Josh Meader Technique Opinions?

Playing Technique
#1

I just discovered this guy the other day, and he’s an absolute monster. Here’s his cover of Cory Henry’s keyboard Solo on “Snarky Puppy’s” song Lingus.

Of course, right away, I started to think about his playing in CTC terms. I was hoping to get some opinions from the other folks on this guy, because I’m absolutely fascinated by his technique!

Technique -

Looks like some kind of very smooth RDT-style “tall mouse” motion, with a three-finger grip. In some videos, he lets go of the pick with his index finger during pauses, so maybe he’s primarily Thumb-Middle, with the Index to stabilize.

His tracking is the most interesting thing to me. He almost appears to track every string change, regardless of size. I can’t tell - is he using some Elbow motion in there as well? Maybe it’s just for economy/sweeps?

It really reminds me of somebody else who was posted here once - some crazy instagram shredder who uses the same basic setup (three-finger RDT with lots of arm-based tracking) - anybody remember that guy’s name?

Phrasing -

Obviously, there’s a ton of economy and sweep picking going on. But he also mentions, in this video, that he intentionally uses at least one note of legato before each string change.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/j3_DBeCJdDM

I don’t know the full context, so maybe he wasn’t referring to every single thing he ever plays (because he’s obviously using economy/sweeping in the first video), but I thought it was refreshing to see somebody look at the escape-angle problem and basically say, “Nah, I just won’t bother.” We know many single-escape players do this with their escape-hatch techniques (YJM etc), but you don’t often hear people outright say it.

Anyway, hope you all found his playing as fascinating as me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the guy!

#2

Keith Whalen (Whalenator) fits that description. Constant elbow or shoulder tracking and 3 finger grip.

#3

For the life of me I cannot figure out how anyone is comfortable playing like that. Everything that person is doing just seems so antithetical to how I could ever play. Yet people do it.

  1. He is using that 3 finger bent thumb Lane/Schön thing. How that could ever be comfortable is beyond me, but again many of people do it.

  2. He is picking closer to the neck pickup. Maybe I’m just really “tactile” sensitive, but If I stray anywhere closer to the neck than that sweet spot where a middle pickup would be on a 25.5” scale guitar, I’m in trouble, and I feel the drag of the pick and hate the sound. I almost have an adverse physical reaction to things like that, but many don’t, and that probably gives them a ton more freedom.

  3. He doesn’t look like he is muting anything. I guess that’s fine since he is mostly playing clean jazz lines. If I tried to do that with my typical set up, again I would be in big trouble. I can barely cope with sympathetic string whine under high gain.

  4. Wider string tracking with the arm. Again that tactile feedback loop and the noise stuff again. For me, goddamn! How does that not even register with some.

I’m curious. I really want to know!

1 Like
#4

My suspicion is that it’s not actually “tall mouse,” but that his grip looks the way it does because he’s doing three-finger (or middle finger+) with short mouse! Hard to tell from the filming angle, but I think I can hit those levels of supination with short mouse and index finger.

#5

I’ve done a cursory analysis of his technique in slow motion, so I’m reasonably confident I can give an accurate account of his primary mechanics.

His primary mechanic is RDT wrist USX + ascending economy picking, which he defaults to whenever possible. He used to play like this almost exclusively as far as I know. You can even find videos of him on youtube playing Gypsy jazz with pure USX for the most part(minus the fast double downstrokes that gypsy players do).

He’s very comfortable with two-way economy picking, and is capable of alternate picked inside string changes at high speeds. He can do DSX escapes(including outside string changes) when necessary, but I doubt he can do a continuous DSX tremolo, or at least I haven’t seem him do it(with the exception of his elbow tremolo which by nature has to be DSX, which I’ve only ever seen him use for tremolo picking rather than complex lines). He seems to use lots of grip flop to smooth things out when sweeping as far as I can tell, especially in the descending direction.

He also has a good wrist DBX motion which he uses for slow-medium tempos. You can see him alternate picking 1NPS arpeggios at times.

It’s definitely not a hard rule. He often picks almost every note in some lines, but he does use legato as an escape hatch a lot when he reaches his craziest speeds to economize on picking.

This shoulder/elbow tracking movement is also an integral part of his economy picking sweeping motion, which might contribute to why it seems so exaggerated.

Overall it’s a fantastic, versatile system that gets you very far with a lot less effort than other systems.

He’s actually doing the opposite. His thumb is bent in the opposite direction to Lane/Schon.

I don’t think his hand is floating if that’s what you mean. I’m pretty sure he rests his hand on the strings/ bridge. He has videos where he plays with high gain cleanly.

#6

Half opposite. His thumb isn’t bent backwards, but he still has that odd reverse 3 finger grip thing.