I want to reinforce what tommo says here @Yaakov!
DBX is definitely more rare than single escape, and it also seems to be more elusive, as you can see in enough technique critique posts here.
@tommo is a really good player who knows what he is talking about, so he knows that the stuff he recommended to you will work with your newly found picking motion, given time. I would also try @Troy s proven method of yngwie sixes, on one string first, up to speed, and then include string switches.
And definitely watch the start with speed video, and get your head around chunking.
Not sure where you’re coming from on this but your own experiment right here shows that single escape is the very first fast motion you could do. So what does that tell you?
In general I don’t like the terms “hard” and “easy” because they’re super vague. What’s hard? Too much effort? Too much time to learn? Because I’ll tell you, once you figure them out, all these techniques feel “easy” to do, as in low physical effort needed to do it.
So the time it takes to figure it out is the main variable. And if you asked 100 new guitarists who never used a pick before to play a single note as fast as they could, my guess is nearly 100% of them would figure out single escape, either USX or DSX. I think that’s just the way “fast” picking works.
DBX I’m not sure is really a high speed thing. It might be more like a mid-fast tempo thing, 120-180 that kind of range. At least from what we’ve seen.
Use what’s working and get good at something, you can always add more techniques later. In total, how many years, on and off, have you been doing this? I know you said 3000 hours but I can’t remember if you said how long overall.
Anyway, again, great work here.
1 Like
I meant that since no one really single-escapes on a lilting ballad melody - single escape is usually for ‘fast’ runs, from what I’ve seen here - it takes more time to develop (more notes played faster = greater demand for coordination & solid technique). So my thinking was that you should learn to crawl (~DBX) before you walk/run (~USX/DSX).
But I sense that folks here don’t see it that way. That’s cool. Crawl-before-walking works in a lot of things in life, but I’ll grant that it’s not a hard fast rule, either.
I’ve got a unique situation. A company shut-down put me into stay-at-home dad status a few years ago. The kids were young and Mommy was getting along well in her field, so it worked out well having one parent with a flexible schedule. But as they aged I found I had more time on my hands. So I pulled out the old acoustic from the corner… and fell in love. I’ve racked up those 3000 hours over four years (my ‘anniversary’ was actually last week).
(BTW, thanks @tommo for those posting tips:)
Slower isn’t really “easier” in the case of picking motions, if by easier you mean length of time needed to learn something. Lots of first-timers here can do Yngwie licks north of 180bpm in a short amount of time. Far fewer can play any of Molly Tuttle’s stuff at 140bpm even after a while trying. The double escape stuff just seems trickier for people to figure out. But I would take that with a grain of salt because most people here are rock players who grew up trying to do Eruption, not Whiskey Before Breakfast.
People definitely use single escape for slow stuff. Even now, if you don’t tell me I specifically have to use a particular motion, I will almost always choose USX because it’s what I know and have done the longest. For example this stuff in the Primer isn’t particularly fast and a great example of what motion I would use if I really wasn’t thinking about it at all:
Very slow lyrical stuff is very often just all downstrokes for Gypsy players, or sometimes all upstrokes for blues players trying to get a particular tone. At that point I’m not even sure these picking motions are even used.
There’s just something that happens when you crank up that Steve Winwood type beat really loud…
1 Like
@Troy I think the fastest single note picking anyone can do (that hasn’t “cracked the code”) is trapped picking. You have a double rest stroke to help you! I know that’s what I would have done.
1 Like
Trapped vs escaped really has nothing to do with speed. Speed is just your joint moving back and forth. The joint moves how it moves, and it doesn’t matter what relationship that joint has to a string or even if there is a guitar present at all.
The fastest alternate picking we have filmed, north of 300bpm, is elbow motion. The way most people hold a guitar against the body, elbow motion is automatically downstroke escape. It wouldn’t be faster if it were trapped. There wouldn’t even be a way to change that. Except maybe by altering the position of the guitar against the body to line it up with the plane in which the joint is moving. But that wouldn’t be changing the motion, only the position of the guitar.
Edit: Here’s what that motion looks like. As you can see, this motion is so tiny at these speeds that there is no possible way it’s rest stroking:
2 Likes
My comment was about this, forgot to quote properly. I think they would pick a trapped motion since they are not tasked with switching strings and it looks “proper form”. I didn’t mean I thought it was the fastest movement. 
I’m glad you’re spelling that out, cuz it’s really surprising to me. I would definitely not have thought so.
One thing about guitar is that the seemingly safe assumptions you make can get you in a lot of trouble. It’s teaching me some humility… A big reason I never figured out the trapped motion (and possibly never would have) is that from audience view, wrist deviation is the only obvious motion. Only with a down-the-strings shot can you more clearly see how critical forearm rotation is (and what the pick is really doing).
I would watch accomplished players and think to myself, well, that’s not the sewing-machine (hopping) thing I do… looks more like sideways wrist motion. A-ha - must be that they’re only hitting the string with like a 1/2 mm of the pick tip! (Wrong!)
But based on that false assumption, I further reasoned that the dexterity required to use so little of the pick would just come after lots and lots of playing. (Nope; ain’t gonna happen.)
Okay, I’m bought in; DBX can wait.
Forearm rotation isn’t critical, all these motions, including wrist motions, elbow motion, finger motions, all work equally well. You just happened to stumble across a motion that uses a blend of wrist and forearm in your fast motion. That’s totally fine, we’ll take any motion that works at this stage.
Just an FYI “deviation” is just the name for only one direction out of of 180 possible degrees of wrist motion. Flexion-extension is the other compass point, 90 degrees away. Lots of wrist motions actually move in between these two compass points. These aren’t really diagonal motions, they’re just one out of 180 degrees. The in-between motions that aren’t deviation and aren’t flexion-extension are actually some of the most common motions in everyday use.
But I understand what you’re saying, you just mean it’s obvious to see the wrist moving what appears to be side to side relative to the guitar. I imagine elbow motion is equally “obvious” from audience perspective.
I don’t think so. Trapped motion appears to be relatively uncommon. The players we have filmed didn’t really have any teaching about “escape motion” and almost all of them ended up with some kind of escape motion anyway. Jorge Strunz is the only purely trapped player we’ve interviewed. You’d think it would be more common, but it isn’t.
We already have one example on this thread of a player who “chose” an upstroke escape motion totally at random, just by deciding to go fast. Another common choice is elbow. A lot of people when you tell them to go as fast as they can without overthinking things, end up with elbow. And that motion isn’t trapped either, it’s almost always downstroke escape.
So to some extent, when you ask a person to shut off their brain and just try something fast, they usually have no idea what motion they end up with, but very often it’s an escape motion we can use.
Lucky us!
1 Like
I’m one of these uncommon guys then. My fast tremolo on thinner strings is actualy double trapped (or NSX as I call it). I keep it small usually, but once I start to make it wider I touch both string. Bascially I use two kinds of elbow picking: palm-anchor-based (strict DSX) and fingers-anchor-based (NSX).
My guess it that while pure unsupported elbow motion is a DSX indeed, you have other additional factors. In my case it’s my fingers that I use for anchoring. Seems like it changes the pick trajectory. Or more precisely, I use a bit of pressure ‘inside’ my guitar, compenstaing it with my fingers. Which makes a pick trajectory different from its ‘free’ form. I still don’t understand how it works in details to be fair…
1 Like
Well, it’s coming. Slowly, but surely. For those who made it this far, thought I’d post a couple tips that have helped me; hopefully you’ll also find them helpful, if you’re working through this too:
-
Consider ditching that old, nubby pick you’ve been using and take a new one out of the pack. Fresher’s better, least was for me.
-
If you’re getting an unevenness, as Troy pointed out in my video, think about whether you’re escaping as far as you’re trapping; realized that I wasn’t.
-
This was strange, but for those who are anchoring with the thumb or pinkie heel of the hand… Your motion’s going to come largely if not exclusively from the forearm and wrist. Whenever I do a strictly deviational motion with the wrist (the ‘wiperblade’ motion), then a strictly pendulum motion (i.e. lock the wrist and use forearm rotation only)… I go back to the single escape tremolo on one string, and presto, the two motions blend nicely into one.
Whatever’s working for others - please share;)
For me it was ridiculous pckslanting (pick almost parallel to strings plane) and 2nps stuff.
I chose large pickslanting angle so that uneffective motion didn’t work. In that case you whether do escaping motion or you stuck.
As for 2nps… I thought that one string exercises are useless in terms of developing escaping motion… well, because you don’t need escape anywhere. Long patterns (4nps,6nps etc) seemed worked in that way: you play almost every note with your old picking technique and make escape motion only on last pickstroke. Because of that I stuck with 2nps and after couple of months I got something USX-ish at last.
1 Like
Not sure I follow… Do you mean perpendicular? (Parallel would be 2BX w/little or no slant)
Yes, I had the same experience! I did everything to copy a gypsy-picking setup, with extrem pick slanting and a flexed wrist, but I simply didn’t escape on upstrokes, which was unnoticeable on single string yngwie stuff. I wasted quite a lot if time there, which I noticed when I tried playing 2nps stuff. This is why I welcome the focus changing from pickslant to pick escape.
oh of course, you said pick slant, not pick path; my bad
That ‘pickslanting’ term is a bit confusing. Sometimes people use it to refer to a pick angle, sometimes they mean movement trajectory. I meant the ‘pick’s plane’. I should be more clear, sorry.
Anyway, it was a torture. Once I started to speed up, I returned to my old picking habits and my pick was stuck. Really annoying. But after some time I managed to pick faster, which meant that I get the correct movement. Then I made a pickslanting angle less pronounced, and I still had it. No ‘lightbulb moment’ though. It was just slow progress.