But when i look at vids of him playing when he was only 10/11 years old he uses the same hand arm position and motions with the same grip. His hands could not be that large as such a young age.
Look at this clip from about 6:10. Big string skips, same hand arm postion and movements as he does today.
That part where he plays a chromatic line with the notes on the low E string with his thumb and skipping to the high E! Just ridiculous at the age of just 11!
Sorry for the confusion. Itās not really about the hands being ālargeā with respect to the instrument in an absolute sense. Itās about the length or size of fingers/palm relative to each other. The idea is that some people who use an index finger grip appear to have a more supinated forearm position while still being able to reach the strings. Players with different geometry might need to use a three-finger grip to achieve the same results.
The increased supination some individauls display is real ā we see it in Magnet footage. Whether it matters or confers advantages is less clear. Weāve seen very good three-finger players, like James Seliga, switch to index and play just as well so it may not be meaningful. I wouldnāt worry too much about this, itās just a hypothesis.
Thnx for the clarification.
I think this could be right.
Iāll add it to the science homework you gave me in the other thread. I have pretty long fingers and Iām not really sure I need the 3 finger grip.
Thanks, and well noted now because I initially thought you meant just large/long in general. With respect to the above comment, I think my fingers are pretty long. At least when I just look at my hands, they look sort of gangly to me and I often have people comment to me that my fingers are long. I donāt know exactly what the ānormalā ratios would be. It does look like my palm accounts for a little over half the overall length. I just know I googled average hand length and the results were 7.6 inches. Since Iām average height (5ā 10") and my hand length is just about 8 inches, that makes me think Iām out of proportion.
Out of curiosity, is your left hand larger than your right? There was some video from many years back where Richie Kotzen mentioned that his fretting hand was substantially longer than his picking hand, so I checked myself and it did happen to also be true - not by a tremendous amount, but a solid 1/4 inch. This size difference is entirely in the palm, however, with the fingers being equal length.
I just checked, it looks about the same. Very hard to get the tape laying correctly and take the picture with my left hand, but hopefully youāll take my word for it. I lack the self esteem to ask my wife to help me take a picture of my hand with a measuring tape on it. She has enough legitimate stuff to make fun of me for, I donāt need any fuel for that fire.
But yeah left/right stuff is often different sizes for no apparent reason. Back in my lifting days, my left arm was always at least 1/2 inch bigger around than my right arm. Which I always thought was weird since Iām right handed. Iāve always wished I was ambidextrous. Itās a great fake out in sword fights
Easy enough to check by holding your palms together with the bottom of the wrists aligned, no need to drag the wife into this silliness. 
But Iāll take your word for itā¦ as youuuu wiiiish.
Additionally, Iām also right-handed, and my left upper arm measurement was always a bit bigger. Iād wondered if the increased muscle mass was compensating for the decrease in āneural connectivityā, or however youād like to phrase it.
Good call, but I still canāt take a picture of that with no free hands. They look identical when I do that (itās always the simple things that evade me)
lol! Well played
Here we go ladies and gentlemen.
This article should tell you whether you should put down the guitar or not for good
If you want to see an excellent example of what Iām referring to, you can check out Lukasā TC on the platform. Itās public for anyone with a subscription:
You will notice the very obvious and large amount of supination, similar to what your technique looks like with three-finger grip, except Lukas can do it with index. Iāve tried to reproduce this and I canāt. I can only get in the ballpark with a three-finger grip. Whether itās finger length or palm shape or some other aspect of geometry, itās clear that anatomical differences are the reason.
Whether it matters, and how much, is again less clear. The hypothesis is that the farther away from deviation the motion is, the more efficient it is. This could be reverse dart motions like all the supinated players, or dart-thrower motions, like in the case of Shawn Lane and violinists. Those appear to be the more gooderest axes of motion.
Pretty cool, do you suspect this had anything to do with Paul Gilbertās mixed escape setup? We know his hands are huge in general but his fingers look pretty gangly, so maybe long relative to his hand? I remember your chapter on that in the primer (Al Mike Al Mike Al) and you seemed to do that without a three finger grip.
I know you were only slightly supinated but in the image poster that shows when when the video page loads, (gold circle around Paulās wrist underside) he looks pretty supinated. Though his thumb doesnāt have that huge air gap we see in Lukasā playing.
Ha!
Yes I drew the circle around Paulās forearm in the poster because it exhibits the phenomenon. He appears to have more supination than we might see from someone with my geometry or Andy Woodās geometry. However Paul is sort of an inconclusive case because he never really went all the way in developing mixed escape. He never really tried to do common mixtures of 1, 2, and 3 notes per string like you might find in a garden variety jazz line, so we donāt know what that might have looked like.
Regardless, it seems clear that the using a highly supinated arm position isnāt necessary to get both escapes, and lesser amounts can still work. What we donāt know is if there is a less obvious benefit to more supinated position, where things maybe get a little easier, a little faster, maybe bigger escapes for more string clearance while still maintaining efficiency, that kind of thing. Youāll keep us posted as you experiment.
Also I would be interested in seeing the tremolo test I suggested where you do it at progressive speeds without thinking about it, to see what the motion looks like.
Thanks for the explanation. Itās all very interesting.
And roger that on the experiments. Iāll try to get some good samples for you. I filmed some last night but the angle was all messed up somehow, also I think I might need a little more time to get used to a tremolo from that position in general. I hold the pick very āflatā when doing this Morse grip and thereās not much edge picking. The little bit that I messed with it the other night, more often than not I got āstuckā during the faster tremolo attempts. Iām not used to that type of resistance when I do tremolo since I use some edge picking on the USX or DSX motions Iāve messed with.
I guess all thatās to say, even though this motion works great so far for DBX, it still doesnāt feel like āhomeā to me yet.
I think this is necessarily true for anatomical reasons.
We have two antagonist groups controlling wrist movements. Flexor Carpi Ulnaris and Extensor Carpi Radialis Longus & Brevis describe a dart-thrower path. Flexor Carpi Radialis and Extensor Carpi Ulnaris describe a reverse dart-thrower path.
Some people (including myself) also have Palmaris Longus, which is another flexor, but itās absent in a lot of people.
If somebody can find the path on the clockface which matches the path naturally described by one of their antagonist groups, then picking along that path should require little or no activation of their other antagonist group. The precise path described by the antagonists would probably vary for each individual.
Youāve mentioned before that on high-speed, you often see errors as a result of helper-motions. In some sense, a wrist movement along a ānon-antagonistā path could essentially be like āwristā movement with a another āwristā helper movement. The activations of the antagonist groups would need to be coordinated, and could be more likely to result in errors at speed than the simple alternating of the muscles of one antagonist group.
Another possible factor, is that when using both antagonist groups simultaneously, some of the force produced by one group is necessarily cancelled by force produced by the other, so using both groups in tandem should result in more rapid onset of fatigue.
The specific antagonist paths are likely to vary between individuals, but I think theyāre quite vertical. This would mean that in 9-0-3 deviation, most of the force the muscles produce is actually cancelling forces produced by the other muscles, rather than creating the movement.
I obviously canāt be sure, anatomy/physiology books and cadaver dissection videos arenāt really concerned with these questions, but this all seems reasonable to me given the information Iāve found in those sources.
Totally. We discuss this here:
This type helper is what Andy Wood looks like during outside picking ā just two different directions of wrist motion. But itās not the one where we see the errors. It usually looks pretty clean in Andyās playing.
Itās the forearm helper where we see the errors. In Andyās case itās where he does it during inside picking, particularly if he has to double up the inside picking. Notes go missing there. The other super common occurrence is the USX player who does it during inside picking, usually descending. Patterns like descending fours, notes can go missing.
Note that Andy uses a DSX-friendly posture so you typically see the helper during ascending inside picking, because downstroke string changes donāt really need it. USX-friendly postures usually see it during descending inside picking, since upstroke string changes donāt need it. āClassic 2wpsā logic.
In theory itās efficient mechanically, at least as far as wrist usage. But itās a lot of jostling around during intricate motions, and it might just be harder to get it right. So as you say, it strikes me as more of coordination issue rather than primarily an efficiency concern like the ādeviation = badā hypothesis.
There are still very accurate players that use forearm helpers. But they appear to minimize. Chris Thile really only does the helper during repeated inside picking. Sierra Hull is even āwristierā than Chris but will use a tiny bit of helper on larger inside picking gaps. And of course we see it in Antonās playing but most pronounced during big ascending inside skips. So I think to some extent it is unavoidable just due to the inside picking needing more string clearance to avoid errors. But my best guess is that minimizing it produces the best results.
@Troy so do you suspect that in DBX playing, depending on the pattern, weāll need a slightly different coordination? Ex: this forward roll
B---0---0---|
G--0---0----|
D-0---0-----| etc
vs one with a larger string skip in it?
B---0---0---|
G--0---0----|
D-----------|
A-2---2-----| etc
When I play things like this it feels like I have to do more work (sort of a āscoopingā helper motion) to clear the strings where the big skips happen. Particularly when itās inside changes. That could just be because Iām still figuring things out, and because Iāve practice WAY fewer patterns with big skips as opposed to more adjacent string stuff. But to me, when I look at players who do the big skips very well (Morse, Anton etc) I feel like I see their motion adapt a little.
As per my post just above, yes, it is normal/common to see forearm helper in the bigger jumps to get more string clearance. However my best guess is minimizing it produces the best results.
Youāll notice when Steve does the larger skips, there is essentially zero forearm:
But he has a very supinated posture where flexion-extension is the main driver and the range of motion there is huge. In your three-finger approach youāre also more in this realm so lots of wiggling shouldnāt be necesary.
As usual, youāre looking for the least effortful thing that keeps you in the sweet spot of the range of motion. I wouldnāt force anything, just seek to maximize effortlessness.
Thanks for the detailed response, I appreciate the write-up. Much of the commentary on errors in inside picking situations gels with what I experienced developing mixed escape playing as a teenager.
This also gels with my experience of developing mixed escape playing (RDT plus rotation). The inclusion of rotations to faciliate string changes never felt difficult or strenuous, and it didnāt cap the speed of the picking movement. However, it was difficult to develop accuracy and I noticed that coodinations that werenāt regularly practiced seemed to ādecayā very quickly.
Something Iāve been wondering about a lot lately is if there are any implications about compound forms based on the secondary functions of the muscles involved. In dart-thrower, it feels comfortable and easy for me to combine the ulnar flexion direction with pronation, and the radial extension with supination. In reverse dart-thrower, it feels comfortable and easy for me to combine the ulnar extension with pronation and the radial flexion with supination.
However, trying to swap direction of rotations (eg, radial flexion with pronation in RDT) feels weird and uncomfortable. It could be due to the pairings Iāve mentioned being more familiar to me because theyāre more common in guitar playing, but I experience the same feeling doing the movements with my fretting hand. Then, thereās the relationship with the elbow. Extensor carpi radialis longus is supposedly involved in elbow flexion, and biceps brachii is an elbow flexor and a forearm supinator.
Iām an absolute beginner at drumming, but my father is a good drummer. Iāve also been watching drumming instructional videos for years. It really seems that the movements drummers make from overhand and underhand grips are the ānaturalā compounds of wrist, forearm and elbow based on those secondary functions.
Isnāt that basically every wrist-forearm player though? Iām not sure how else you would do it.
Sorry, I mucked up.
I meant pronation there. Radial flexion with supination is one of the comfortable ones for me, I even said so much the line above!
EDIT: On the original topic (sorry @Andjoy if your thread has been derailed), those string skipped triplets Anton is playing are ridiculous.
A single group of those string skipping triplets feels like it would be OK with practice, or maybe some variation with a second note on the high string or another note on the middle string before returning back to the low string. I used to play Carl Verheyen inspired lines with mixed escape, and some of them felt similar to that.
Repeating the triplets though, I donāt think my mixed escape accuracy was ever good enough for the big inside skip over 3 strings, and I have no coordination which feels transferable to that at all.