Hi!
Here again the first two rounds of this devilish riff by Master Paul Gilbert.
I had posted some time back the same riff, as I had spent some hours studying it. I decided to revisit and bring it up to speed, give it another go basically.
I can’t remember about last time, but this one I got two elements that I needed to work on: besides the sextuplet runs, this time I found that the first part with the sixteen notes in three groupings, although not “difficult” to nail and make sound properly, tired me quite a bit. So, basically, the second time around in the riff, I was fully contracted and “running on fumes”.
I had to ease-up substantially on the “slant” of the pick to get it to a level of relaxation in the hand which allowed me to play two full riffs without too much extra tension.
I mean, the first pattern can (should?) be played by inverting the slant according to the pattern (sorta like what’s shown in the videos on Michael Angelo, if I remember correctly?). I found that if I make the slant very shallow, I can still manage the string changes cleanly, but reduce the “stress” associated with the slant toggle.
(Hopefully this makes sense)
The other roadblock is the first note after the sextuplet, because this comes with a wrong stroke for a downward pick slanting, or DSX as you call it nowadays. Sorry about that, I haven’t followed the evolution of terminology and concepts, I have a lot to catch up in that department.
At the minute, I just approach it “as it comes”, I try to flick in the last note by accomodating a change of slant for the first note of the next bar, after the sextuplet, on the next string down. However, especially if one thinks of simple three note per string runs, this is difficult to implement at serious speeds. I don’t have a solution for that and I’ll likely write a post specifically for that 
Anyways, thanks for watching and I’d appreciate any suggestions you want to make!
Michele
