My roadmap to 'shred' (baby's first meedlies)

Playing Technique
#1

So it’s been just about 1 year exactly since I’ve joined the CtC forum and started watching as many of Troy’s instructional videos and all the interviews possible. My playing when I started was … let’s call it ‘nascent’.

I arrived with some facility for a wrist based (somewhat DBX) motion, with relatively decent speed from a ‘moving your picking hand fast’ standpoint heh. And while I’ve made some improvements in that regard over the year, it’s not been any monumental like, fireworks going off, lightbulb moments. For a while, I was alright with that. I figured I’d already got enough of a base that I wasn’t going to have one of those ‘Ohhhh so THAT’S what it feels like!’ experiences.

Well I might have had one just a few days ago.

Best I can figure is this is around 180bpm triplets by the time I get rolling at the end. And there’s for sure more speed there, right now it feels like a hand sync limitation, NOT a ‘I can’t move around the strings fast or predictably enough’ problem.

And for the first time, I can at least see the ‘path’ that people like @troy, @tommo, @Pepepicks66 or @gabrielthorn (these are off the top of my head a few of the more active posters from recently) might’ve taken themselves to get to where they are now.

How did I get to this? Rewind to quite literally only 2 weeks ago, when I decided to try and REALLY learn a tremolo motion that I could use to play something consistently for minutes at a time. Prior to that, I could do a wrist based flutter/tremolo for a couple seconds at most. I worked through it for a bit, some attempts were far too rigid (straining), some were too inconsistent and unpredictable but other times it just ‘worked’.

So I happened upon a primarily DSX (or somewhat trapped?) motion that looks like this. And allows for a tremolo that seems well in excess of 200bpm for minutes at a time.

“Great, so make music with it!” Is what I hear @Troy and @tommo saying from the back! So I did. I wanted to get it to the point where I felt ‘confident’ in it. So I recorded lead and rhythm guitar for ‘Miserlou’ and comped together my first real cover. The thread is here, with some further examples of tremolo and some analysis for the curious.

https://forum.troygrady.com/t/miserlou-my-attempts-at-learning-an-efficient-picking-motion/

That solidified in my mind that I was able to play in this way, musically. The next step was figuring out what kind of motion I was using. So I took some video, and it appeared to be a DSX motion for the most part. Yeah there’s some variation depending on which string I’m on, but as far as I can see, if I applied it to some DSX licks, it should definitely support it.

And wouldn’t you know it, it certainly seems to.

You can see for yourself the evolution of my picking, and what I’ve been up to (on and off) here. This is a link to every Cracking the Code clip of my playing from the past year or so. I’m not asking you to watch all or any of it actually, just if you’re curious to see what MY journey started from, it’s there in its entirety. Warts and all.

Anyway, this has been me posting about my (seeming) “Aha!” moment for what string changes can feel like when you’re definitely not fracking string hopping! :smiley:

EDIT - 1 thing I forgot to add/ask is: At this point, my next steps should be…? My assumption would be to go through the catalog of prominent DSX players and learn some of their songs/riffs yeah? The motion itself appears more or less correct now I think…

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#2

I watched all the videos. I’m not really into crosspicking stuff so I can’t comment on that, but if you can sustain tremolo picking at 200bpm 16th notes for minutes and it’s escaping in any direction, I’m jealous, and on top of that, I think you should bump up your metronome and try to play simple licks like the ascending sixes on a much higher tempo than 180 bpm triplets. 180*3/4 = 135 with 16th notes, it is still a very slow speed to really feel the sensation of fast playing. I did the same thing, thanks to @Pepepicks66, he just pushed me and kept pushing me and all my mental barriers regarding speed disappeared in a few days.

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#3

I think this is a great start of “meedlee” (I love that word), I would suggest drilling it more until you can whip it out on a whim, also experiment with different levels of palm muting, neck pickup, phrasing into / out of things with it…

Specifically what pattern to move to next, I actually started with a similar one (that I played in the stream when you brought this up) which is sextuplets but 3 nps on 2 strings, so like 7 - 9 - 10 on the d string, 7 - 9 - 10 g string, repeat until something inside you dies. The “Petrucci-ism” is to do that pattern with the last 3 notes becoming the first 3 notes of the next sextuplet.

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#4

Yes! Ok this is the info I need/require thank you. Because for me, everything above 130bpm sounds and seems fast as hell and I’m very dumb with music notation/theory and haven’t internalized any of the conversions.

I just grabbed some footage of my tremolo, this is today, no warmup or anything 1 shot 1 take.

Does it escape? Who can say because I screwed up the angle I was filming at. Brain genius right here…

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#5

Hard to tell from this angle and I’m not a professional here but hopefully it does, and it’s DSX as it’s elbow motion. Try to play the simple ascending sixes pattern and you’ll see. Doesn’t matter how sloppy it is, just give it a shot and crank up your gears.

D-------------------------------10-12-14-
A-----------10-12-14-|-10-12-14----------
E-10-12-14-------------------------------

And so on…

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#6

Just wanted to check @JB_Winnipeg if you had any luck with the DSX stuff.

#7

Man, I appreciate this! Thanks for checking. I’ve made some progress into upping the tempo a bit and keeping sync, but I gotta say, just practicing a cascading run is NOT high on my list of ‘this is fun!’ guitar things right now.

I’ve been playing mostly acoustic and learning songs I can sing whenever that turns back into being legal around my area lol.

I need to find some downstroke escape players and check out their songs to try and get some ‘actual’ music instead of just something that feels like a drill. Every elbow player already seems to be playing at fuckin’ lightspeed x 100 already so it’s pretty intimidating! I don’t have that hand sync down yet.

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#8

Ah okay, I was just curious but I totally understand if this is not a priority for you. Nowadays I’m also dreaming about singing and playing at the same time, I just can’t do that even on a basic level lol :smiley: Lockdown can’t be an excuse for me :thinking:

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#9

I have almost given up on this - I honestly don’t think I will ever progress past the basic of basic chord strumming. If you you find the magic bullet, save one for me!

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#10

Heh, well this is one of those instances where the ‘traditional’ wisdom of learn the song inside out and backwards (however you’d normally do that) for both the guitar and the vocals, still applies I’d say.

Once you’ve got those pieces figured out, then combine them SLOOOOOWWWWLY the slow part being key so that you know when the vocals change and correspondingly the guitar parts.

There were a few days where I almost kindlinged my guitar but I ended up managing to learn The Boxer while playing finger style over the course of about a week. And I am no great shakes a finger style player so it’s definitely do-able, just… be prepared to suffer for a few days LOL :smiley: