might just be me, but I’m only hearing audio out of left channel!
My only comment regarding the gain to separate responsibilities. To me, picking the string skips is a drastically different problem to solve than the left hand fingering (or even right hand palm dampening) being clean. That said, to me it’s seemed from really early on that your picking hand is making a really good motion. Might be worth trying some of your fastest attempts sans gain though.
I don’t feel like Anton uses a lot of gain, he picks really hard and that helps with the aggressive sound. Definitely not Black Metal amounts of gain he is using though.
But as always, rock on! You’re sounding better all the time with this. I actually really appreciate you posting the super raw “part of the journey” type of clips you’ve been putting up.
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It might be helpful also to practice whatever pattern you are working on right hand only, clean sound and all notes let ring out.
I find that sometimes swipes are hidden with left hand muting.
Having said that, it depends on what your goal is. Minor swipes don’t matter much if the left hand is muting them. I just find it helpful for my purposes, which is more chord arpeggiation, with notes ringing.
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on this. I think one of the possible benefits of this forum could be to see more people who developed wtfbbq picking chops on their entire “journey,” as you put it. When I was younger and more easily frustrated it definitely would have helped 
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I’m a big fan of posting the whole journey. I really respect Dean Lamb a lot because he posts those learning attempts on his channel (granted, he wipes the floor with 99% of players still, and is able to learn crazy stuff in an hour or two really well - but you see all the mistakes and how he handles tricky parts).
One mindf*ck with this, which I totally felt when working on my sweep picking but maybe a bit less so - is how frequently it feels like you’re back at square one. Like I’ll have bursts of playing dead on and smooth and fast, sounds great for a couple bars, I stop and maybe try to record what I just did and it’s gone lol. And some times I’ll pick up the guitar, and the motion is right there, sometimes I do what I normally do to find it and it’s stubbornly hiding.
I think it’s because
a) the attack is hard, it means you notice a lot more of the string resistance changes, so pick grip becomes very important, and I see why Anton and his students warn of breaking your technique when attacking lower strings vs higher ones. Just takes some conscious work getting used to.
b) There’s a certain level of relaxation that I think can be easier going one or the other direction, maybe based on past habits - for me, ascending staring on an upstroke is weird, and I’ve been drilling it and that’s helping. I think 100% the issue is that going from upstroke to downstroke is already including relaxation of the right hand to drop into the next string, and that I’m anticipating having to fight against gravity so I tense up too early. I think it’s something I have to train out of me and it may well be a learned habit, so I’m working on unlearning it on top of getting the base motion down.
For a) and b) I’ve been adding in practicing more low string forward rolls to get used to both at the same time.
Then there’s c) Finding the right pick grip, I’ve been messing with this a lot, and keeping the index and middle finger joints lined up is important, more so than the thumb placement for me. But getting away from the center of the thumb pad still feels crucial, for me that’s meaning I navigate toward the thumb knuckle a bit rather than the tip, but that’s kind of equivalent as far as stability from what I can tell. I’m also messing with shifting to the edge/side of the thumb just a bit and figuring out what feels right.
When they all kind of come together it re-affirms it on the right track
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Yuuuup, I’m in this stage too most days. Woke up today and it was there, then went to make coffee and when I came back it was gone again. Hopefully it settles down eventually! 
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Spent some time cleaning up and recorded the beginning section of it pushing the speed again - obviously plenty of rough patches, the very beginning up to the first big descending arpeggio is smoother now though. The string skip + arpeggio parts are obviously the most time consuming just getting down. I get runs periodically where I just about nail that whole section but it’s far from consistent.
I’ll continue to focus on the weak points throughout in the same way and see where it is in a couple more days.
I’ve definitely been having a bit of trouble on the high E string, a bit of tendency to just completely whiff strokes…what’s the solution?
I had been trying to focus on making sure everything was as close to “the same” as possible with the right hand from string to string but maybe I need to make some minor adjustments.
One thing I’m noticing is I need to re-anchor more than I thought to keep things even, rather than just keeping anchored at the top of the bridge. Like I’ll drop down a bit if I’m about to play a descending arpeggio or play a run on the high strings and it seems to make a difference.
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I’m wondering if for this type of playing (DBX/crosspicking, not just 902) everything ends up being a mixed bag of “coordinations”. Mainly I’m thinking about Anton as the litmus test, just because everything appears so consistent and uniform with his approach. But I think there are tiny variations he might use (regarding anchoring and even the exact motion) on a phrase by phrase basis.
On the surface it’s easy to say “we’ll just find a curved motion that escapes both directions” but it may be more nuanced than that. As you say, drop the anchor down a bit on a descending arpeggio. Or, as I’ve seen with Anton, at times more/less rotation seems to be needed.
I have no idea if I’m correct or not. If I were though, it would be really cool to get a set of ‘rules’ (or plausible options) much like what Troy came up with for single escape.
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I think this is spot on, the more I play around especially with the 5 and 4 string sequences, I realize introducing a helper motion is, if not required, super, well, helpful in maintaining form and can come from the elbow, shoulder, back, some combination of muscles not used by the rest of the motion. Conciously working in shifts in where you’re anchoring the palm when you know a big descending or ascending run is coming up and working it in with the picking motion seems like part of the whole “system” - the movement itself with one anchor point really only gets you across 3 string reliably. You can do it across more but form starts breaking and it feels less stable.
Additional note on this: Navigating the anchoring with arpeggios that involve string skips like the Solfeggietto feels a bit like a chunking exercise, I’m thinking about the next chunk of notes in terms of where I should adjust my anchor point to play them.
Further note: Because of this, it almost feels a little easier to do those string skips than it is to maintain a smooth sequence of 5 string arpeggios, as the latter requires the smooth tracking motion like a sweep that @Tom_Gilroy moentions - and maintaining that evenly feels less natural to me than handling discreet chunks of smooth motion in one direction then jumping to another location for whatever reason. Maybe because it lets you repeatedly reset your tracking motion so the long sequence of smoothly tracking arpeggios is less forgiving/has less room for recalibration.
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Here’s a new clip of the Solfeggietto - I think every time I film myself I end up tensing and rushing more than when I’m playing it relaxed, still, getting further along. That string skipping chord alternation at the end is tricky lol. Most of the tabs don’t include it, but Anton does so I’m trying it.
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Getting this attack pretty solid on clean for Serrana
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I realized I still have this tendency to not deviate enough on upstrokes
In this clip - I start just making the upstroke motion more exaggerated to try and get it in muscle memory a bit. When I start into the Serrana sequence it goes pretty well and mostly clean for a bit, towards the end of the clip mistakes are increasing quite a bit and I can tell I’ve stopped making as much radial deviation, plus I think I need a bit of a tracking helper motion for the 3 string arpeggios, which I’ve worked on separately and am trying to get into the habit of using that.
Thinking if I really keep hammering home the full range of motion for radial deviation on my upstrokes maybe I can eliminate a big source of inconsistency.
One note on doing so - I think resting my palm a bit towards the middle of the bridge rather than the top is beneficial for making me keep that radial deviation throughout. If I start out higher, another option is to change pickslant on the initial downstroke on the E or A string, not for any particular escape but so I can hit the upstroke with additional force and conciously initiate string tracking/recalibrate my anchor point down a bit.
These kind of add a little to the concept @joebegly of having a bit of an ensemble model of picking especially for this longer picked arpeggios, it’s maybe not just 902 but there’s some string tracking issues to solve for that may involve more than one helper motion.
I also have an update on the Solfeggietto - I haven’t practiced it as much the last couple of days but the work on arpeggios seems to have helped the string skipped arpeggio/cascading arpeggio sections. I need to comb through it and do cleanup work probably at the beat/2 beat level and really work on getting it smoothed out but it feels like I’ll have it before terribly long.
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Hm, yeah some of these I’m recording through my axe fx as input to my laptop and just using Quicktime - it’s probably set up on mono for some reason when I do that.
I could be totally off here, but something about the “plucky” attack of your clean-tone clips makes me think that you might find it easier with some more edge picking.
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You’re not wrong, I’ve been keeping the attack pretty stiff on purpose because it’s a bit more difficult and I like the sound so I want to have a pick grip that supports that.
But I’ve figured out an adjustment where I bend my thumb a bit to shift the pick angle, might be what I was missing as far as the bent thumb, I need to get a bit more used to it though. I also just switched to 11 gauge strings from 9, so I’m using a fair amount of force but the momentum of the hand is working for me, when I use more of an angled attack I think I can make the motion less exaggerated and it feels quicker, just not consistently comfortable so I haven’t filmed that.
I was down tuned by a whole step with the 9s, I’m still down tuned but I think the 11s make it a bit easier, the give was just a bit too much on the strings lower than G.
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Yes, this! Something that has helped me (that may only be a “proprioceptive mnemonic,” so to speak) was to think of the path of the pick when projected into the plane of the strings as being angled – I think I had subconsciously been trying to pick each string at the same place but obviously that’s not realistic with wrist tracking.
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