I’ve never seen Petrucci alternate pick this in a live setting. Although there are legends that he did do alternate picking in the studio recording.
Anyway - I would say that you don’t really need “Technique Critique” at this stage because everything seems to be working and sounding great 
I haven’t seen him either doing it with alternate picking live, and honestly, even on the album it sounds sweeping for me.
Thank you for checking it, as always 
I just don’t want to spam the forum and create new posts all the time. Should I create a thread called “practice diary” or something? 
Sounds good! I think that would go well in the Show and Tell category.
If you feel like including some explanations alongside the video or sharing some tips I think people would love it / find it very helpful!
You are getting great results and I’m sure I and others will end up stealing many ideas from you
Thank you @tommo, and thank you again for all the tips and encouragement. I’m not sure whether I should create a topic for each solo/song I’m trying to nail or just write a practice diary.
Our “rule” for show and tell is approximately 1 new thread per week per user - but we never really had to enforce it. Of course you can put several videos in the same thread if they fit well together.
I think it’s up to you to think how you’d like to subdivide / present your stuff. But again I’m sure many people here want to learn from you given your very impressive progress in the last couple of months. Tell us all how to get there
I was hoping alternate picking for the arpeggios, but sounds awesome regardless!
I think I’m going to steal your idea @gabrielthorn and make a thread with my practice stuff.
Haha no worries, I’ll follow your thread for sure.
I don’t see the point alternate picking this to be honest, apart from showing off on a guitar technique forum. If I manage to speed this up with alternate picking one day, I’ll do that for sure 
But it won’t be a real goal for me.
@Pepepicks66 @tommo I also gave a try to the Universal mind intro the first time while standing up, with a midi backing track. Not perfect, but I’d be happy to perform this way in a live situation.
I’ve noticed something with my picking hand in the last couple days when trying to get throught the 200 bpm barrier. My picking hand is “floating” more than before, almost giving me a “bouncing” feel. My palm is not resting on the bridge at all, also, my forearm is not touching the body, there’s a visible gap between the guitar body and my hand. I’m using my entire body to pick I don’t feel tension anywhere though. My pinky still touches the guitar body but I’m not anchoring heavily. Also, my pick slant is much more like a downward pick slant, despite my escape motion is a DSX.
Edit: my palm is slightly touching the bridge when playing on lower strings.
Has any of you experienced similar things? Tempo is 200 bpm.
Lick is this looping pattern:
E -----------14-15-17-15-14----------------14-15-17-|
B -13-15-17-----------------17-15-13-15-17----------|
This “floating” feeling of my arm became more and more frequent after practicing this chromatic run:
I still keep trying to find a faster picking motion than my current one. Based on what I’ve experienced in the last couple of weeks, I keep experimenting with a different picking motion. There’s still elbow but my wrist and forearm is in a different position I think than it was before. I’ve tried to do something similar I’ve seen in @Troy’s post Questions on how to practice using chunking . I’m sure it’s not the same motion, and I’m not familiar with this fretting pattern so I couldn’t execute the run without stopping constantly. I’ve noticed that with my new microphone connected to the interface, it is recording both the dry signal and the mic signal. I’ll sort that out, but for now, you can hear the mic on the left channel and the dry guitar signal on the right.
Not sure if this is a valid motion or if there’s a default escape here.
I’m sure there’s a valid motion in there somewhere! Anything you can do that fast can probably be made use of for something.
It does look like you’re trying to get an USX motion (based on the arm position and initial string attack etc) but my eyes are telling me you’re reverting to a DSX motion mid-tremolo. That’s your primary baked in tremolo escape, the one that you’ve had so much success with lately?
That’s not a critique mind, just something I’m seeing. My guess is you’re on your way to figuring out a new escape, but you’ll need to keep futzing with it to get the feel down.
Yeah, I’m sure my current technique is interfering, but honestly I find my hand much more loose when playing fast stuff this new way. There’s not as much control as with my default motion but maybe one day it’ll click. I started discovering this mainly by trying to playing cascading 6s at 150bpm (it’s 225bpm 16th notes). Not perfect but that’s how I started to feel this “new” motion (is it a new motion at all?)
First take on this. Personally, I find this more difficult to play than Technical difficulties. For me, ending the sextuplet runs on the D string feels more natural than starting the DBX pattern on the A string after the burst, so timing is terribly off at some places, it needs more work for sure. Thank you for the great exercise @tommo and for the tabs
For every new lick you take to a high level, one box must appear in the background. This is the secret of gabriel’s technique.
I’d say it’s not true, but that would be a lie
Evening practicing, with some rough bits.
Sounds like the sixes are a little slower than the metronome, are you running the metronome through your computer software separately?
What I’ve noticed that I start the first 2 groups slightly earlier than the beat. Shame on me.
The metronome is on the computer.
Haha once again don’t beat yourself up about it! Where’s all the guilt coming from?
Every time I try to record something to a click / drum beat, I have to do a few attempts before I get some decently-timed takes. And even then, it’s not humanly possible to be exactly “on the grid”.
I think it’s fairly normal and the important thing is to be able to evaluate it and try to correct it. For example, I noticed that it’s very easy to anticipate the beat when there is a fast and short passage (I’m thinking e.g. Paul Gilbert’s technical difficulties). If I’m not careful, it easily looks like this (I started early and finished late here):
If you listen to Paul’s live performances of TD, you’ll notice that sometimes he falls into this trap too, but the overall result is still great:
