Ok thank you, I’ll take a look at the dart thrower form now 
Have you taken my poll yet? lol!
Just checking - are you suggesting dart thrower for a USX motion?
Haha, not yet, but I have had a look
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No I’m suggesting this as a way of helping find a double-escape form that is always zero-degree at all speeds. Your current form might be fine but if you can’t immediately figure out how to make it stop doing USX slow → DBX fast, then trying something else might help.
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Slightly odd question - If I stick with my DBX motion, if that seems to be on the right lines at the moment, but then try to introduce downstroke sweeping with something like the EJ 5s lick, is there a chance I could develop some kind of USX by feel? I know this os kind of an odd question - but is it possible?
On another note, is trying different pick grips (e.g 2 finger) a good way to mix things up as well as trying different techniques/forms?
If Troy says you’ve got the start of a DBX motion, but you want to play EJ stuff, why not try approaching it the way Andy Wood does?
If it feels good right from the beginning you’ll know you’re on the right track. Once you’ve got a version of “this is it!!” going, then you can try experimenting with other things.
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No. I’m a broken record here, but the best way for you to learn USX is to change your form significantly enough that it triggers a different alternate picking motion right away — one that follows a USX escape path even as you speed up. This advice is based on what we are seeing in your clips, and based on interactions with lots and lots of players who look just like you technique-wise, and who have struggled with the same problem.
Sure. But if you are asking because you want to try different ways so you can learn USX, then the best advice is to switch to grazing fingers, i.e. touching the guitar body, with a forearm position that is supinated and feels comfortable. This is the single most important change since it is common to many USX players and will feel the most “different” from what you do now. It will make it easier to try motions that are different than your current motion, like forearm, forearm-wrist, and fingers.
Try those things and get back to us and let us know if the motions look any different.
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Here is an attempt at a USX motion using wrist-forearm
What do you think could be improved?
Thanks again for the help!
Edit: I just realised you cant see much of the forearm. This video should show that better:
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Does this look ok? I’m having some difficulty moving this motion across strings, so I am just wondering if the motion on the single string is correct?
Thank you
It looks like shallow USX to me so I’d say you’re on the right track. I’d suspect, just from being in a similar situation a few years back, that if you introduce the fretting, muscle memory kicks in and your picking hand will default to what it already knows.
I used tremolo melodies and ‘double picked’ passages to gradually introduce the fretting hand in while allowing me to still concentrate on the picking.
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Does the motion remain a USX motion when going fast? If so then good. If it becomes another motion, then not good. Motions shouldn’t become other joint motions just because they’re fast. This only happens, as Joe points out, because you want to switch to another motion.
Also, is there any reason you’re using the giant pick? It’s creating a second pitch which makes it difficult to know if the note is really being hit smoothly. If only as a test, I would try a more typical pick somewhere around 1mm just to eliminate the pick as a source of mechanical confusion.
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On one string, I think so. When I play across multiple strings, I think it’s less consistent, although I am still getting used to it - its still new to me, and before I have been pretty much exclusively a wrist player when alternate picking.
I do have, and have swapped between some jazz 3s, I know the giant pick is a bit goofy 
(Its by purple plectrums if you’re interested) however, I find it quite comfortable to hold and play with due to its thickness. When playing, the second pitch is not really noticeable in person, but I have realised that it can be heard quite obviously in the videos. I can use a jazz 3 in the future for critique videos if that makes your job easier
Gentleman,
I regret to announce in this old thread that I have a question. In the earlier incarnation of the current RDT primer material, the aforementioned chapter on USX RDT with the supinated arm position was available. It has since been removed, likely because it caused confusion. I hate to be User#1,000,000 with a USX question - but will this video or a continuous USX-RDT video be available again?
Without boring you handsome ladies and gentlemen any further, I have a unique problem when trying to learn some motions. With that original USX RDT chapter, I was able to replicate and slightly modify Troy’s form and get the motion working well. Occasionally, I’d drift out of that form every so often, and I’d lose the smoothness. I would reference the form from that magnet footage to re-orient myself every so often. Naturally, it’s not good to rely on footage/props/etc., but for whatever reason - it helps me to do so on occasion.
Will there be a sequel or re-upload of that chapter in the near future?
I am very proud of all of you for your bravery and persistence in following your dreams to achieve new guitar playing skills. I love you and hope that your day and holiday season goes wonderfully.
- Toad
Right — I think it was a little confusing so we’ve removed that for now. Here’s why.
The reverse dart section is focused on teaching the most generic possible way to do picking with the wrist. Instructionally, the simplest approach is to teach just one overall form, so the player can use that to play any phrase regardless of how many notes are on each string. For lack of a better term, this is what we’ve been calling “double escape” form. It doesn’t mean the player will be making double escape motion all the time. It just means that this is the form from which double escape motion — and thereby, the ability to pick any line so long as it is alternate — is possible.
Based on what we have seen, I think most double escape players become DSX players when speeding up, not USX players. I think this is because, if your picking motion looks like USX when you do a tremolo, this usually also means that you have downward pickslanting. This recipe will cause garage spikes when trying to play certain picking patterns, making the attack on those phrases awkward.
For players who want to learn a generic one-size-fits-all approach to alternate picking, our best guess is that your tremolo probably needs to look like either trapped or DSX motion, and your pickslant needs to be (close to) a zero-degree pickslant. The ability to do DSX but hold the pick vertically appears idiosyncratic to DSX motion, and doesn’t seem to translate to USX. So zero-degree pickslanters get access to two different motions — DSX and DBX. This is why they can “pick anything”.
Yes, there are complicated approaches where a USX player can do things involving two-way pickslanting to get other string changes, but it’s unclear if they really end up with the same degree of pure alternate patterning capability. So we’re ignoring that in the initial steps for reasons of simplicity. Most players that can “pick everything with alternate” appear to do so while using double escape form as the underlying foundation for everything, along with a combination of DBX and DSX motion. This is true even if those same players use a little 2wps here and there.
So… if we put back lessons on how to do USX, it will probably be in a section on how to become a USX player and will probably include explanation of why it’s kind of its own animal — suited for playing USX lines specifically, and not suited for being a base for double escape playing. At least so far as we can tell right now.
I will say that I have not seen many (any?) examples of someone doing USX and “drifting” out of that form. I’ve seen lots of examples of players who are basically DSX players thinking they’re doing USX or trying to learn it, but not really doing it, and just becoming DSX as they speed up. That’s super common.
The simple test for this is to do a tremolo and see what it looks like. If it’s DSX, then I wouldn’t bother trying to figure out how to do USX. I would work on DSX stuff like in Metronomic Rock, and get these lines as bulletproof as you can:
Getting great at any single technique is the fastest possible way to get great at the next one. This means not just doing the tremolo with a given escape, but getting the hand sync happening, learning and smoothifying all the base phrases and picking patterns, etc. This really drives home what it feels like to be accurate at typical lead playing speeds, and levels up your picking jedi powers significantly.
It also sets you up for double escape / mixed escape playing down the line, provided you are using zero-degree pickslanting form and not UWPS.
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Hi everyone, I have a question regarding the RDT picking motion and I did not want to open a new thread with the same title, hope this is okay.
In the video on the RDT picking motion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWuGkXhj0T8) Troy explains the motion as a motion that uses flexion and extension as the basic picking motion, as opposed to deviation. Am I getting this correctly?
The follow-up question then is why Joscho Stephan´s picking motion is described as a RDT picking motion. Isn´t he using a blend of forearm rotation and deviation with a flexed wrist and with a pronated form? Is he using extension of the wrist at all? Also, Josho is a USX player. As I see it, the RDT picking motion is a DSX motion.
Thank your for claryfiying.
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It’s extension plus ulnar deviation for downstrokes, flexion plus radial deviation for upstrokes: the hand is moving along a diagonal path at the wrist. The exact proportions vary among players - John McLaughlin has more of the deviation path, whereas James Hetfield (or a ton of other metal guys) have more of that flexion/extension element present. The forearm positioning (just how much supination is present) has a lot to do with this.
I asked Troy this very question in some huge RDT thread here. I suppose technically Joscho’s hand is also moving along that RDT path, but clearly the technique itself is quite different from, say, McLaughlin’s.
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Just depends on the players setup, both DT and RDT can be USX or DSX.
DT USX = Shawn Lane
DT DSX = John Taylor, Molly Tuttle (at her fastest speed)
RDT USX = Joscho Stephan, Mark Tremonti
RDT DSX = Troy in his RDT video, Andy Wood, Sierra Hull (at their fastest speeds)
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My understanding of the most recent guidance on RDT is that it’s capable of any/all escapes but it’s “setup” dependent. If you get a really neutral setup, you’ve got DBX and DSX. If you get a supinated setup, you’ve got USX. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around how the USX part is possible, but Troy’s cited lots of examples.
I could be wrong about all or any of that though…been wrong before many many times lol!
All the reverse dart setups are “supinated”. There is some amount of the underside of the arm visible in all of them. Some players, like the metal players, use an arm position that is more obviously supinated.
I don’t like the term “neutral” because what does it mean? You have some overall form that you use, including instructions for how to hold the pick. Then, using that form, you try to do a tremolo in a way that feels easy. That’s the first step.
Because if you watch this clip in slow motion you will see there is almost no turning of the forearm:
Even in Joscho’s strumming motion, where there is some forearm turning, the amount is small compared to the distance the hand actually moves. That’s how you know most of the motion is coming from the wrist joint not the forearm.
Note also that “reverse dart” is a general term for a range of wrist motions. It doesn’t refer to any particular type of escape. If you take Andy Wood’s wrist motion and do it with Joscho Stephan’s form, you get different escapes. The form and look of it is quite different, but the wrist motion isn’t [very] different.
These things are stupidly technical to explain, and even giving these things a name and trying to simplify the understanding of them seems to invite players to try and “figure out” how they work. But that’s almost always counterproductive to learning how to do them.
So we’ve tried to focus all the instructional material as much as possible on things you can do hands-on. Rest on this part of the body, hold the pick this way, move the hand / arm like this, etc. Does it feel smooth? Do the notes sound even? That kind of thing.
If you’re trying to learn how to do a particular technique, I get the best results experimenting in the hands-on realm, while constantly reminding myself that if it’s fast and easy, it’s more likely to be correct.
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