Elbow USX motion

Playing Technique
#1

Greetings, I have noticed some players that seem to do USX with elbow motion. If I remember correctly Troy stated and we could see that elbow motion is naturally DSX, but I’ve seen guys like SYU that do a lot of 2 note per strings playing and looks like he uses elbow motion to play this sort of phrases, but seeing it closer looks like he sometimes might use a little bit of wrist to achieve this USX motion, sometimes it looks more like just the elbow, any ideas on how this works?

I’m not even sure what kind of player SYU, I think he is primary DSX but switches to elbow motion to do even note alternate picking playing.

#2

Elbow USX exists but CTC aren’t certain how it works yet (string changes possibly enabled via the rotator cuff), Zakk Wylde when you see his bigger arm movements would be an example of this:

Troy also demonstrates it here:

I’m not sure that’s what Syu is doing from the clips I was just watching, way smaller movements, perhaps more isolated to the wrist, maybe RDT USX? Possibly some forearm as well but it was hard to tell because he was wearing wristbands covering the wiggle zone of the forearm. Any clips you could share demonstrating what you see?

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#3

You are right he uses wrist bands a lot of times, doesn’t help to figure out his mechanics.

Looking at this clip at 4.18 it might seems like there’s a bit of forearm involved along with elbow? and no wrist band, sadly, the angle of the camera doesn’t help:

I think this particular playthrough is a good example of how he starts using elbow motion right from the start since there’s a lot of 2 note per string playing, then goes to more wrist, sadly the camera angle doesn’t help much again.

Here’s a more frontal angle starting at 0:25, sadly the video doesn’t allow embedding so gotta watch it on youtube, he starts with more elbow action then goes only wrist, but even on his wrist motion looks like he uses a forearm-wrist motion action sometimes, despite the wrist bands. So he might use the forearm for getting that elbow USX you think?

So looks like he might use RDT form, forearm-wrist and elbow motions? And just constantly switches between them, but I think you are right, he might be primary USX, maybe uses the elbow for more of a tone, sound effect, getting a bit of a pinch harmonic going through his alternate picking.

#4

I’m not seeing any of the bigger movements I’d expect from elbow playing, in fact most of those clips you linked I think use forearm rotation before transitioning into wrist playing. This is pretty common among USX players, switching between varying degrees of forearm motion and wrist motion on the fly :slight_smile:

If you watch the Zakk video, notice how his whole arm locks and moves as one unit? Looks quite visually distinct whereas the only movement I’m seeing from Syu’s arm is tiny bits for string tracking. I could be wrong but that would be my best guess!

EDIT:
Loads of great forearm rotation in the last video! Probably the most clear example so far, looks similar to my own wrist forearm blend.

#5

Oh I think you are correct! Yeah I think the elbow motion that I’m noticing is mostly string tracking like you mention! Maybe elbow assists the forearm and wrist ever so slightly.

Thank you, so we could conclude SYU uses forearm and forearm-wrist primarily to get USX motion?

#6

I personally believe it needs a forarm rotation that can’t be seen because it’s so slight. If I lock my forarm I can’t do this well at all, but letting it twist even if it’s super small I can do it. But if I recorded it you wouldn’t see it.

#7

My best guesses would be forearm-wrist and wrist, I wouldn’t like to say for certain without Troy having a look first :slight_smile: Pure forearm is also different, I’d love to be able to figure out how to do it because of how cool it looks, think EVH when doing this part of his live solos:

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#8

Yes with Syu is definitely sometimes hard to see it, so it gets a bit confusing, but like you said it’s there.

#9

Oh yeah no, forearm motion is so unnatural for me, even just a slight bit i don’t know why, I rely mostly on wrist and a bit of elbow. I’ve been considering adding some finger motions tho, to see if I can get other motions, like a DBX or a trapped motion like economy picking.

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#10

Sooo this is interesting. Elbow USX IS indeed possible then? Or no…?

#11

Check out Zakk Wylde. He manages it.

Edit: oops he has been mentioned earlier here. Still, good evidence.

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#12

That’s cool but I thought USX was impossible for elbow? Troy does it here, and so is Zakk… wtf? So does that mean that double escape is possible for elbow then? Are there any elbow dobble escapees? And are there more Elbow USX’ers? Fascinating.

#13

I think Troy has speculated that rotator cuff comes into play on elbow USX. That makes sense since that could give you a trajectory of into the body on downstrokes/away on upstrokes.

Elbow for DBX…I dunno lol! Probably someone out there could do it but I’d bet you need wrist helper motion. I feel like I’ve heard Troy say some of the bluegrass players have some elbow and get dbx. Having gone down the rabbit hole I’d recommend some form of wrist based motion though. After all, even if we CAN do something doesn’t mean we SHOULD lol!

Even players like Bill Hall who have awesome elbow motions go wrist when it’s dbx time.

#14

Troy mentions Billy Strings’ rotator cuff picking motion in this article:

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I think that screenshot is from this performance:

Loads of great views of the motion, you can really see it following the arrow Troy marked out on the screenshot. Rotator cuff motion is completely fascinating to me!

EDIT:
Another way this footage is great is that you can clearly see the rotator cuff motion moving Billy’s upper arm when he plays but when it switches over to Molly you can see how her upper arm doesn’t move in the same way at all, really cool :grin:

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