Aside from needing a little more “swing” I think it sounds pretty damn good.
ah yes i should probably mention that i’m just using this lick now to get the motion down. once i do, then i’ll give it the SRV treatment. right now there’s basically no rhythm haha
I figured. I was just saying lol
I’ll take a look in more detail later. Definitely faster/smoother. I noticed the upstroke not escaping on the high e in places. BUT, the more I learn about great DBX players, the more I see many of them swipe quite a lot. This makes me think one of the most important things we can do to develop good DBX is to also develop great fret hand muting lol!
Overall, nice job though. The pick slant looks nice and neutral, which I know Troy says is normally needed for DBX.
thanks Joe! i’m not sure what swiping is. i need my cracking the code to english dictionary haha. but i’m glad to know i’m on the right track!
It’s a sort of a loaded term, but in either case it’s when the pick plows through a (muted) string. So, we’re not supposed to hear it (but sometimes, we sorta do hear it)
So those are examples where it’s intentional, though quite possibly unconscious, and it’s allowing the player to stay in single escape mode.
The other type is what I was referring to – it’s more like an accident. We’re trying to clear the strings but life gets in the way. Here are some awesome players that do it during crosspicking
(There must be something pretty difficult to play about that tune Tumeni Notes, huh? 
)
Both in Steve and Andy’s clips, which both sound awesome, you can easily see these changes are not 100% clean. They are trying and succeeding to varying degrees. So that’s why I think great muting is cheap insurance when we’re in DBX mode. I think at these tempos, with distortion it’s probably easier to get away with than at the more moderate bluegrass/clean tunes. But then again, at the more moderate speeds, clean escapes are more achievable.
I hate to do this cause I know this will step on the DSX toe players, but I just don’t see swiping viable for a DSX player. The whole point of the swipe is letting he left hand flesh of the fingers mute the strings. Doing it with DSX will be much more complex since the basic mechanics of swiping is using the flesh of the fretting hand to mute, meaning you will have to do even more preplanning. This will put way more work for DSX players to swipe through a trapped upstroke string.
Isn’t that how Gilbert does “his” lick though? Same with Batio I am pretty sure
After attempting it myself in USX, I can say that if you attempt this to swipe through a musically descended upstroke trapped stroke with DSX to get through a string musically descended to go to a downstroke it will be a nightmare compared to how easy it is doing it on a musically ascended trapped downstroke to get to the upstroke on the next string in USX. It is cake walk for the fretting hand with USX, not so much with DSX you get to use the tip of one finger which requires some finesse of the fretting hand. And even still it creates quite the harmonic that is very difficult to get rid of
I think that’s entirely specific to the phrase you’re playing.
This USX swiped lick (assuming you swipe through the 12th fret on the 3rd note)
Will sound just as messy as this DSX swiped lick (assuming you swipe through the 12th fret on the 4th note
Same reason in both situations, the natural harmonic. Some people like the way it sounds though. I’ve heard Tom Gilroy comment that in his younger years he was making clean changes on the PG lick and was a little disappointed he couldn’t get the same articulation Paul got. That harmonic can be a nice aggressive “crunch” if you’re into that type of sound.
Again though, that’s a different topic than the swiping we’re talking about that can happen in a DBX context, where it’s not so much engineered or systematic, but more of an “error” that we may have to learn to live with. And seeing 2 of the very best crosspickers on the planet do it (Steve and Andy) makes me think the rest of us should very much learn to live with it lol
So you have more experience in this area of analysis of these players. do you see them swipe during both musically ascended and descended string changes or mainly just the ascended one where it is easier to hide? of course this could all be moot, but doing this on an acoustic instrument it is blatantly much more noisy during the musically descended one compared to the musically ascended swipe. i think this also will factor in as well.
I’m trying to figure that out actually lol! I’m sure they’re all trying to be clean but it would be interesting if say, someone like Andy, who is more DSX by default tends to swipe on upstrokes. His very first downstroke swipes though…so…I dunno. Could it be that it’s a palm muted pattern and that sort of forces a “downward pickslant”, which we know isn’t great for DBX? I’ll see if I can find more of a pattern or trend.
So far to me though, it’s enough to know that some of the best players in the world aren’t clearing the strings when they’re trying too, particularly at fast tempos.
Martin Miller has a completely different technique than the other guys, and he’s really clean on it actually. I don’t think he has any swipes
But right after it he has this real relieved sounding sigh and says “that was a good one!”…meaning it’s probably not something he thinks of as being easy either. His tracking is very robotic too, which I think might help. He makes these small, notchy motions with I guess elbow or rotator cuff so pretty much each string changes, he’s tracking like that. Steve and Andy look like they more “reach” for the notes through the range of motion in the wrist.
I was just watching some of his stuff, and to me it looks like he not only has a firm grasp of both one way escapes, he is also fluent in both. He probably tries to solve most problems with that approach, and ditches the swipe stuff for a more pristine articulation. Or maybe doesn’t want to override his techniques. I find that it is sort of crossing the line of possibly messing up consistency. But this could depend on the player, some it might mess up, some it might not.
I would say proceed with caution if you decide to try swiping, and make sure it isn’t jacking with your consistency. kinda like that movie with kevin costner, tin cup, where he gets the shanks. 
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i wish i could swipe or whatever like these guys! i’m so far from this level that i’m just leaving that nuance out of my brain for now. this is a great convo but, just to get things slightly back on track, any more feedback on my clip by chance?
Ha, yes sorry for the derailing. I watched it more closely, it’s looking good. I think the places where there are no escapes are sort of happening randomly and from what I’ve heard Troy say about that sort of thing, that’s where you want to be. Same mistake every time means a problem, different mistakes in different places means the technique is working the majority of the time.
Maybe you could have a little “drill” that isolates the lick more? It’s so brief that it never really gets a chance to get worked out. That strum comes up, which is a totally different motion, then you have to scurry back to the lick. Maybe something like this to loop and focus on the escapes?
e|-----0-----0------|
B|:--0---0-3---3-0-:|
G|-3----------------|
The other thing that really boosted my DBX once I got the main motion down, was trying the Steve Morse 3 finger grip. There may be some initial weirdness (there was for me) but after a brief period it proved better than the more “traditional” setup I’d done before. And then it’s this nice cycle where the different setups sort of help each other out. Mix it up some!
do you have it transcribed out? i could give you some tricks like practice it in swing tempo and burst into triplets. or chunk it out in groups of 4 notes, then 8 notes, or 3,6,12 and leaving 2 rest beats before chunking again to build up some stamina. then slowly lowering that rest to 1 and a half rest, then 1 rest beat, then half a rest beat, then try to lengthen the chunk more and more, by adding that rest beat at the end.
thanks! will do! i will say that my biggest issue “feel wise” is doing the upstroke during an “inside picking” motion.
for example, take hitting the E string on a downstroke and then hitting the B string on an upstroke. the upstroke feels really clunky and garage spike-y. maybe not so much in the clip i uploaded but in general this is the case.
i’ll try to upload a clip, as upstrokes in general give me a really hard time, regardless of dbx, usx, dsx, whatever. for example, if i do 5-8 on the E and then 5-8 on the B and start the passage from a downstroke, it’s smooth at fast tempos. if i start the passage on an upstroke, it’s clunky as hell, especially when i have to hit the upstroke on the string change. total train wreck.
i feel like if i could fix this problem, my picking would really come together.
again, i’ll post a clip! i’ll also experiment with what you mention above.
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and here’s the clip! link to my profile here: User Homepage – Cracking the Code
see the vids titled “starting on upstroke”. i uploaded a slow and fast version. ironically (given the name of the videos), i start each video by playing a simple lick starting on a downstroke. then i switch to starting that same lick on an upstroke. you’ll see it becomes much messier. this is true regardless of what type of escape i use.
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Interesting! Question - isn’t there a feature where if you’ve uploaded a high frame rate video, you can “request slow motion”? I thought I saw one of your other videos had the tabs at the top where you could watch the slow motion version of the high frame rate.
Anyway, I can see what’s going on in that video. Do you noticed how when you start with a down stroke, in most cases you are “swiping” through the B string prior to doing a downstroke? You did get a couple clean reps in the beginning, but after that it’s basically “down up (swipe) down up” repeatedly. This can indicate trapped playing, but interestingly, it can’t trapped because you are not swiping prior to returning to the e string. That would have been “down up (swipe) down up (swipe)” and that’s not happening. I guess the main thing is that motion is super flat.
Also interestingly, when you start on an upstroke in the middle of the video, it looks like a totally different motion. It’s more “DBX” looking as the upstrokes and downstrokes go in the air, but it doesn’t look at all like stringhopping (which is of course a DBX motion 
just the bad one lol).
All this tells me you’re on the right track though. Plenty of people just feel weird starting on an upstroke, so that’s legit. It’s all mental of course. If you were to hold a pick and put your hand on the table and tap to the beat of a song, you’re actually feeling things starting on an upstroke I’d be interested to see what happens if you try playing starting on an upstroke, but just stay on one string
e|-8-5-8-5-8-5-8-5-8-5-8-5-8-5 etc
U D U D U D U D U D U D U D
Or maybe something where you play a measure of that, then switch to the b string for a measure. Constantly changing strings can cause us to do some weird stuff that we wouldn’t otherwise do.
Anyway, nice job! things are looking pretty good. You ought to do a platform TC with Troy/Tommo on this stuff to make sure I’m not steering you wrong. I’m super interested in all this stuff, but I’m not always right.
thanks!! yeah i plan on doing another TC with troy/tommo but wanted to explore the fundamentals a little more first with you and the other good people on this thread.
i never noticed the swiping! i’m assuming that kinda stuff cleans itself up naturally?
as for the upstroke, i noticed i changed to dbx too. i guess that just feels more natural for starting on the upstroke but it’s still awkward feeling. i can confirm that the upstroke still feels awkward when i do usx or dsx.
i’m gonna try the trem picking on one string and then two strings and see how that helps things.
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