From what I’ve read in some of the posts, he’s a 902 player. What are some clues that I’m doing this movement? It doesn’t feel that obvious if I’m doing it or not.
I don’t think CtC uses the term 902 anymore. What you’re talking about is Reverse Dart Thrower (RDT) motion, so you should watch the primer section on that. In short, RDT motion incorporates a degree of wrist flexion and extension (a door-knocking motion) in addition to deviation, which makes it a faster movement with more endurance than pure deviation (straight side-to-side wrist motion).
I think there’s some dispute over whether Anton uses RDT motion or whether he’s a pure deviation player when it comes to his base picking motion (tremolo). CtC teaches that pure deviation is generally a slower motion with less stamina than RDT and Anton is both insanely fast with a lot of endurance (again, purely talking about tremolo here). However, he seemingly lacks the supinated forearm that is the hallmark of RDT motion. So, I think it’s at least plausible that he’s a pure deviation player.
We’d need slow motion and magnet footage to tell for sure. However, if you look at the fast section in this “one string solo” (timestamp at 3:50), the fast single-string motion looks like RDT - DSX to me:
3 Likes
@tommo, I know you’ve seen that video where he explains how to hold a pick. I tried holding the pick that way and then I almost couldn’t avoid swiping, which is what Anton recommends. What is it about holding the pick the way that he recommends, that makes you prone to swiping?
I can’t really comment on the specifics of what Anton teaches, because I didn’t attend his online School. I’d happily buy his video lessons because I’m always curious to get info from a lot of sources, especially incredible players like him. My hard drive is full of lessons from Rick Graham, Tom Quayle, Lari Basilio etc.!
Unfortunately, buying separate downloads doesn’t seem to be an option in Anton’s school. It’s either a long-term subscription or nothing, as far as I know.
Therefore, I basically have the same info as you! I.e., whatever he posts on youtube. An additional difficulty is that he always posts low-framerate videos (I think 29 or even 25 fps), so that when you slow them down they are blurry and choppy and it’s hard to draw any conclusions!
My DSX/RDT statement is purely based on a superficial visual impression and we’d really need high-quality magnet footage to confirm.
PS: @looneytunes regardless of what Anton does, I see you are a MIM member so you can use the Technique Critique platform to show us (the instructors) whatever you’re working on and is giving you trouble!
2 Likes
I’m not exactly hip to the lingo used here, but the one thing I would add is that I doubt it’s pure deviation translation movement, mostly because it’s really hard to do fast on its own. It’s kind of a chunkier larger slower movement. I think most people that use deviation to a degree are realistically combining it with something else.
1 Like
His motion, however you want to name it, is pretty close to straight up and down deviation. Is it a little offset so that it’s technically miniature mouse RDT? I don’t know, maybe - it doesn’t really matter. To attempt copying it, you’d want to aim for something that appears to mostly be deviation.
Technically this is all DBX, considering there’s only one string. 
1 Like
I would technically say its nothing since both imply some sort of an escape, and your not escaping anything in a scenario where there is nothing to escape.
A one string guitar! That’s pretty cool actually 
That was the only way I could eliminate all swiping from my playing. Remove the other 5 strings.
4 Likes
Nah man, these are alternating between:
noEAfDfnoGBE and noEBGfUfnoAE
(I kid, I kid)
2 Likes
Oh goddamnit! I saw what you threw in there. That’s funny.
3 Likes
careful, this is already what people think the Cracking the Code forum is like
4 Likes
From what I’ve seen he’s intentionally obtuse about his playing so as to sell his lessons, which it seems to be an all-or-nothing commitment. While he’s clearly a great player, I don’t think he’s doing anything particularly special as he claims to be, so called “universal technique.” Whatever he’s doing is something people would presumably be able to copy in short order if there was footage at a good angle.
1 Like
To me his movement doesn’t look anything like deviation players like Mike Stern and Eric Johnson, he’s got loads of flexion-extension! Deviation based players don’t achieve anywhere near Anton’s level of speed. He’s got what looks like Andy Wood levels of supination with bigger hands which I think allow him more easily to get into the tall mouse RDT levels of speed 
1 Like
Well, in my opinion, Anton is RDT – DSX who does a lot of 2wps and DBX when needed.
But basically, if you have the anchor points in place and try to apply RDT – DSX, you will have a similar result to his.
but I agree with Tommo that we need magnetic videos to confirm this!
I don’t think it’s a “big secret” but it’s great!
Here’s a little example of how I do it (RDT-DSX Anton’s style):
6 Likes