don’t you think this has a part to play in his playing?
…nope!
I think the time and effort he put in is probably the biggest part of it.
Time and effort with a mechanical advantage.
We all have different hands, minds, personality, place in time, I fully believe though the hands you have let you do more than others who have different hands.
You can not overcome a mechanical advantage that someone else has, for example height.
It doesn’t matter how much effort you put into it, you ain’t jumping as high as a taller person, and you ain’t playing as fast or freely against someone with a mechanical advantage.
The hands dont lie.
No matter how much you practice, unless you have the hands to do it, you can’'t.
There are physical limitations on mechanical work.
The thumb is an obvious example, but the fingers are less so, take jason becker, his hands can do this,
You don’t think hand flexibility is in some part related to ability on guitar?
My hands can do that. I can’t shred like Jason Becker.
Why do you keep looking for these little factors that aren’t part of what we can control, especially when we’re using an example like Eddie Van Halen who, monstrous player as he was and influential and all that jazz… is kinda mid to high-mid when compared to more skilled modern players?
Isn’t the entire damn point of the whole Cracking The Code ethos to look past the “oh well his thumb is super muscular which is why his playing is so cracked”.
No, it’s not. His playing was so cracked because he happened upon a suitable style of picking that didn’t fall into the multiple possible picking pitfalls and worked at it until it he could play really well.
I am not trying to imply that I don’t think genetics are not a factor when someone’s really dialed into it and is pushing the very limit but Troy has been able to show mechanical methods of picking (specifically, high ergonomic mouse RDT) that when properly utilized allows most people enough potential picking speed to outspeed anything EVH put on a track; the speed is not the issue. It’s the working to get it under control, consistent, and repeatable.
If your hands can do that post a pic.
Yes, I believe the mechanical aspect of technique heavily influences musical output. That means you cannot replicate, for example, EVH, without his unique hands, joints, and tendons. You just can’t do it.
Troy’s work is about helping you achieve speed in your own way, not in someone else’s way, but your own personal method of playing fast.
“Eddie Van Halen who, monstrous player as he was and influential and all that jazz… is kinda mid to high-mid when compared to more skilled modern players?”
You serious mate…?
How many videos are there of kids at talent shows playing Eruption?
Eddie used a middle finger grip but never reached the peak of tall mouse speeds, I feel players with the real mechanical advantage are the ones who can achieve those speeds with a regular grip, no? 
Well I’m not talking about pure speed, its the combo of flair and speed. Control.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/syWQA9_FaD8
This is what I’m trying to get at.
@Jacklr Do you think they should be on the record?
What has personal flair got to do with your thumb? The more efficient your motion is the more control you have so I’d say that is linked to speed.
What impresses me about players like Eddie (and other naturals) is there ability to intuitively work motions out with no prior knowledge of them and in Eddie’s time, very few others players reaching the same heights of technique to use as a reference point
1 Like
Personal flair being a innate feel for expression and the physical ability to express it is everything that classical gifted people are, there are plenty of people in either category that struggle to express themselves due to lack of one or the other, someone with both can get their point across in some form of media.
To be more direct you could have all the mental ability of Ed and none of the physical ability to show it.
The tools you’re working with most definitely have an effect on how effective your expression or communication is. Without a doubt. Eddie thumb most definitely helped him play what he wanted to.
Let’s say for example you didn’t have a thumb, are you going to be able to play any van halen songs well at all? You might say well sure with a lot of work you can use two fingers to hold the pick and kind of strum… is that where you’re going with the argument against a flexible all knowing all powerful thumb? Are you crazy? You can’t even do a thumbs up without a thumb, people will think you’re flipping them off!
What about Rick Renstrom? 
2 Likes
I do have a musician friend with a similar hitchiker’s thumb who does think it’s helpful for his picking…
…but at the same time, EVH is I think most notable, in hindsight, for how well rounded his technique is and how well he made it serve the music, than it is for his picking speed per se, and plenty of other players who can pick at an equivalently high - or higher - level don’t do this.
I suppose you could explore the fact that this gives him a pretty neutral angle for his pick relative to the strings, without much pick angle at all, and that Marty Friedman kind of famously also uses a very flat picking angle… but there are plenty of players who I think probably eclipse both of them in raw picking chops - Paul Gilbert is who I have in mind here, though he’s hardly alone - who use a very aggressive
picking angle. In Paul’s case it’s for tone, not efficiency, so my suspicion is that either can be used extremely effectively and it may have less to due with speed as much as tone.
Myself, if I had the picking speed and control of either of these guys, I’d be a happy camper.
If I understand that photo, his thumb will be stationary here and he is rotating around his forearm. If we call the shortest distance between his pick tip and the line through his forearm R, a large value or R means that he doesn’t have to rotate through a big angle to cross a distance S (indeed, the angle is S/R). S is presumably an inch?