I love how mainstream the concept of escape picking has become! Troy and other innovators are really making a difference when it comes to demystifying guitar technique.
In this video, Cecil explains his approach to escaping exclusively on upstrokes and sweeping on downstrokes a la Yngwie and Benson (who clearly is his main influence technique-wise), and highlights the relevance of developing a nice tremolo motion. People just didn’t talk technique like that 30 years ago.
I bought Cecil’s picking course from his website. Nothing much further to add to your post except that IIRC he will occasionally use cross-picking (his terminology) for what he calls more nuanced phrasing.
James, did you like the course? I’m a big Cecil fan, took a private lesson with him years ago.
I found the course very interesting, even though ultimately I haven’t totally adopted his way of picking. I say totally because I’m interested in using some aspects of how he does things - basically, my picking style is a two-way economy, although I am aware that some economy pickers such as Frank Gambale won’t use a purely directional economy style for all their lines - for some, they will make use of a particular pick-slant/escape direction.
But I think the course is good because some advice is not wholly predicated on adopting his style, if I remember correctly. Plus in the PDF there are some cool lines.
It’s cool that you had a lesson with him. I requested a lesson with him a few years ago but he never got back to me, I think I said something along the lines of ‘my right hand needs sorting out’, and fair enough if he didn’t want to try and sort it out for me! I am however friends with him on facebook. He strikes me as a very cool guy and obviously a stunning player.
Thanks! I can’t speak for him but I’d wager missing that message was just an oversight rather than anything about its content