Hi - I Just jumped back into shred guitar playing after doing the pickslanting primer last year. What exercises or easier fast songs would you recommend to get the wheels going? So far i am practicing the pop tarts lick with minimal results, the 6 nps pattern Troy taught for hand sync, and pentatonic runs. Any advice would be great. Thank you.
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Hey there! Best course of action is for you to open a technique critique.
I can see that you are a subscriber, so you can open one in the platform (go to your member dashboard, and click the “TC” icon).
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I think there’s an often overlooked logical protocol for learning anything on guitar, which is to break down the piece you’re trying to learn into smaller and often simpler versions to figure exactly what is holding you back. I think regardless of if you’ve been playing 1 year or 50, the following is important for learning something difficult on guitar. The lick you’re working on requires alternate picking, string changes and multiple different notes on different strings - that’s 3 components, plus the 4th component of left & right hand synchronization. So I’d approach the lick like this:
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Is your alternate picking consistent and reliable on 1 string? If not, practice more on 1 string before you work up to string changes. Gotta crawl before you walk.
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If your 1 string alternate picking is good on 1 string, try doing the string changes without fretting any notes - as you can see, we’re just testing the picking hand at this point, trying to find what part needs work.
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Try playing the lick entirely with hammer ons & pull offs, with no alternate picking. Is the fretting hand doing its job or does it deserve some practice without the added complication of alternate picking?
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So your alternate picked string changes work well at tempo and your fretting hand is pulling its weight, the issue must be hand synchronization. From here, I would practice the lick at slower speeds in order to ingrain the order of movements but keep in mind that motion mechanics for slower tempos are often very different than those at faster tempos so your hands/body will sort of still need to learn a different way to do it at faster tempos but that will be easier to do now that you’ve built some muscle memory regarding where your fretting fingers go and when you make a string change.
I think those are excellent suggestions. A caveat I’d add to #3 is that this step be performed with “all hammers” as “pull offs” can be a different technique than what happens when we’re 100% alternate picking (or even economy picking). The reasons for this is:
Whether you do a “pull off” where the higher fret “lifts”, or even if you do it the way I prefer (pulling down so the note has a more similar articulation with hammers, which tend to be a little heavier sounding) in both cases it requires that we have the lower fret planted. This often would not need to be the case with all picked phrases and it could actually impact hand sync. All hammers fixes this as we’re (lightly) pressing on each note, just like we’ll be when alternate pick. I’m sure there are edge cases as there are picked licks where it makes sense to keep the fingers planted. Maybe I should summarize the whole above paragraph with “when isolating fretting, make sure to use the exact same movements/sequences you will be using when picking all of it”
Also, if the lick has any barres/rolls where we’re fretting the same fret across adjacent strings, I just never have any luck with fret hand isolation. Since that note ends up not sounding, it just causes the whole thing to go off the rails for me. Fortunately I don’t play many licks like that anyway 
I love the fret hand isolations approach!
Re: #4 I think one of the most powerful ways to improve hand sync is accents. Whether we’re playing slow(er) or fast, having that landmark is critical.
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Thank you for all of the advice. I noticed after a few days of breaking down wrist angles, edge picking, USX and DSX - I am a predominantly a DSX player. When I try to do USX my wrist feels like its locking up and i can barely tremolo at 150bpm. My DSX picking style can get to around 200. I grew up playing Metallica and fast palm muted rhythms where I most likely developed this style. So trying to force a USX move where my wrist is having trouble adjusting between strings is not working at all. Is there anything i can do to unlock the USX or just focus on being a DSX player and work around it?
The suggestions in this thread are good! This is essentially the sequence we follow in the Primer. We try to make this clear enough that you shouldn’t have to make a forum thread to outline it all. But we can always be clearer! Suggestions welcome.
Very generally, we establish your joint motion via testing and we go from there. You can’t skip ahead to playing phrases until you know what kind of joint motion you’re making.
We can’t give you advice on your technique without seeing video of it. But understand that learning different joint motions is complicated. You can’t just “unlock” them with exercises. They’re whole different motions. Most people only learn one in their playing career and then they play those kinds of phrases. Only @joebegly wants his main hobby to be stuck in the awkward learning phase with all techniques forever!
Whichever motion is working, I usually recommend just using that one so you can move forward into things like synchronization and musical ideas. You can always learn other skills over a longer time frame as a secondary focus.
If you want us to take a look at your motions definitely make a TC were happy to take a look!
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Ha! Well you’ve got me there. Guilty as charged. I suspect I have some degree of Asperger’s syndrome where I am interested in the “details about the thing” more than the “purpose of the thing” . This would be a huge problem if I weren’t having tons of fun. But I am having tons of fun! Before I found your site, I’d actually parked my electric guitar and was only playing classical.
Something did change a little recently though, most likely the release of the Metronomic Rock seminar. I’m considering tossing my motion dabbling journey and just going all in with DSX (and a little DBX on the back burner).
Thank you Troy! I actually just noticed something that I was overlooking. I am a wrist picker(pencil motion) and can do USX and DSX. I was practicing standing up and I just broke my fastest USX record with the pop tarts lick. I noticed when I stand up i naturally adjust my elbow angle to keep a steady picking hand up and down the strings. Where as when I sit and practice my elbow moves and my wrist has to adjust to compensate for the move up and down the strings. Something really simple but made a tremendous difference. Sorry if the questions were basic. I watched the primer a year ago and seems like there were a lot of updates! I am rewatching but if you have any suggestions where i can jump in and start learning exercises/patterns that would be super helpful. Just to give me something to practice while learning and watching the videos. I appreciate all of the help.
No problem — these questions are not basic! All of these lessons we make are on the same subject: how to move a pick back and forth. If these things were obvious, we wouldn’t have a teaching business.
I would still start with testing. Things like unexpected speed improvements while playing are a sign that the joint motion itself is changing. To some degree this may always continue to happen. But you really want to get some results on the motion tests first. While not perfect, they a much better gauge of your actual potential than trying to play different phrases in different postures where many different factors could influence the results.
Once you have that, then I would film tremolo tests with the different motions you know how to do, and compare the speed to the joint motion tests.
This is another aspect worthy of testing. Are you really able to make these two escapes, continuously, on a tremolo? This ability is actually not that common.
If you can do tremolo with two different escapes, are you using different joint motions for this? Or are you using the same joint motion with a different posture? If so, is the performance any different? If so, maybe one of these motions is really the better one, and maybe you should focus on that one.
I wouldn’t skip ahead to patterns or exercises until you’ve done some testing, and you know what’s going on with the motions themselves.
Thank you! So I am rewatching the primer again and definitely missed some of the videos along the way. Although on each of the tests I can get around 200-220bpm and with a pick in hand I can only get those tremolo speeds with DSX which is my primary motion. USX breaks down and I start using my fingers to compensate for the string changes. When I perform DSX I don’t even feel the string changes at all. I guess I have to accept that I am a DSX player and stop forcing the USX motion as its really uncomfortable and not working with my joint motion(8-2 ergonomic mouse motion and wrist/forearm picker, I cant tell if I dart or reverse dart thrower I put my hand almost flat against the strings rather than on pinky side of hand because I cant seem to achieve a constant tremolo without discomfort when resting on pinky side). I appreciate everyone’s responses and advice to go rewatch the primer. I will watch the whole thing before posting any videos so I’m not missing any vital info!
I’m in a similar boat as you. I have considerable DSX speed and a subpar USX. I’ve been a member for like 3 months and I only just “got it” for what my best USX motion is. Like, literally a couple of days ago. I’m not knowledgeable enough to attempt to guide you towards a good motion like the rest of the folks on this site but I can say that it’s worth it to keep trying.
The only suggestion I can make, which is when it clicked for me, is to see how smooth your motion is when you do DSX up and down the strings and try to achieve that same smoothness. I’m still working out the kinks but it’s very clear when I see it. But I have to actually look at my hand to keep it going like I want when traveling. That’s the part that tripped me up. But I finally have a motion that does what I want it to do. And it wasn’t what I thought it was.
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Thanks for the post. I agree I will not give up until I get this down. I already have a decent DSX motion and working on USX even though its not naturally my primary motion. I feel like with enough practice I can get both to a nice speed with accuracy. I have a few sections of the primer left then I will post a technique video.
Keep at it!! I hit 250+ DSX and was barely hitting 150 with USX until my breakthrough. I can get about 180-190 now and can YingYang 6 at about 175-180 on a good session. I think I’m at about 150 traveling, but when I’m well warmed, I’m 160-165.
You should update that other thread where you initially posted your videos, prior to getting an “official” critique from Troy. It would be cool to see a before and after, especially because SO many people come here wanting a USX motion but they are better at DSX. Though, as hard as it may seem, just finding it within us to not want a USX motion and go to town with what we’re already best at could yield some great results.
Actually, you’re threads inspired me to be honest with myself about my own USX ventures. For me, part of the fun is learning something new BUT…was it worth it??? I tried messing with some of the Eric Johnson phrases I practiced during the USX quest and wondering, “what would happen if I re engineered these to be DSX???”. I also allowed the “cheat” of actually (gasp) changing some notes if that made more sense. Immediately I got some cool licks I otherwise never would have thought of. And even though it’s a bit of a mess, I can see if I spent more time with it that it would be easier to do this than it would to play it the “right” way but using USX. It’s not in a fatigue type of sense, but for me, since USX wasn’t my natural motion, I have to concentrate really hard when I do it or it turns into my more auto-pilot motion.
I’m not sure if I’d consider the quest wasted time, because I had a lot of fun. But I might have had more fun shoe-horning EJ stuff into DSX. And for the records, that’s exactly what Troy always advises us, because learning a brand new motion is not an easy thing. I think that’s possibly especially true for the more (cough cough) “experienced” players (i.e. older people) because our existing motion is something we don’t even think about. Like you mentioned, you don’t even often look at your picking hand. Having to suddenly think about things on that level makes our whole playing experience different. Definitely more of a challenge. But yeah Troy tells DSX people who want to play EJ to just look to players like Andy Wood and Joe Bonamassa. They are both primarily DSX and just do “their” version of EJ. They both sound really good!
I’ll film something sometime this weekend. The strike is over so I have to go back to work….
It’s funny, I gave a lot of thought to why I’m putting so much work into USX, and though the EJ solos were the start, I think what I like best about it is the benefit of that little sweep between 2 strings. The 2nps stuff is great and I want to do the hell out of that, but incorporating that motion in stuff is my favorite part.
You could just start phrases with an upstroke and keep your DSX motion going and get 2nps essentially for free. You already sort of do that when you descend on the chromatic 4nps stuff, so clearly you have the ability play upstrokes on the down beat (which is what everyone complains about when this is suggested lol).
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I don’t wanna hijack dude’s thread but the little bit I like is because of the sound of Troy, not EJ, doing it in the Cascade seminar intro. I think it sounds better than going up.
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Hijack away! Hearing that this stuff is possible gives inspiration to the newbies out there. I played for 17 years and just started thinking about picking mechanics. Obviously we all want to USX because of EJ and Yngwie but the reality is DSX might be a lot of our primary motions. But hearing you were able to work through it and still achieve USX as a DSX player is huge. Thanks for all of the posts!
I played for about 16 before I retired for about 15 years and have been back for like 5 month. It was sort of like starting over for a month and change but it’s slowly coming back.