Hey man. No, I have not tried it yet. I was focusing on the new setup and figured it didn’t make sense to tackle that yet since I would be also having to memorize new phrases. My brain is small. I will get some new clips posted soonish. Once I know if I am on the right track or not, maybe I’ll give that solo a go. It’s definitely cool. If I have a few minutes later I will try slopping through it and at least see if I run into the same issues you listed.
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please do let me know if ya do!
@Troy – is there some swiping going on there in measure 11? I can’t figure out how all those pickstrokes can work as pure USX without swiping or some double escape and I don’t see double escape.
love playing this. That descending bit reminds me of Eruption.
You have the slow motion video, what motions do you see happening? In other words, what direction does the pick move? Whatever way it moves, that’s the motion I’m making!
Not trying to be a jerk, I’m being a little Socratic here just for the learning opportunity. Take a look and see what you think is happening, and which joint or joint motions you think is creating that.
no, no - I appreciate that opportunity.
I spent about an hour watching it at 25% while both playing along and on my own. I experimented with string change points and even wondered if perhaps it was transcribed incorrectly. After watching both right and left hands like that over and over, I listened hard for the sound of swiped notes but at that much slowmo, it was hard to tell.
If there’s double escape motion there, I can’t see it so determined to play it with swiping for now.
am I on the right track at least?
thanks! I know you’re busy.
ok… I noticed I could make a loop of a spot on the player and now it looks to me like there’s some very shallow (right word?) double escape motion.
if that’s the case, I suppose this backs up the idea that double escape motion doesn’t have to be a drastic shift from supinated to pronated.
What I was looking for is for you to notice that the pick just moves in a straight line from the lower string to the higher one. That’s it. No fancy terminology, just “what is the pick doing”. I’m probably doing that with wrist motion, by moving the wrist in a straight line. I can’t feel it.
The practical answer to your question is, it doesn’t really matter what motion you make, because it’s not continuous high speed picking. Just make whatever rmotion here that sounds good. That’s all I did. Whatever you’re seeing here is simply the result of me doing “whatever”.
We know a lot more now than we did when we filmed this, so now I can look at this, and go, “Aha, that’s a trapped pickstroke probably wrist motion that goes straight across. It slides because of the pickslant so you probably don’t hear much swiping noise. Didn’t know I was doing that. Interesting.”
That’s it!
excellent. thanks for taking the time on this. yes! I see that straight line motion between the B and E strings and then once again between G and B. Without all the hours I’m sure you’ve done, it can be hard to see this and looking for these things is good practice. Reminder of how tiny some of these motions are.
and yes, “whatever” makes sense here. I often think, “man, he’s just going for it here,” when I slowmo other players like Eddie but I hesitated to say that about this because I also think of you as a more intentional player so I wondered!
Now to work on flipping to DSX. there’re two downstrokes in row here that would need to shift. I’ll keep pluggin’.
thanks!
To be clear, everybody is just winging it, that’s how all these motions are learned. So there’s really nothing different here about this instance. The only difference is I wasn’t particularly aware of it. But I wasn’t aware of it the first time I played a USX line either. I just became aware afterward.
So try not to overthink things, the instructions are just there as a hint.
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right - we all ultimately find how our bodies do these things best and it’s not always how someone else’s would or does.
How is this working out? Have you filmed any of the more elbow version of this yet, and what does it look like? If you get a chance to grab a clip of it, that would be interesting to see.
Hey Troy, thanks for checking in. I have not filmed anything to submit, I’ll get on that tomorrow. I did film something quickly on the second day and noticed some wobbling…both the guitar shaking and the pick slant changing a lot. I wanted to try to correct that on my own. I think that is gone, so the footage tomorrow will confirm.
Over all I think this is working out pretty well though. It’s definitely faster picking than I’ve ever done. I wrote a little Bach-ish etude that’s all DSX to help have something fun to play while I’m getting used to it.
Still feels a little weird, but I expected that. Also, I wanted to ask…do you think it’s an issue using this Brendon form, but having the hand more open so that the picking hand ring and pinky fingers lightly touch the body? Not like a hard anchor, just gentle contact to help keep pick depth consistent? I catch that happening without thinking about it sometimes when I look down. I used to play that way back in the day (ever since seeing MAB when I bought his Speed Kills DVD). Maybe the best answer is to film a clip or 2 with that setup as well to see if it throws things off at all? Just having the picking hand float freely may be what’s weirdest about this to me since I’ve always employed a gentle anchor.
But yeah over all I definitely think it’s something to work with it. When I nail it, it feels great. Almost unlike anything I’ve felt. We know how strange my perception of what I feel vs what’s reality is though haha
Cool, great work on the etude. It’s definitely very inventiony. We definitely more stuff like that, actual musical pieces for people to play with dfferent mechanical styles. Because you asked for feedback (ha, you didn’t!), I think m.11 should continue the pattern of m.10 in a circle of fifths kind of way with the same exact melody line just a whole step lower or something for symmetry. Rather just going back to the minor as you have it now. We were already there in m.10 so why go back so soon? m.12 is great and heading toward the home stretch in the faster harmonic motion / Bachy kind of windup and m.13 is perfect too.
Anyway re: hand position if it works I don’t see why it matters. But only you can say whether it works. I would keep an open mind and go with whichever actually produces better results. “Feels weird” is totally subjective and could just be the result of it being new.
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Great ideas! I honestly didn’t take the etude too seriously but you know there is a little potential there! As a theory/composition major, I’ll run with this because it’s a fun little challenge, not unlike the weekly assignments my composition professor would have me do. I’ll work in your suggestion but there’s a lot of other cool things I could do with motif development and even more chromatic harmony than the little bits I threw in.
You probably know this already, but classical pieces aren’t just nice little tunes. They are architectural works or art where every measure has a significance and relates to the piece. Whether it’s a motif or phrase that gets transformed there’s some thread that lives through the whole thing. Bach even did this in his ‘exercise’ pieces. Once I asked my theory professor where all this ‘stuff’ he was teaching us came from. Pretty sure my question was in the context of voice leading and counterpoint, not chord movement or anything as the rules of harmonic progression were already standardized. The profressor’s answer was something to effect of very astute individuals noticed patterns and considerations that prevailed through Bach’s catalog. So he’s like the forefather of some now foundational theory concepts, before it was standardized. Pretty cool! I wonder who cracked that code though…
Anyway, I know all the ‘rules’, so I’ll try to do the same with this little etude. But first, I owe you a video. Thanks again for checking in on my progress, the cool suggestions for the little piece, and stay tuned for the new clips!
Hey @Troy here are some clips I filmed earlier today.
Tremolo only:
Lydian DSX circular phrase:
I was struggling to get good takes on that one today. I think if I had a magnet instead of my wife standing in front of me holding her phone I could probably do better lol Can’t wait for my magnet order to get filled and shipped (December-ish still, right???)
Anyway that’s where things are. I think it’s promising compared to the thing I was doing early on with the Petrucci exercise, where I was trapped, and DSX and shallow USX at random times. One thing I notice is when I tremolo my fastest, it may be a slightly different motion that when I’m at a speed where my left hand can keep up. In the second clip there’s even a spot around 0:17 where I try to tremolo for a second to ‘reset’ things and my hand opens up more. That vanishes when I go back to playing the phrase. What do you think?
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Man that tremolo is scary! What have we done 
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Yeah I will second that, this looks and sounds awesome. You know you’re in deep when you get excited by a single note played well. But there really is such as thing as a good-sounding attack and a good-sounding tremolo, and this new motion has it.
Nice work here. You’ll get a handle on this eventually, to where I think you’ll be able to have your tremolo level of speed plus left hand synchronization. I would try something even simpler like the Yngwie six-note pattern. Can you get that any closer to tremolo speed?
Here’s a great Rusty Cooley pattern you can try if you want to go for a four-note stretch:
The thing I like about this is there’s even less finger reuse because of the fourth note so even though the coordination is a little weird at first, you may be able to do this faster once you memorize it. Basically, single string repeating patterns will help with the synchronization. I wouldn’t stop working on the two-string stuff, you need variety. I like to mix everything together.
Another fun thing you can you try is tremolo melodies:
That will get you used to hearing what this motion sounds like when applied in all its fury to something musical. And you can try and synchronize that with accents too. Although I find that harder than synchronizing actual fretted notes because all the repeated notes become sort of a blur.
Ten-dollar phone holder and store-bought tripod, then your troubles are gone. You won’t get that perfectly down the strings angle but you will be able to get a much more consistent look with way less hassle.
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Thanks!
Yep, been watching that very clip this week because I wanted to see what his elbow looked like. Not sure if you caught this, but I had a swiss pick in one of my clips because I thought that pick he was using looked so cool I just got my set in the mail today. I think I may be hooked. They’re really nice! But yeah I think you’re onto something with just taming the beast and working on hand sync. I think the string changes will just take care of themselves since the motion is smoother and more consistent at the higher speeds.
I’d intentionally focused on multi string. Like you said, I’ll keep doing that, but the single string stuff will probably get the coordination better at higher speeds. Right now it’s just all falling apart. My wife mentioned that. She was like “Joe your tremolo is ok but your Lydian thing is just falling apart”. Then my 4 year old son said “Daddy you suck. Your playing is just totally falling apart”.
Just kidding about all that falling apart stuff lol! I know you hate that phrase so I wanted to throw it into this post a time or three just to make your neck twitch lol! Sorry, couldn’t resist hahahaha!!! 
This is a great idea. I’d thought of that initially. I think I didn’t pursue it because if I did change strings at all, it would be weird to do it right on the beat since that’s not DSX compatible. I thought I saw Brendon doing that in the interview some and changing right on the beat. I’ll need to rewatch that. Seems like a string hop would be required but everything he did looked really smooth.
The whole reason I went down the USX route is cuz EJ is my favorite rock guitarist. I can almost play most of his stuff. You can see why I have issues holding on, since DSX is what my hands want to do. Gets clunky and out of sync when I try to match his tempos. Sadly, even if I can tame this DSX beast with my new picking posture, that still won’t allow me to play his stuff. I’d have to get really creative with remapping the notes, or start on upstrokes. His downward 2 string sweeps ain’t gonna happen at all with DSX. Garage spikes. BUT, like you say all the time, learning one motion totally correctly may help with others. Once this new DSX setup is cemented, maybe I can revisit USX with a forearm or wrist mechanic and be on a good path with it.
Anyway, I’m rambling on as I tend to do. Thanks a lot for all the help you’ve been @Troy and @tommo , I feel like I’m onto something here. At least I’ll be able to play something in the 180 - 190’s pretty soon, even if it’s not the EJ stuff I’d like to be playing. That’s definitely a great step forward!
It’s been a while but I thought an update was in order. I actually took a couple months off from playing after this due to some crazy work scheduling, but I’ve gotten back into it recently. I do not have any new videos to prove it, but this whole journey turned out really well for me.
I’ve now got a pretty promising DSX wrist (sometimes wrist/elbow blend) and wrist/forearm USX motion going. I can attribute this to finally getting the feeling of what fast and smooth feels like. Even though I could play cleanly (on good days) in the 16ths@180 bmp range, it did not feel like what I’m experiencing now. The only way I can describe it is ‘relaxed’. Whether I’m playing at 160 or 195, the motions I’m doing now do not feel any more or less difficult at any of these speeds.
Oddly enough, my only struggle currently is that it seems like my brain can’t feed by hands the notes fast enough. I never feel as though I’m tensed up or losing steam, in either hand. This could also be that I’ve all but totally ditched exercises and I’m playing things that don’t really have any repeated chunks in them…just a steady stream of melodic activity. Anyway, even that stuff is getting there.
So, I’ll get some videos together sometime soon-ish. I just wanted to give some confirmation that as per the usual, Troy’s advice is solid. Get a fast smooth motion going, even if it’s not the motion you think you need to play what you want. Thanks again @Troy!
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@joebegly Passages that don’t really repeat are the worst as far as memorization goes at speed (for me). I think I feel the whole “relaxed regardless of tempo” thing, I’ve never really focused much on relaxing but I’ll keep that in mind next time I play.
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