Hello;
I’m brand new to the forum and am looking at the monthly sub. I’ve a learned a lot from his primer already.
I have a question about the intro to "Don’t Stop Believing " by Journey. I see some people do pull offs to achieve the speed need to rev the intro up at the end. It’s kinda like when troy talks about that Volcano Technique. However I see others pick it all. Do I start the intro with a downward slant or upward.
Here is how he does it
Hi and welcome!
If you’re wanting to pick every note and start with a downstroke and use strict alternate picking, you’d be in the best position if you used downward pick slanting. I think now the preferred terminology for this pick movement is ‘USX’ though as the important thing is that the pick ‘escapes’ the plane of the strings on upstrokes, allowing for easy string changes. You could in theory do this without really slanting either direction.
But yeah to keep it most simple, slant downwards the whole time and you’ll play it like Neal Schon is doing. It’s great exercise that I do pretty often because it forces lots of string changing.
Neal has am interesting picking technique…it looks like wrist with trailing edge pick attack…but there is something different about the motion I can’t pinpoint. The slant of the pick isn’t obvious to me however alot of his playing seems to lend itself to USX. It’s solid that’s for sure. One could do this lick with DSX if you start it on an up.
I realised that I had a downstroke escape motion, which was disappointing, but found that I was able to play this beginning with an upstroke. I thought I would have trouble starting lines with an upstroke, but it really hasn’t turned out to be a big issue. I’m not there yet, a long way off, if you are an upstroke escape player, then starting with a downstroke will do the trick.
This comes up quite often on the Forum, but the reality is (and I think you have hinted at this already) that the two systems are equally powerful! John Mc Laughlin and Al Di Meola, for example, are mostly downstroke-escapers. You don’t hear many people complaining about their technique 
While it’s a good goal to try and familiarise yourself with the other type of motion, using the motion you already have is likely to bring the most musical satisfaction in the short-medium term!
You are probably right! To be honest I was disappointed at first because a lot of the Eric Johnson and Yngwie stuff immediately seemed off limits, and the Strunz and Farah and John McLaughlin Material while fine just wasn’t of the same interest to me. However, I seem to be getting over it, and have been developing licks to suit the downstroke escape. Descending pentatonics starting on an upstroke work quite nicely - if I could get my left hand into gear, which I am working on. I think it would be nice to have a library of downstroke escape type licks, maybe I could contribute something like that to the forum. Ascending pairs of threes seem to work pretty well (new issue: left hand, then right hand tracking!) ie. 12-14-15 new string 12-14-15-12-14-15 new string etc. So while I was disappointed, I am getting over it!
I struggle with alternate picking this lick too, and I really want to get it down for a cover band I’m in. I pretty much found CTC in 2021 because I had no RH speed whatsoever and needed to play this lick! Although vastly improved because of this site, I still don’t reliably have it. (USX and starting with a downstroke)
However! I just tried slowing the above clip to 25% and fullscreen - doesn’t it sound/look like he is pulling off to the 2nd note and picking both notes on the 3rd string?
I might give that a whirl, which could solve my cover band problem. However I still want to conquer this with alternate picking! (Personal vendetta at this point.) I just feel that sixteenths at 180 should be achievable and I’m frustrated that I haven’t gotten there, which means it’s probably time to renew my subscription, finally film something for technique critique, and get cracking once more!