn’t being patient enough and was looking for a shorcut. But yeah seems like DSX tricks and 2wps pretty much solve the mechanichal issues in about 90%-95% of what I want to play at the exception of those occasional phrases that absolutely require USX.
Basically I was looking for a solution to play fully picked 3 note per string scales, which is why I wasn’t considering the Metronomic Rock DSX approach, but now I’m open to other solutions, specially for live performances where I don’t want to risk using motions that aren’t fully reliable yet just to get everything picked MAB style, it’s just the sound that I like the best but I guess it’s alright to sacrifice it a little on certain occasions where it’s just not working mechanically. I know Tommo offers a solution for a fully picked approach to scales that doesn’t involve playing 3 notes per string patterns but other kinds of groupings to force the DSX change. Also his solution for playing 3nps with DSX approach involves two downstrokes in a row with hammer ons or pull offs at certain points of the scale, and also Riffdiculous suggested the approach of up down hammer for every string which I’m happy to use aswell as an alternative.
Thank you Troy!