Metal riffs...with DSX wrist motion?

Playing Technique
#1

Hey all.

Long story short: I recently transformed my elbow motion into a DSX wrist motion. I have since been developing a neat vocabulary of DSX licks and it’s been a blast.

However, the thorn in my side is anything on the low E and A strings. In particular heavy riffs that utilize crunchy tremelo and galloping. It just feels ‘yucky’, and almost like walking on a tightrope in comparison to the effortless feel of the higher strings.

So I guess I’m wondering what information or opinions there are regarding the relationship between DSX motions and the technical heavy metal stuff.

I remember Andy Wood saying he doesn’t like playing on the low strings.

Does Jeff Loomis retain his DSX motion while he’s riffing?

Paul Gilbert is described as a primary DSX player. Is he using that motion during the chunky bit of ‘Scarified’?

I’d love to hear some opinions. Hope everyone is doing okay.

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Another technique critique
#2

From my experience and observations of pretty technical metal players on rhythm: DSX is not viable. I’d be curious to see if anyone has pulled it off?

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#3

As a DSX-only dude, I agree that it sucks when it comes to metal riffs. I tried playing stuff like Holy Wars by Megadeth with reversed picking and hitting those power chords with upstrokes and it totally sucked. Wasn’t Brendon Small DSX though?

#4

IMO riffs written for primary USX will be a bit awkward with DSX and reversed picking (upstroke on the beat). But wait… what about this guy :wink:

However… it is totally possible to write riffs that are optimized for DSX and I’m actually working on that for some upcoming lessons :slight_smile:

PS:

This is an interesting approach, I tried it on and off too, but not consistently enough to assess whether it’s viable. I actually see no fundamental reason why it shouldn’t be (as proven by Troy vid above), maybe it’s just the fact that 99% of us have gotten used to downstrokes on the beat and downstroke chord stabs?

PPS: I see that I managed to open with a statement and then contradict myself at the end. Please don’t tell my Maths colleagues :wink:

#5

I agree with all of the above.

I’ve spent the last two weeks - since I talked to Tommo about this in another thread - practicing only upstroke eighths on the low E. EDIT: Should also be transparent in that I’ve been reversing the pickstrokes for a bunch of old Emperor and Slayer riffs I’ve learned. So starting on an upstroke with dyads being played with upstrokes

The progress I’ve made?

Zero. Literally no progress whatsoever. It still feels horrible. My form starts turning into an elbow motion from the pure-wrist motion I’ve shown in my downpicking thread from this time last year.

When you do only downstrokes = the pick passes the string with gravity, and performs the string skipping motion against it. And it’s the exact opposite for only upstrokes.

If two things aren’t the same, how are they equal? It fails a basic logical test on its face.

There are times when upstrokes only/upstroke dominant phrases makes a lot more sense, but I don’t think uber technical and/or conventional metal riffing is aided by a DSX approach.

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#6

See above video from Troy :slight_smile:

What have I done? :smiley:

I think you have said basically the same - but this suggests to me that for the whole 2 weeks you were using a motion that was not suitable for the task. I think this has not so much to do with up/downstrokes, but with the motion itself you used to generate the repeated upstrokes. Again see Troy’s video above where he does repeated upstrokes at 250bpms or so!

I suspect the effect of gravity is small, nad the effect of “which joint/muscle is generating the motion?” is the dominant one, but I suppose we could test this. Have you ever tried do do metal rhythm playing while lying on a bed? that way you have gravity at approx 90 degrees to both up and downstrokes - does it feel any different?

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#7

Lol, it hasn’t only been that. Basically been reversing all these old metal riffs I’ve known. It feels so awkward.

Yeah, the motion I’m using is fine. I set the metronome to 250-260 and was able to match Troy. It’s not the speed I’m finding to be the problem, but the level of comfort. It just feels absolutely awful even if the speed is there.

Thinking about it now it’s likely because I’ve spent such a stupid amount of time doing downstrokes. There might be some interference between the movements.

There’s only one way to practice guitar from now on:

gravity-boots
gravity-boots522×522 26.1 KB

But in all seriousness I’m going to keep pushing this reversed metal stuff. I still find it odd we haven’t seen a single case of a metal player reversing all of the cliches.

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#8

With all due respect for Troy: that was fast picking, but not something I would consider to be difficult in the realm of metal / aggressive rhythm playing.

My personal benchmark is James Hetfield in the “Master of Puppets” or “… And Justice for All” era. A good amount of players have come around since then that are better technique-wise, but IMO, no other metal player has influenced the landscape more, so it’s a good benchmark that people can relate to. I believe a majority of those riffs will not be possible DSX, at least not as written.

I bring this up because I’m not sure what @GreenGuitarMusic end goal is. If they’re trying to reach the benchmark I described above (or harder), DSX will not work, at least from what I’ve seen.

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#9

As usual I think we come from the same school of thought w/r/t a lot of metal and technical guitar playing so I’m inclined to agree.

I did find this:

Suffice it to say his extremely tense and extremely uncomfortable looking performance here is not exactly inspiring me with enough confidence to continue this experiment for more than the next week.

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#10

Not to derail the conversation too much, but when it comes to “upstroke metal” the only band I know of that does it is Red Chord. A ton of Mike’s riffs implement this, @guitarenthusiast you should check them out of you haven’t.

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#11

I did check them out when you recommended them back in April. I really liked a lot of what I heard.

Thanks for this, this is really interesting. I just tried copying his pickstrokes and I think his way might actually make more sense than traditional downstrokes for this line. I’d have to A and B it over the course of a night or so but it’s definitely worth exploring. How do you feel about the way he plays it? Would you do it this way?

I’ve never fully subscribed to the idea that this forum seems to fixate on, which is that all pickstrokes are flippable for any given phrase. It has never made sense to me. My disastrous results with reversing all the metal phrases I’ve learned hasn’t given me any more confidence in that idea.

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#12

@guitarenthusiast honestly haven’t tried to play much of their stuff since it sounds bananas, but I would probably try to play it with downstrokes or alternate if it’s too fast, but the upstrokes on certain chords would have to stay, since it’s a unique sound. Maybe I should detune a guitar and give it a go!

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#13

Are you asking about eighth-note type rhythm parts, where you might do all downstrokes or all upstrokes? Because those motions aren’t single escape. Meaning, they’re not DSX, and they’re not USX, they’re circular.

We have lots of closeups of this in our Brendon Small interview:

As far as which joint motions you’d use to do this, there are lots and Brendan does different kinds. He has a wrist/forearm approach which he uses for all-downstrokes type lines where he combines bass notes with chord stabs. This would be more similar to Kirk Hammet’s approach.

Brendon also has a wrist motion where he mixes all downstrokes and alternate picked single notes. This is what he does when he plays the Meshuggah “Bleed” pattern with mixed alternate picking and downstrokes, which you can see in the interview:

The alternate picking motion here is DSX, and the downstrokes are circular. This is similar to Hetfield’s technique, who is a great wrist player.

In wrist technique, you can do USX, DSX, DBX, or circular escapes like in metal riffing — all from the same arm postion. It just depends on the direction you choose to move your wrist. Hetfield’s arm position is more supinated, so similar to EVH or Albert Lee, but the end result is the same as in Brendon’s case. James can do USX or DSX wrist motions from that arm position. So there is no need to worry that this general form is somehow inappropriate for metal riffing. It’s obviously very appropriate, since he’s the template for a lot of people.

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#14

Hey Troy, thanks for the professional opinion. There is a lot of discussion here about the mechanics of constant downstrokes vs constant upstrokes, and it’s certainly interesting. But my concerns were more to do with an overall discomfort using DSX motions on the low E and low A strings.

While trying to alternate pick on those low strings, the ‘flexion/extension’ element of the 2 o’clock wrist motion intensifies to a point where the motion decays into an unworkable ‘table tapping’ motion.

I think it has something to do with my thumb heel not having any strings to rest on.

So I suppose I was wondering if this is a universal problem with 2 o’clock wrist motion, or if there are players who actually do maintain a supinated, double heel anchor while playing on the low string.

At the moment, the only way I can alternate pick on the low E is by radically pronating my forearm and rotating my hand inwards to a ludicrous degree so my thumb heel can anchor on the guitar’s body.

#15

There are motions you know, and those that you can kind of imimate at a slower speeds but aren’t actually learned / memorized. So what happens is, you go fast, and you can’t do the “pretend” motion any more at the fast speeds, and the motion just morphs into whatever fast motion you already know how to do. This is why we see so many posts of players “doing DWPS”, at a slow speed, by making deliberate diagonal upstroke escape motion. But when they go fast the technique just becomes elbow or something else, which may not be upstroke escape at all.

The only way to really know if you have something that can work at high speed is to discover it at high speed by experimenting. It won’t necessarily be consistent yet, but if you can at least do it by accident a few times, and verify that you’re really doing it (filming, for example), then you have a shot at slowing it down a small amount and doing it more deliberately.

In your case, it sounds like you have some idea of the lines you want to play, or just that you want to be able to do alternate picking on low strings. Which is good, the more general your requirement the more likely you will find some technique that can do it. You really don’t care which kind of technique you end up with so long as it can play the lines. At least, I don’t.

So you have to go fast and find some motion you can do at the speeds you want, even if it’s only hit or miss at first.

Is this your idea of ludicrous? Because I’ve been tooling around with this motion the past few days and it’s super fun:

This is one the easiest high-speed alternate picking motions I’ve stumbled across, and the fact that I can hit these speeds is a trip. It’s like the first time you did EVH tapping and you were like, haha, it works. Sure, it’s not the most common form in the world. But neither are the results. I can count the number of “famous” players who can alternate picking anything at 260bpm on one hand. The guy who plays for Archspire piped in on the post because he does something similar and thought it was cool. So those players are out there.

Again, I don’t care what the technique looks like, I just want something that works. Experiment relentlessly and suspend your judgement. If something feels good and sounds good, then it is good!

#16

Goodness, that motion is no joke. I appear to have some practicing to do!

So all of the different picking motions you know were categorized after the fact?

The process has always been ‘play fast, scope out a motion that works by feel, and only put the microscope on it much later, if at all’?

Even back at the original Yngwie breakthough?

#17

I know it’s just words, but I think @Troy prefers the term “experimenting” to describe what to do at this stage - i.e. - what to do before you have a well-established motion for the task (correct me if I’m wrong Troy!).

“Practicing” suggests that you already possess a solid motion that you can recall at will, and you are just working on applications like refining a passage of a song and whatnot.

This is a good summary of our current teaching methodology :slight_smile: :+1:

I would add that we now actively discourage the use of the metronome at the early stages where you are “looking for a motion”. The first objective is just that feeling of speed+smoothness+ relative ease. The “musical correctness” can be sought later!

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#18

One thing that might not have been considered is pinch harmonics. Good luck hitting them on the beat in heaps of riffs with strict dsx if the riff is fast and you are starting on an upstroke.

Another issue I have with strictly dsx for metal riffs is I can’t imagine it ever sounding as aggressive as when the accents happen on a downstroke. The downstroke can have the whole weight of the wrist/ forearm involved which you can’t get from an upstroke.

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#19

Apologies if I’m interpreting this wrong, but the conversation reminded me of a guy named Paul Ryan and his playing in a band called Origin. He has some interesting wrist positions. For instance, check out 1:41 of this video:

Sometimes he opts for extreme extension (DSX?) and others flexion (USX?) You can even tell in that video as it switches scenes he’s playing the same riff with his wrist “flipped” the other way.

Reverse dart speed!
#20

I’m primarily a DSX type of player, and I can do fast downpicking, gallops, and tremolo picked metal riffs.

Instead of thinking your primary motion is useless, replace that with how you can optimize DSX for metal rhythms, and Brendon Small is the example to look to.

Once you know the motion that downpicked metal rhythms make, which is a circular motion, it becomes easier to optimize that motion.

As Troy Grady said, check out Brendon Small’s technique. It’s pretty much the Ur-Example for metal playing when you’re primarily a DSX player.

That said, even if you have these motions, nothing beats good ol’ practice. I learned downpicked rhythms, tremolo picked rhythms, and gallops like I did anything else, by learning songs, and just trying to keep up and stay on rhythm.

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