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With this many contrasting opinions…
@tommo help! What’s really going on here? Or maybe…it doesn’t matter because it sounds great!
Sorry all, bit of a tough week with the small daughter sick and out of daycare, I hope to be back and sort out some of the outstanding Technique Critique threads by the end of the week.
In any case, upon a first look / listen this sounds great! It also looks to me like the elbow joint may be moving at the higher speeds, while forearm rotation gets reduced (or stops altogether?), but this may be in combination with other subtle things so I can’t really tell what escape it is.
…but this may not matter because it seems to work! I’d only change something if @lukasgraesslin feels some kind of discomfort while doing this.
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My vote is that it doesn’t matter. If you find you can play most of what you want to, who cares what you are doing to achieve it. Unless it’s resulting in discomfort or injury.
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Thanks all!
It doesn’t feel uncomfortable or anything, it’s just that it doesn’t seem really reliant but maybe that’s just a lack of practice.
I tried to record a slomo video but I’m not sure how useful it is. I had to sit in an unusual position to make the angle and lighting work more or less and the red light syndrom hit hard this time. The playing isn’t as good as in the other video but I think you can see the picking more clearly:
Still looks like DSX to me (you can see your down strokes move away from the guitar body) with predominately wrist and forearm movement. Maybe some rotation, particularly towards the final note.
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I really feel the urge to try to get it into a proper USX movement at faster speeds because at least I think that might be a solution to make it more reliant and consistent. Also at the moment I really can’t do those speeds for long as I tense up quickly and get sloppy. And my current standard hand position would definitely fit better with USX than DSX.
I know I shouldn’t get hung up on stuff like that but to be honest it’s also fun trying that stuff out 
Well try, you never know, you can end up using more than one. I find I use more than one depending on what I’m playing. For Yngwie type stuff like particularly his sequences, I plant my hand on the guitar like he does and use a similar motion, and it really works well for his type of playing. For everything else I use my default. So you may find you do more than one equally well.
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I should probably submit another critique to see if I’m actually doing what I think I’m doing. I think I have a USX motion now though. My default was always elbow and it would start to creep in even when I wasn’t trying to do it.
What seemed to help me was focusing on a mechanic that’s difficult to include elbow at all with, and for me that was the pure rotational EVH type. Maybe play around with that?
But I guess the question is, do you really need that? You sound so good! Troy’s recommendation for my own playing was to go all in with the elbow since that’s what my body wanted to do. I was trying to do USX too. So I had a mismatched downward pickslant with the elbow doing all the movement. He said I should try a little more pronation, maybe more of a trigger grip too.
I guess another thing you could try is the Zakk Wylde approach.
That’s elbow and USX, though it’s a mystery how that works His ultra flexed form likely helps encourage something else, like rotator cuff, to help with the escaped upstrokes.
@joebegly whether you are or are not doing what you think you are, is it really that important at the end of the day? If it works, it works regardless of what it is.
Now if you have some problems with it, then maybe looking at it is good to establish and work on a helper motion to help with the lines that are harder to play with your primary mechanic. I think it’s entirely possible to be able to utilize and be good at many, but it does come with the caveat that it may feel like your learning the instrument all over again, so a lot of people may be dissuaded from taking that route.
For my situation , yes, it’s very important. I don’t want to re-hash my whole critique because it was TL DR, but the gist of it I’m doing something wrong. It’s ‘right’ enough that I could get away with playing 16ths @ 185 bpm, but it felt strained. It should feel easy to play at that speed. What I’m doing now feels easier, but it’s been (incorrectly) ingrained in me to just work really hard until things take care of themselves. Maybe it still doesn’t feel as easy as it should. I don’t know. The way to know is if there is something slightly incorrect about the motion that could be made more efficient. That’s why I need to submit another critique.
OR I could just stop worrying about picking every single note and embark on this thing I’ve been wanting to do for years and never even started. I don’t want to derail this thread though, so I’ll shut up now
Yeah same for me basically. It’s not something I really really need, I mean it doesn’t restrict me from making music of course 
I just want to improve it for the sake of it.
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hey @lukasgraesslin , I agree with the others about some suspected elbowy / DSX-y motion creeping in at the higher speeds.
Now, since you mentioned consistency, it would be good to see what happens when you try to play some DSX licks (i.e. only changing strings after downstrokes) with the exact same motion. Are you more consistent there? Do they feel easier?
If so, it may be further evidence that this motion is indeed more biased towards DSX. And the consistency problems may be due to you thinking that you are doing one thing, while doing another
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Thanks for all the input!
I’ll try out some more DSX-y stuff. When I did it the last time it didn’t really feel easier or better but that might also just be because it’s “new” to me.
One thing that I tried yesterday though was to keep my DWPS handposition and really concentrate on not using my elbow at higher speeds and just use wrist/forearm. Just for fun and to see if I can do it. I think it was actually more successful than the DSX way.
I can instantly feel when elbow is used so it was not super hard to prevent it, I just really had to concentrate on it and tried not to move it at all for the test.
It felt much more relaxed that way and it makes me think that this might be something to work on a bit more. Especially since I’m so extremely used to this handposition that has quite some DWPS and would work with USX.
I’ll work on it a bit more and try to make another video if there is progress to show.
The fact alone that I was using DSX even though I was sure it was USX already helped me on focusing on the right things, so thanks again!
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Have you tried, for fun, playing that phrase but starting on an upstroke? That’s how Jeff Loomis plays it.
Otherwise, it’s cool to hear you report things are feeling more comfortable and you’re having some success intentionally bypassing elbow.
Yeah that’s what I tried. Feels very weird although I think I could get it to work with more practice. But I think I’ll focus more on the no-elbow approach for now.
Hey, just wanted to give a quick update about my progress of reducing elbow movement (it’s not that it’s crucial for me to get rid of it but if it might improve my playing, why not)
From time to time when I’m playing I try to work on the fast stuff and see what’s going on with the movement.
Had to film it with my DSLR again because of the lighting so no proper slomo unfortunately.
I think if you take that tendon on the right arm that stands out a bit as a reference and compare it to the video in my first post the whole arm moves quite a bit less. At least I think so, definitely feels like it though because I can tell that I’m quite a bit more relaxed.
Compared to your first video it looks like there’s a little less forearm motion, I think a front angle would be best to identify forearm though?
Have just edited my previous post with another video. Still hard for me to tell to be honest from looking at it, but feeling wise it’s less tense for me (damn red light syndrom aside…) than before so I definitely don’t regret trying to focus on less elbow.
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Better angle I think! Elbow motion seems to be there a little, but I wouldn’t call that your primary. Looks like wrist flexion / extension?
Sick finish on that guitar too! What is it?
