I sure am Enjoying Metronomic Rock

Masters in Mechanics
#1

Even though I am on a soul sucking, heart wrenching “suck” grind trying to learn how to do DBX (and/or Mixed escape) it’s really nice to know that really, I can play pretty much anything I want with DSX - especially when combined with sweep and hybrid, and of course Legato and tap.

It was and is really nice to go through the material and be able to execute ALL of it; no rearranging of notes or re-thinking all of my musical life decisions that led me to where I am… lol

I suppose that the coolest thing about it is that it feels like it was custom designed for me! lol I know it wasn’t but, man is it ever cool to go through an instructional package and smash them down and then just get right to personalizing the concepts. Awesome.

So yeah, Tommo - Troy - thanks for this. I am eagerly awaiting the “DBX for confused/dim m’effers” volumes 1-8 to come out. In the meantime, I’m still toiling away at DBX but quite pleased with DSX!

(And of course, Mr Tom Gilroy thanks sooo much for getting me sorted so that I could understand this stuff. I am STILL working through your stuff! hahaha) :grinning:

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#2

I’ve been digging it too. So many great licks in there! And like you said…it’s like they made it “just for me”. Must be how the USX crowd felt back when the EJ and YJM seminars came out.

Also, I’ve been working DBX a good bit lately and I’ve noticed that more focus on DSX actually aids DBX. For one thing, it’s that nice reminder of what “easy” feels like. I’m doing pretty well with DBX (not a boss quite yet, but one day maybe…) but I do occasionally catch myself thinking of “the old ways” where something feels hard and I just need more time with it. NO!!! Remember, it’s easy or it’s wrong!! Secondly, as Troy showed us in the RDT section of the primer…DSX and DBX (so long as they are both performed as a wrist RDT motion) really are not very different, if at all.

Keep the faith on DBX. I saw your public TC for Tumeni Notes. My Tu cents on that tune is that it’s pretty hard. Anton Oparin says it’s hard, so yeah. It’s hard. Steve himself swipes a good bit on it. It’s rock music, just keep the fret hand muting solid, turn it up and let it rip :metal: :metal: :metal:

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#3

Hey Joe! I sure do like the way you describe things in regards to guitar!

Yeah, DSX feels pretty easy for the most part. I like it. It’s a workhorse that ‘gets er done’ for the most part. Lots of creative options there. It’s interesting that DSX and DBX are similar in RDT mode… I don’t know hahaha I think that I have the downstroke pretty good (Seems to always escape), but can’t figure out how to efficiently re-angle that upstroke. Working on it.

As far as Tumeni goes, I can actually Hybrid or swybrid it pretty close to tempo and while that’s great I’d really just like to Morse this shit, you know? :grinning: I’ll get there, I’m relentless. I am much closer that’s for sure. I mean, I can double escape - it’s just really inefficient, and as a result not so fast…

Yeah lots of new discoveries thanks to my time with Tom and now slogging through Metronomic rock. I am awaiting something like this to come out… “Kicked in the face by a mule and taking forever to learn DBX? Try THIS:”

1 Like
#4

Glad you like it :slight_smile:

Honestly, after working on this I have very little patience for anything that’s not DSX-able. Single escape is just so easy and reliable!

If I had to perform live on a regular basis, I’d probably use DSX exclusively.

Check out some Andy James live footage. It’s usually spotless and 90-95% of the stuff he plays is fully DSX. Maybe even 99% :slight_smile:

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#5

I think just about 100% of his fast stuff is DSX nowadays. I’ve been following him for a long time - he definitely tried to force some mixed escape in the early days, like on his Lick Library vids, but somewhere along the line he wisely decided to make things easier on himself.

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#6

If you count the finger tapping Andy does, the numbers land you squarely at 110% DSX. When you do tapping from a pronated position that counts for double DSX because there is no way in that position to get a USX stroke in. The fact that there is no picking to begin with while tapping acts as multiplying 2 negative numbers and therefor his DSX is 110%. @tommo does math for a living and can back up this formula for me. I think there is a pi and cosine in the calculations.

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#7

Where do you go to give your DSX that extra push? 11.

AndyJames11

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#8

I recently saw an older forum thread of your incredible mixed escape playing, and I am just curious if you prefer single escape to mixed escape for lines where either can be used? :slight_smile:

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#9

Sweet baby jeebus! That guy is awesome! I’ve heard of him, and for whatever reason, I just didn’t pick up on the fact that that he is a damn beast. Thanks for sharing this video; much appreciated!

But now it has me thinking that I need to further optimize my DSX hahaha

Wonderful playing. :grinning:

1 Like
#10

Hopefully you won’t mind me hijacking this thread just a little bit, but I’m having a bit of trouble with the gallops lesson in Metronomic Rock. Perhaps someone can give me some insight. Specifically…

image
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It looks like there’s quite a bit of downward pick slanting in that image. I know that escape direction and pick slant direction aren’t always 100% correlated but generally DSX seems to work a lot better (for me at least) with a slight upward slant. With such a downward slant, I run into the garage spikes problems. But I’ve always had a lot of trouble with upward pick slanting on the low E string because it pushes my hand past the strings and I don’t feel like I have any good anchor point for my hand. So… can anyone who has gotten a downward pick slant working with DSX in this situation like Tommaso seems to have done offer any pointers here?

EDIT: Wow, well apparently my intelligence is approximately rock-level today. Tommaso IS @tommo… I was thinking it was a strange coincidence that there was another member of the CtC team I hadn’t heard of with a really similar name. I should probably learn people’s actual names rather than just going off of forum handles. And that’s a good cue for me to go to bed.

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#11

Haha no worries, I don’t think I used my real name on the Forum much :slight_smile:

On a theoretical level you are right. A slight upward (or neutral) pickslant would be preferrable. There may be a little mismatch between my pickslant and picking motion on the low E string, but it’s not so much as to create big problems as far as I can see/feel in my own playing. Plus, I think I use a bit of edge picking that smoothens things out.

But most importantly, to follow the seminar you don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t!) copy my exact posture and setup. The key thing you need is a working DSX motion on all 6 strings.

Note that many DSX players do something similar to what you say when they play on the low E: they rest some part of the palm on the guitar body above the bridge.

This is a good angle of Al Di Meola playing his iconic “Race with the devil on a Spanish highway” which features a good amount of “galloping” on the low E:

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#12

True. I mostly ask because DSX always gives me so much trouble with the low E string, particularly when combined with palm muting. It’s one of the reasons why I wish I could figure USX out (I’m not really complaining though because I haven’t put much time into it). The USX hand position honestly feels more natural/intuitive to me than DSX, it’s just the tremolo motion I haven’t yet gotten.

I’ll take a look at that video and play around with the different variables some more.

#13

I think in the Andy Wood interview he mentioned that being the least comfortable string to palm mute on. He clearly could do it but the fact that he mentioned that (relatively speaking) he didn’t like the way it felt is probably a clue. He’s of course got one of the best DSX motions out there.

#14

You can certainly find way to do DSX+palm muting comfortably on the low E string (e.g. See Di Meola who is DSX and does a lot of muting).

Here’s a quick example of muting VS not muting using DSX in my own playing. These contact points work well for me with Strat-like guitars and my particular motion. Again there’s loads of variables so you don’t have to do it exactly the same way as me :slight_smile:

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#15

dude what amp/guitar/pedals are you using in this clip? the tone is killer.

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#16

which clip? :slight_smile: If you are referring to the last one with the muted / unmuted thing, it’s a squier jazzmaster mini pugged into an amp simulator called mercuriall reaxis. Then, the sound comes through the Eris 3.5 speakers I have in my mini studio. Finally, the studio is super small and the walls have a lot of reflections (haven’t acoustically treated them yet), and everything is captured and compressed by the iphone mic.

So yeah, it’s a big mishmash of ingredients that make this clip sound this particular way :slight_smile: