Likely. But there really isn’t much to see. Some of his larger strokes appear to move away, and then some of the smaller faster in.
In other words I don’t know. And if I could play like him I would be happy.
Here’s a good video of him playing, (sorry its an advertisement). He talks a bit about hand placement and muting. @1:45
He’s a fantastic player!
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Yeah I guess that explains it. I guess using the wrist, from this posture, offers a lot of flexibility in terms of what escape you can make.
Yeah, very cool. I think I’ve seen that before but probably didn’t pay attention to that part. Makes sense and definitely seems like his default placement.
I think a lot of us will agree on sentiment like this. If someone can play at 240 bpm for an extended duration like he does, a song like the subject of this thread (195bpm) would probably feel like you’re cruising. His technique and control are certainly top notch.
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I can’t replicate the type of motion he is doing when I try copy his setup. I don’t understand dart or reverse dart thrower, is there a video that shows those motions close up on this site?
Same here. I’m not going to spend tons of time on it. I can now do a pretty fast RDT with a trailing edge grip. Different muting contact points, but it does the job. I can also, from his setup, come off the strings a little and do a forearm rotation movement that is fast and USX. Well, I think it is forearm. Who knows, with as bad as I am at identifying motions. Here’s what that looks like:
Troy shows the reverse grip RDT here:
And in this (Igor) thread, Troy mentions that as a foot in the door to the motion. So maybe once I play with it more I’ll be able to mimic Igor’s motion a little better. Part of me doesn’t want to spend the time though lol!
Honestly I’ve made pretty good progress just noodling along with the backing track that came with the lesson I bought. Just trying to play as many beats of licks (that work with a particular escape) until I start to lose it. I’m reliably getting 3 or 4 beats of all 16ths when I lock in, so hopefully it will help develop a series of chunks I can stitch together. If nothing else, it’s helping 195 to not feel so scary.
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Thanks I’ll have a look. I’ve always struggled to understand the dart thrower motions, which leaves me scratching my head with many topics. It’s come up a lot lately!
Yeah, one thing I’ve realized is that these movements feel/look much more ‘vertical’. Think “bird pecking” motion for the RDT.
I think that many people have issues grasping this from a purely literal reference, because you can flick darts in many different ways. Some people when they think of dart throwing, think of flexion and extension, (the exact movements responsible for string hopping) or using more of the arm. Or if you are like me, you wind up your whole arm and hit the wood beside the dart board. But if you view it as a form of wrist translation with a slight diagonal wrist flick it makes more sense. It’s more of a way of describing how your wrist may move in a 3 dimensional plane, and not so much a 2D one like strict translation. At least that’s what my interpretation is.
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I think that RDT is from the lower left to upper right on the clock face (8-2, for example) and DT is upper left to lower right (such as 10-4).
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That’s correct but it can be even more vertical. 7:00 - 1:00 still counts as RDT and for whatever reason, the more ‘vertical’ this motion becomes, the faster I can do it. If I balance my arm on my thigh, let my hand overlap my knee and do a door knocking motion as fast as I can, all I need to do is supinate a tad and try to get it a little more diagonal. I can get this crazy fast. My hand and wrist just look like they are made of rubber. I can’t necessarily apply those big uncontrolled movements to guitar playing but just feeling that freedom and elasticity of the motion is valuable.
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For sure. I really don’t expect casual users to need a super technical understanding of exactly how all the joints work. All the recent Primer updates have split up most of the “how to do it” from the “how it works” stuff, and labeled the “how it works” stuff completely separately as “reference”. Not only that, but the lessons include specific instructions to skip over the reference sections and only come back later if you want to learn the technical.
The more we can converge on “do this” type teaching, as, in the recent posts in this thread, the better:
For the power users, if they do understand the terminology and find it useful, great for them.
In this video he does appear to use some rotation, but is picking way slower.
Here’s a better video in terms of some close ups. I definitely see rotation in this one. His whole forearm wiggles.
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Interesting. Yes, definitely some forearm on display here for a good amount of this. Sorry for oversimplifying. I only watched into the 20-second something range of the first video and those motions don’t look wiggly.
In this clip as well, when he does the descending scale stuff in this clip, there’s no significant forearm rotation. 3:38 for example. I would say he’s got more than one motion.
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He’s doing it all from the same setup/posture though, right? If I (try to) use his form, I can get a wrist USX, and I can do a forearm rotation/wiggle USX. I cannot do the DSX he’s doing in the first video of his I posted. The downward slant feels pretty garage spikey to me.
I know it’s not important and I should focus on what I can do and not worry about what he does, in terms of actual application. The nerd in me wonders though: how’s he manage DSX from this setup? Can you think of any other players that have a similar setup and motion to him?
I’m definitely digging his stuff. He’s got a softer, more soulful side too, which is cool considering his blistering chops. Lots of guys like him just wanna shred lol!
Yes, same arm position, different motions. Supinated arm setup makes sense for this.
It’s perfectly fine to be curious. It’s my whole job. Where we give the advice to not worry about what other players do is when players post here and don’t say why they’re asking about a particular player, leaving us (the teachers) guessing. I’ve learned the hard way after writing some very long forum posts that a lot of times, they’re not really looking for a detailed technical explanation of what player ABC is doing. They’re really just having trouble with some basic thing (speed, endurance, tension, accuracy, etc.), but not saying so explicitly. The end result is “Why didn’t you say so? Here are three things you can try…”
My reflexive response now whenever anyone asks about famous player ABC is to try and find out why before writing a novel in response. That’s where we’re coming from on that.
I’m not familiar with the DSX thing you’re referring to that Igor does. I wouldn’t automatically assume from transcribing the fretting that there has to be DSX in there though unless you can actually see DSX motion occurring. There are lots and lots of ways to get around that, including the most obvious: picking even numbers of notes per string (whichever escape fits your picking motion), and simply fretting something completely different. You’d be amazed how often this can pass.
Nuno is a DSX player with a reasonably supinated arm position and index finger grip.
It’s not a question of being able to do the motion using that arm position, it’s just the pick attack. I need to use a three-finger / middle-finger grip to not have garage spikes with EVH / Morse / Lee arm position and DSX wrist motion. There is probably some way to orient the pick with an index grip and a supinated arm position to not have spikes if you fool around with it. For example, you will notice Igor does upstroke sweeps with a downward pickslant. But there’s also a lot of edge picking, and the supination causes the pick to tilt toward the electronics / pots as well. It’s not a strictly pickslant / no pickslant thing.
I would point out that if you’re trying to figure out a way to do mixed escape while having a pronounced DWPS orientation, we haven’t seen that. Olli Soikkelli, Andy Wood, and Albert Lee are about as DWPS as we’ve seen while being mixed escape, which is to say, not a super lot.
Looking at some of the other stuff he plays after I found this video, I would assume that as well. He’s pretty stylistically diverse and seems to play things that seem to require more than just a one directional escape.
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Here’s some Nuno DSX:
Couple very brief closeups in the Boston show. His pick orientation doesn’t look super duper DWPS to me so I suspect that the arm position really isn’t that supinated, maybe a little more than Andy. If we filmed this we would see slight dwps and for outside picking sequences that might be fine so long as he can actually pick the last note on the string without sliding off.
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So, it’s this:
He starts that on a down stroke and I can’t see any economy or pulloffs. I assumed he’s doing DSX because that’s the only way I can play that lick at high speeds. Plus @Fossegrim and @cmcgee11235 mentioned they saw his downstrokes escaping at times. I can play that with DSX (though not from his posture…) I cannot play that at all with USX, regardless of posture. Sure, I could refinger it. But I’m curious how he does it. I already know how I could play (albeit, not quite as fast or as clean has him lol)