Bill Hall First Time Attempt At Rotational USX

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#1

Hi, Everyone.

The last couple of weeks I have been having fun trying my hand at USX. As a lifelong elbow oriented player I never really played in a USX style and I when I was watching Troy’s videos on here recently I thought I would give it a try. I came up with this motion pretty quickly. It feels super comfortable. I am not touching the body at all and barely touching the bridge. My hand is really free. I am having fun trying it and the Eric Johnson style runs and Yngwie economy picked lines feel great! I am going to keep experimenting with it and see what happens.

Here it is at a couple of different angles fast and slow. This is sort of more cruising speed…not going for a really fast tempo more of a nice speed to memorize the motion.

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#2

That terminology is ancient and hopefully will go away soon; consider using “ USX” instead.

#3

Thanks! I will change it.

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#4

Man…now Bill has ANOTHER awesome motion :slight_smile:

As if the elbow, wrist dsx, dart thrower wrist and dbx weren’t enough lol!

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#5

Very cool! It’d be interesting if you kept a journal of sorts here while learning this motion, to see how it changes over time and smooths out. Right now, I see some rotation some of the time, other times it looks more like an elbow/delt combo (totally to be expected since this is new and you have a different motion well burned in).

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#6

It’s a little more complicated than that — I apologize ahead of time for nit picking!

Pickslanting is an important component of picking technique. The path of the motion is the escape. The orientation of the pick (in one of its axes) is the pickslant. These two need to work together or you’ll get garage spikes. This is why some picking motions are only possible with certain forms.

For example Bill is doing USX. There is almost no way to do a USX tremolo without a downward pickslant. So in this case I think “downward pickslanting” is an OK shorthand for these kinds of techniques since those two things are almost always found together. e.g. You could call a Gypsy player a downward pickslanting player since it’s accurate — they do indeed use a downward pickslant. It doesn’t describe everything about their technique, but it’s accurate for what it does describe (the pickslant).

Where we’ve had confusion in the past is not knowing that the pickslant and the escape motion are two different things. We had players that want to play Eric Johnson lines, so they would do something with their form or grip to make the pick “appear slanted”. This by itself won’t create USX motion, so they would try to play fast and the motion would just become whatever motion they already know — usually elbow or wrist DSX. Hence the ultra common “failure to USX” problem which we have seen many times.

As long as you know these things are separate, and you’re doing what you need to do to learn the technique, that’s what really matters.

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#7

Nice job! It looks like USX.

As to whether it’s actually “rotational”, or how much, that’s harder to say. Pure forearm rotation looks like EVH and this isn’t that. But a mix of a wrist and forearm will cause the pick to trace a semicircular path when you film it with a Magnet:

If you film it that way and you see the ski-jump trajectory, and the pickslant becomes “more dwps” toward the top of the upstroke, then you know rotation is happening. If the pickslant doesn’t change, then it’s probably wrist or elbow / rotator cuff (Zakk Wylde) not forearm. You can see your elbow going a little side (left and right in the frame) to side so it looks like at least some of that Zakk motion is happening.

Doesn’t matter so long as it escapes. These are just little diagnostics we’ve come up with over the years.

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#8

Absolutely right, but I look at your work like this: “choose your path (DBX, USX, DSX), and then then you’re stuck with the necessary matching pickslant(s).” I think that reasoning in terms of the paths is very powerful and the pickslant is really an obvious mechanical consequence of the path as not to hook the pick on a string. Does this make sense? You’ve invented everything here, so I want to be consistent with your preferred conventions, but it seemed to me that one should avoid talking about pickslant unless it is necessary, and that going backwards from pickslant to path is more of a historical artifact of the fact that the escape terminology seemed to have been invented later.

#9

Sounds really cool! Love the pick attack!! :slight_smile:

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#10

Thanks so much for the explanations @Troy! I had a chance to play a bit yesterday and I recorded myself trying it from several different angles including with the magnet, I threw in an Eric Johnson style run at the end. I also tried to see if I could dial out any sort of elbow movement for fun (not that I mind if there is :slightly_smiling_face:) I didn’t feel any sort of elbow movement when I was doing it yesterday. I do know the more relaxed I am the easier the motion is. It feels so much different than my other motions but it feels really easy to do.

I am just sort of playing it at a speed fast enough to feel the motion so I can memorize the motion. I have tried it at really fast speeds and it is definitely useable for that also. I am having fun with it. I might work up a couple Yngwie solo using it if I have time for fun. Thanks for the input! :slightly_smiling_face:

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#11

Thank you so much, @joebegly. I am having fun trying it. It feels so different than the other motions I use. :slightly_smiling_face:

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