John Petrucci’s universal mind, what is the ideal way to go about practising this? DBX? A combination of DSX and USX? Something entirely different?
I started of playing this without any knowledge of pickslanting and this is what I naturally started doing, looks like all the techniques Troy isolated had an ugly mutant baby, my apologies in advance…
It would need some combination of mixed escapes, seen as it mixes odd and even numbers of notes per string.
The recommended way to approach it is to try it at speed and see where the issues are. The video you posted is too slow to know if it would work fast.
I think John is a wrist picker, I’m not certain though as I haven’t really listened to him much, but the wrist can do all escapes.
Even though this is probably not how John does it, I think the simples approach for this is to use downstroke escape + pulloffs wherever required. Of course, this assumes that the player is comfortable with downstroke eascape!
I’ll try to remember to post more details on this, perhaps including an example clip 
I’m with @jptk that, at the speed of your video, you won’t be able to find out whether you are doing the right motions. Try to see what the snags are when you speed up, and do not be afraid to insert a pulloff or two if it feels good!
Something we ask pretty much everyone when getting started is to also post a video of your fast tremolo picking on one string. There’s a lot we can figure out from it so give that a shot when you have a minute.
Post update vids when you feel ready and we’ll take a look
Your filming was already pretty good but I’ll post our standard filming instructions just in case
Man the problem is I economy picked this to 120 bpm with bad form and I realised that wouldn’t cut it so I’m trying to relearn it with all the correct techniques :’) now the max I can play this clean is at like 90bpm only, with pure alternate picking. There seems to be a lot of switching between uwps and dwps but it seems like going down this path won’t result in problems at higher speeds.
Ahhh part of me does want to legato it but I want to be able to do this with pure alternate picking, I want to hone my alternate picking until I can play this song. This guy mentioned that the studio version is pure alternate picking and then did it himself, so that’s when I decided.
A weird thing I discovered today while going through CtC content, I can tremolo okayishly with uwps, but it feels way too awkward with dwps, you can see how it slows down in the latter half of this video, I hope both my uwps and dwps tremolo equalise with practice, it seems like I don’t know the right movements to make with dwps.
And thank you for complementing my filming haha, far from optimal but I tried my best.
I’ll try to speed up with a combination of uwps and dwps and post a video when its upto speed, I just hope that’s a feasible way to play this lick.
Thanks for filming this!
I definitely prefer the look and sound of your downstroke-escape (DSX) tremolo, so I’d recommend that you explore the potential of this motion
You are not alone wanting to “pick everything”, but I should warn you that this is an ambition that holds a lot of people back and prevents them from harvesting a lot of “low hanging fruit” that are available with the motions they can do right now.
In the longer term, I of course would not discourage anyone from experimenting and trying to find new motions in addition to (and not instead of) the ones they can do right away.
So, back to your case :). If you accept the suggestion of trying to adapt this lick to DSX, I’m willing to bet X dollars that you will have this lick up to tempo in a few days or weeks at most
If I haven’t made mistakes, here is a fully DSX version, including pickstrokes and pulloffs. All the “fast” string changes happen after a down:
Okay man you have me convinced XD
Plus I think it’ll be better to focus in on the movement I’ve JUST discovered works for me, tackling N different things at once is beginning to get a little bet overwhelming. Also I guess once I get the feel for this at 150bpm, I can start experimenting and pushing things further.
And thank you for your words of encouragement, I’ll try my best to not make you lose your bet haha.
I have a final question (I hope) about the version you posted, this would not be strictly alternate picked right?
Something like: downstroke at 17 and escape+pull of to 13, then downstroke 15, up 14, down 15 and escape
Correct (I think 
)! The idea is that we replace the upstroke string changes with pulloffs.
While you do the pulloff, your pick should have enough time to get out of the string plane and reposition ready for the next downstroke.
So it’s basically 2 downstrokes in a row, but they happen more slowly thanks to the pulloffs.
Let me know how comfy you find this!
It’s super comfortable! I can see myself speeding this up 
Thank you so much for your help, finally see light at the end of this tunnel. I’ll post a video of it here as soon as I get it up to speed.
FYI he plays the last measure differently from that tab, no B string: e20-13 g17 e13 etc.
Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind
Thank you @JBakerman ! Hopefully it’s all still playable with downstroke escape + the “pulloff trick”?
Just my 2 cents, I’m currently working on a few sections from MAB’s No Boundaries and this section below contains extacly the same picking patterns as Universal Mind, just without the string skipping bit. It may be a good idea to try it before attempting UM.
