I try to analyze this picking motion but I guess I need your help

Playing Technique
#1

Hey,

I was trying to analyze the picking motion of Kevin Heiderich, but since I only recently got a subscriber again and am not yet that much into the motion analysis stuff, I need a little bit of help.

So far I see a lot of wrist movement and I think it is mainly upstroke escape. I think the forearm is supinated (I hope that is the right term) a lot because you can see a lot of the underside of the forearm. You can also see a lot of forearm rotation if he plays chords or string skipped single notes, which he also does by moving his whole arm position up and down (or back and forth) a little bit. His pick grip seems to be some sort of in between trigger style and angle pad?

The thing I am very confused with is, he plays a lot of very crazy stuff and at least for other covers he did (songs by Necrophagist) he needs a lot of downstroke escape strokes as well. But I don’t know how he does this. You can see that he has some kind of turn in his hand then but I am not able to interpret what I see. It could also be that he swipes at least some of the notes he plays.

Since this guy has one of the craziest picking hands I have ever seen, maybe somebody is willing/interested in looking at his hand.

Thank you!

3 Likes
#2

Do you have a clip of him playing something that “requires” DSX? My guess is for those riffs he’ll either swipe or do subtle DBX with a secondary motion.

1 Like
#3

Thank you. Well, I think the best example I can give is this one:

The thing is, at that speed with mainly string skipping I think there will be a lot of swipes, although you can still see some kind of turning going on. That is the best example I had in mind, unfortunately I don’t have short clips of him playing. Judging from the video in this post, the faster stuff (which is somewhere around 150 bpm 16th triplets) seems to be swiped because it looks all like upstroke escape…but I am not sure yet.

Problem is, at that speed it is really hard to see. I am not even sure if he plays things like I am (learning that song at the moment, but on regular speed - which is hard enough already). Could also be that he changed the fingering slightly so that he only uses USX, but I am also not sure if he is that conscious about that stuff.

#4

In this video I see him doing portions that I believe are DBX with finger assistance. For example, 0:28 and 1:18 runs you can see the slight change in angle. Also when he plays slower notes that ring out, I’m pretty sure I see his index finger flex / extend lightly at the first joint, indicating he does do some kind of finger motion.

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#5

Yes you are right. The motion is pretty shallow too, so everything is very subtle. The motion seems to be primarily driven from the wrist, but I think I see some forearm rotation here and there too. What would I give to get to this level of performance…

What I find odd is that he switches between anchoring his hand with ring and middle finger and not anchoring at all sometimes.

#6

Just replying to say I’ve loved watching this guy over the years. He has got to be one of the best players I’ve seen on YouTube and I’d love to see the analysis on him too