In order to learn to play this and other EJ stuff, do I realistically have to develop a USX technique or are there any DSX players here that can do this well by adapting things to DSX?
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As a DSX player, a dream would come true for me if thereās a way to play this song with my picking motion. Iām afraid an USX motion is a must for this.
Well you can switch the picking directions so that they are compatible with a DSXā¦ or use the pull-offs in different places to allow for it. If you are a hardcore DSX picker then I would hazard a guess that it could be easier to learn a tweaked version than try and get USX goingā¦
Even if you switch the picking to start on an upstroke, consider the ascending economy phrases that are such a cornerstone of the EJ sound:
E----------------------------------------------------------
B-----------------------12-15---------------------------
G--------------12-14------------------------------------
D----------14---------------------------------------------
A-----------------------------------------------------------
E-----------------------------------------------------------
picking : D . D . U . D . U
The fact that he sweeps the first 2 notes creates this neat ābubblyā type of sound that I donāt think would come out if you played this phrase with strict alternate picking (which BTW would work out perfectly with DSX if you start with a downstroke)
That said, Andy Wood and Joe Bonamassa sound reasonably authentic when they play EJ phrases, so maybe note choice trumps articulation at the end of the day. Neither of those guys are USX players, based on what Iāve understood from comments by Troy when he discusses this.
You could easily get creative with either what pick stroke you start on and possibly some legato sprinkled in where it makes sense to play a note-for-note rendition of this tune using DSX. Pretty much what @PickingApprentice said. I agree with him thatās less work that learning USX, as Iām in the process of learning USX myself (I am a natural DSX player). Itās going well, but it was and still is a journey.
Also, I canāt see a way how to play his cascading fives with DSX ā¦
Itās not his exact pattern, but this would be a cascading 5ās DSX run that would sound like his playing:
Hmm, interesting.
What is the max picking speed one would need to get to for this song?
If I have a target in mind Iāll see if I can find a tremolo using a USX pattern and see if I could get that up to speed without too much strain. Iād have to abandon the elbow motion that I currently employ at really high speeds though but Iāll experiment.
I didnāt count the notes to a clock but it feels like if you were either playing 16ths notes at 180bpm or 6ās at 120 bpm (12 notes per second) youād be in his range.
I will say this though, just because Iāve heard it cautioned on here by Troy and others: best not to get ahead of ourselves. The way forward is truly to go with what you are fastest at. Most players, myself included, donāt quite have a grasp of what it feels like to play fast and effortlessly the way our heroes do. If you make progress with what you are naturally fastest at, you will learn this feeling. You can then go back and apply it to another motion and use it as a reference point. Youāll know right away if the new motions feels right or not. I went through the same thing. Elbow was my fastest motion, so I rolled with that and Iām now working on a forearm rotational/wrist blend so I can do USX phrases. Iāve tried going the other way around and learning a USX motion before really getting a feel for fast/effortless playing. The results were not good 
Troy set me straight and now itās going much better.
This is very typical for Ericās fast lines. Iāve measured some of his fastest playing in Transcribe! and he was able to reach 14-15 notes per second with his pentatonic 5s and 6s.
Cliffs Of Dover is at 190 bpm. According to the official transcription the fastest section is triplets, which is 9.5 notes per second. Not his fastest playing by any means, but some of the lines are pretty tough.
Iāve started relearning Desert Rose recently, which is 92bpm and has a few licks at 32nd notes (about 12.3 nps) Bizarrely, those are some of the easiest licks in those solos.
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I donāt doubt it. Do you recall a title or 2 of where his fastest playing is? Iāve been working on Trademark for awhile, which I think is about 120bpm. The only truly difficult part is the run queued up here:
There are some 6ās and 5ās there, so that would be max of 12 notes per second assuming Iām not too far off of the tempo.
I should add, more on topic, I always thought the fastest part of Cliffs of Dover were in both of the free time section in the intro and outro.
So, based on the studio version, the phrases in the first 25 seconds, then the bit from 3:50 till the end:
Not sure how to best clock that since the tempos is loose. I wonder how many notes per second those parts are thoughā¦
Okay I see, so for Cliffs of Dover that would be equivalent to sixteenths at ~143 BPM?(at least by the official transcription)
Point well taken. Much as I donāt want to feel like EJ stuff will be kind of a square peg for my most instinctive fast picking motion, it does seem like I should just accept that at fast speeds (and possibly due to how my 3rd and 4th finger rest in extension as opposed to curled on the body of the guitar, a tendency that I just cannot for the life of me seem to get away from) elbow picking with DSX is what I need to focus on really mastering for now. A long journey for sure.
Just keep in mind, Rusty Cooley plays DSX with an elbow mechanic Nothing wrong with his playing!!!
I think there is a big difference between whether you want to completely nail the EJ style/sound/system vs wanting to be able to āinjectā an EJ flavour into the mix every now and then. The former will take a good deal of time and effort, the latter you can do with what you have (albeit with a bit of tweaking).
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Ha I just looked him up and saw a videoā¦melted my face off lol
As a primarily DSX elbow guy pre-discovery of CtC, I feel this. I had tried to learn Cliffs of Dover on multiple occasions with pure alternate since thatās just how I assumed Eric was doing it and I could never quite get it up to speed. Once I saw Troyās EJ videos I spent a pretty long time getting comfortable with the EJ techniques to the point where I forgot how to play the way I used to before, lol ā¦ so I went from abusing DSX favoring licks to abusing EJ pentatonic stuff. Iāve since rediscovered my old sort of technique while making some improvements to it based on the CtC materials but I feel like I took a very roundabout way of learning a new picking style, but hey - now itās all in the toolbox. Hereās a lil vid for an example using the EJ style picking although Iām more of a wrist rotation guy for the USX stuff:
Itās definitely doable to learn a technique thatās pretty much the opposite of what youāre doing now, donāt let that stop you if thatās your main concern! But like @PickingApprentice was saying, if all you really want is to be able to sprinkle in some EJ-isms once in a while, it might be more worthwhile to make his phrasing work with your picking technique as it is as itāll probably be a significant time investment to reverse engineer a totally different technique.
Might be an unpopular opinion but if youāve got decent left hand technique, using pull-offs sounds nearly just as good and depending on how much gain youāve got on tap you canāt tell a huge difference. If youāre gonna play a whole EJ song with hammer ons/pull-offs instead of playing the way he does, sure it wonāt sound as much like him, but if youāre sprinkling a few licks with an EJ flavour here and there no one is going to on a witch hunt cuz you didnāt pick every note.
Nice! How did you go about learning the section with the tonic note picked with the finger alternating with using the pick. I was never able to get comfortable with that. Perhaps thatās a particular skill that is more amenable to slowly working up with a metronome since itās a very particular bit of coordination/movement?
Love the tone on that vid (and the playing of course!), what were you playing through?
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Yeah, I can barely play that at lick 10% of the tempo. I have no idea how people do thisā¦
Itās a very foreign skill to me because using the 3rd finger to pick a note while using a plectrum with my thumb and forefinger, apart from feeling kind of odd, changes the fundamental way that I use my third and fourth finger as an anchor/support against the body of the guitar when picking. So it feels kind of like Iām hanging in the air a little bit. Iāll have to try practicing this really slowly and scaling up. Like patting my head and rubbing my stomach at the same time ha