Hey there! Dumb question time! So I have this “move” that I have been messing around with lately; looks like a wrist/forearm rotation similar to what Jimmy Herring does. I don’t need it to be super lightning fast, but I feel like Jimmy’s around the 16ths @ 140bpm mark and I’d like to level my motion up a bit; so far though I have been enjoying playing all kinds of different things at around 16ths @ 130 (Top speed) and I am hoping y’all might have some pointers; I tried working on improving a tremolo speed on a single string, but that’s pretty slow going. After about 130BPM it’s like my arm doesn’t know how to do that motion anymore and it kind of devolves into an elbow thing. Any help and suggestions are appreciated, thanks everyone!
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The general rule of thumb for increasing speed is to find a motion that has the speed you want from the start. i.e if you wanted to play 200bpm, but your single string tremolo maxes out at 150bpm you may need to reassess your technique.
Assuming you have a few years of playing experience 16ths @130-140bpm indicates an issue with your technique.
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Thanks for your reply!
Yes… I do agree, there is many issues with my technique. Trust me - I know better than anyone else just how badly I suck, and how flawed my technique is.
I can do a single escape DSX at a decent tempo as shown below, it’s not great but it’s passable but that’s not what I am working on/towards at the moment.
That wrist/forearm rotation that I do escapes - I just need to figure out how to make it faster; it’s kind of an alien movement to me so 'starting with speed" isn’t an option. If i do that, I just revert to my wrist DSX, or Elbow forms. Not that either of those are bad, they just don’t yield the note combination escapes that I am looking for is all.
I recognize that it won’t likely be “super duper fast” I just need it 10-20bpm faster.
Apologies for the crap playing, but hopefully it illustrates kind of what I am going for and what I have in both realms.
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Your playing isn’t crap at all to me man.
I think he’s got a lot of forarm rotation going on. At least thats what I see. I think this is DBX. From what I’m seeing.
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It’s possible that doing DBX wrist forearm like that just won’t go faster. There are DBX motions I can do that are definitely not stringhopping but they are capped similar (or even slightly lower) speeds. Others have a higher speed limit because they are just more ergonomic I guess. The Steve Morse setup is always easiest for me.
The interesting thing about DBX, at least for me, is that once I got it down I found I could learn different forms of it. These variations would help each other out too. So maybe since you have your foot more firmly in the door now you could get some succes from another similar motion. Troy does a DBX capable wrist forearm blend that he gets going very fast. I’ll see if I can dig up some clips.
Also, just remember that most of the very best DBX players have little “swiping” errors when they play at the faster speeds. So one way to get some speed is to live with that, making sure fret hand muting is solid so no one hears the swipes
For example, both Steve Morse and Andy Wood swipe a LOT
Both of them sound so great though!
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He seems to do three finger grip too?
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Oh yes! I want to see this! Thanks in advance, Joe!
It could very well also be that I am new to this and I am beating the shit out of my strings and wasting energy/sacrificing efficiency for power. I don’t know. All I do know is that this is the closest I’ve been yet with this lol
Yeah, I just discovered Herring from Troy, I think he’s a 3 finger grip/trailing edge player as well! He’s really good!
Maybe this explains (me) a bit more? Again apologies for the crap playing. All off the cuff…
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So down on your own playing, way better than me man. Love to play as well as you.
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This is the one I was thinking of
I recall recently someone on the forum asked Troy for advice on how to do this and Troy cautioned them to not even worry about it if you can’t already do some type of wrist forearm blend. I think the reason was it’s just not very common and not many stumble upon it or something. But, since you are already getting on with the Herring motion maybe this is something you could mess with.
Edit:
BTW @Scottulus that stuff you are doing is sounding awesome! I know you’ve been chasing DBX for a while so huge congratulations on gaining ground there
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The video makes things a lot easier so thanks for that, and for clarifications sake we’re all here to learn so no slight on your technique 
The first thing I notice, you appear to have no fixed position when picking, and if you do it is not stable and moves around quite a bit. The same could be said for your actual picking motion which seems quite variable (effort wise) and a very strict rotational movement.
I know that your goal is less about speed and more about DBX/cross-picking, which is awesome, but I still think focusing on trem first and then going back to this would be helpful.
There will never be a point were having a solid trem in the 180bpm+ range will be a hindrance to DBX at 140bpm+ imo.
TLDR: Try the RDT and/or forearm wrist section in the pickslanting primer and focus on a smooth and easy feeling trem then go back to the DBX stuff
Thanks guys. It’s a lot to think about and hopefully apply to my playing. I really appreciate the feedback.
@joebegly Wow! That’s quite a display of picking mastery there by Troy, eh?
Thanks for sharing, that’s fantastic! As near as I can tell, I am ass backwards from what he’s doing here; he’s supinated, I am pronated. he’s leading edge pick grip, I am trailing edge… Still, this is a great reference point.
I think that I really want to exhaust my “Herring move”, y’know tweak it, search for optimizations to get it going to it’s full potential. I have already been enjoying some pretty cool moves with it just at the tempos that I am currently at. I haven’t yet tried to pair these rotation escapes with my DSX stuff just yet, but I have been focused pretty much entirely on this rotated mixed escape type thing.
I literally stumbled onto this while I was trying to make my single escape playing not be “trapped”. Kind of a happy accident in a way - I mean I failed at doing what i was trying to do but succeeded in mutating into a way that while pretty different actually escapes.
Troy has me working on a thing right now, and I’d like to be very, very successful at that little bit of music but I am at a point where the rotation that I am doing tends to give way to a more familiar motion when I ramp up the tempo; It ends up morphing into my pronated DSX form, or an elbow form. While both of these are fine, and highly useful neither are the motion that escapes. I know what I need to do to develop speed and vocabulary on my single escape playing and I will move forward with that; as soon as I figure out how to make this weirdo “Herring Cyclone” go a smidge faster! lol I don’t know why, but I seem to always end up doing things the hardest way possible!
@JAB All good, man - my picking technique sucks hahaha and I know it - it’s why I keep coming back here! It’s gotten a lot better but there’s always things that need to be fixed, and sadly what comes naturally for one person may look and feel like something truly awkward, eh?
What do you mean by “fixed position” my man? Is it the actual hand is kind of always in a different “spot” so to speak in reference to the strings? I was actually made aware of that years ago and really tried to umm rigidly enforce a sort of “zone” but it added quite a bit of background tension for me I think. Might be worth revisiting though, a lot has changed about how I play.
So my tremolo on a single string was 16ths @ 200BPM using RDT with my pronated DSX. I wouldn’t say it’s “easy” but I could probably go faster if I worked at it.
So this brings me back to my original question; How does one develop speed in a motion that is alien/new. In my case, that’s this trailing edge grip wrist/forearm rotation thing, and yep I have been working my butt off on getting a quick tremolo (But I still play through a variety of things) Current tempo is a very messy 16ths @ 160bpm. The motion is really haphazard and not always a rotation - feels like my body is trying to discover how to do some sort of “twitch” if that makes sense… Clean and defined rotation (and much cleaner playing) occurs at 130 and lower depending on what I am playing. I am afraid that if I “go fast” I will not do the motion and then end up practicing something different motion wise… again… lol
But I must say, my picking hand looks weird AF
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Ahhh I can see I fooled you! lol Thanks for the kind words man - I am trying to figure the darned thing (guitar) out! 
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Yeah exactly, just the fact that your hand seems to be in a different spot. As you would know, the hand will change its ‘fixed position’ a bit depending on the string you are on, but generally it stays in a similar spot (for most this is the pinky side of the hand and rests where the strings meet the bridge)
16ths @200bpm is excellent, and therefore you have all the potential speed you’ll probably ever need. Keep in mind, a single escape motion (irrespective of whether it’s dsx or usx) is only slight tilt away from being it’s inverse and DBX if you use a neutral slant. People like troy, andy wood, anton oparin etc are good examples of this.
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I think this is what I boil down to that same thing I noticed in Shawn Lane’s hands, his freaky shake move. My pure radial/ulnar tremolo only shakes at one speed. And I would wager since it ain’t 20 plus notes a second that it is just slower, just my genetics. No tension shake, sure I could begin to tense the arm to force faster tempos, and even here I am not sure if it really would go much higher.
This is why I feel that just playing more and more will get you faster, but it will be a long game. Similar to how jazz/blues players play in swing tempo their entire lives. That two note fast just develops the move between your entire musical mindset at a very rapid tempo that the body slowly adapts into it where you can do it longer and longer at double time speeds (when the licks and phrases go from a dotted 8th and a 16th to triplets), faster and faster as time goes on. Because you are playing all day, everyday.
Sometimes musicians are lucky, and that sync with a fast nervous shake gets them to the technique finish line faster, much less time developing it. Us unlucky ones have to work on it far longer, or be limited in speed. We are all unique, use what you got, you cannot have it all. Even the fast ones still have genetic limitations in other areas.
I still don’t get why technique seems to override composition so much. You wouldn’t try to speed write something, unless you have procrastinated a deadline, so the question is, “why worry about if you can play this many notes at this tempo?”, sounds like you need to deal with envy.
Don’t let these mental speed issue traps prevent you from enjoying your passion, you write great music. Practice the speed thing for 10 minutes a day, then ball it up, and throw it in the corner for tomorrow.
There are many circumstances where higher tempo playing would be called for.
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It’s okay; my creative output isn’t hampered by a pursuit of greater technical proficiency. My practice time consists of a lot more than just picking practice, and really - I try to keep the “picking” things I am working on as musically applicable as possible,
I mean, those two videos I posted could be construed as creative expression also - sketches, right?
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This is a problem I wish to have. Does it have to do withe envy?
How are you defining envy? Short and sweet - it’s when someone lacks something someone else has…and wishes that other person also didn’t have it.
That’s not what’s going on here at all.
No one here wishes Yngwie or EJ or Petrucci or whomever didn’t have their abilities. The entire premise of CtC is, in part, predicated on the idea of wanting those abilities ourselves, and learning how.
That’s not envy.
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For you obviously not, but for others it might be envy, jealousy, discontent, or some other reason that could be mentally trapping them from flourishing with their own abilities.
First, I think your playing is very cool, @Scottulus! Lots of neat ideas.
Second, and more to the point, this is definitely a strange technique - certainly worth experimenting with, as are all things, but you might be navigating somewhat uncharted territory. I’ll say that when I look at Jimmy versus you, he has a much more obvious rotation (???) element going on, and sometimes it looks like deltoid/rotator cuff is aiding things, too. If you watch the vid Whammy linked earlier at 4:41, you can see some upper arm “flapping” happening.
Here’s a video of him with short sleeves - make of it what you will. When he starts picking faster the movement looks more like regular RDT, also with the shoulder thing going on.
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Eh…could be. At the same time, there is no such thing as a totally pure motive. Jealousy? Sure, some of that. Discontent…most definitely. In spades.
If I were content with my playing…I wouldn’t be spending so much time working on it.