Hey man Syu is one of my favorite guitarists and I have studied some of his footage, I haven’t been able to discover all of his tricks but I have however, discovered pretty interesting tricks he uses to achieve extra speed and also to avoid downstroke escape changes and keep his downwardpick slanting motion going on, better term for it is upward escape motion since the pick escapes on upstrokes, I mysef like you, I am the opposite of Syu in motions, I’m a downstroke escape player or upward pickslanter, so I can get closer to playing how he does by reversing the patterns he uses on the picking hand. Also the metronomic rock DSX course in here is really good to learn some of these tricks that you can use in reverse to what Syu tends to do quite often.
So just for clarification
Downward pick slanting=upward escape motion
Upward picksklanting=downward escape motion
This simply means for example on an upward escape motion or downpicklsanting like SYU, his downstrokes are trapped and his upstrokes escape the strings allowing for effortless string switching
For upward pickslanting or downstroke escape player its the opposite, our upstrokes are trapped and our downstrokes move away from the string allowing escaping the string and the string change.
Now here is a trick I’ve found SYU uses to avoid fully alternate picking certain licks, in Syu’s case again he does this to either play faster or to avoid downstroke strings escapes which is the opposite of his primary USX motion. While Syu is able to do both escapes or a double escape, he generally avoids it, I still haven’t figured out how his double escape motion works but in any case adding a sneaky legato articulation allows him to play faster than fully alternate picked patterns, even ones where he would need only one motion like downward pickslanting.
On a quintuplet like pattern I have notated how it would be fully alternate picked only and then how SYU would pay it adding sneaky hammer-ons to achieve more speed and avoid having to do a downstroke escape motion, it’s like it gives an extra boost of speed and it’s easier to play fast. After the hammer-ons he does another upstroke so it’s two upstrokes in a row separated by the hammer-on:
He uses a quintuplet pattern similar to this one on the Burn My Heart solo. Again this gives him an extra speed boost and allows him to avoid having to do double escape motion or DSX:
Now on this live example from Syu you can see how he uses the trick of adding the sneaky hammer-ons on a pattern that includes some string skipping here in Exercise 14 from the Whisper In the red sky solo, he does a full speed demo of the exercise, if you watch that demo in slow motion with the youtube player you will notice his picking pattern is D-U-D-U-Hammer On, then followed by another upstroke again , the hammer on gives enough time to do two consecutive upstrokes. So now, on the new string you begin with an upstroke like this U-D-U-D-U, basically what I’m trying to say is that this isn’t a fully alternate picked example, there’s some sneaky legato that’s introduced, similar as in the quintuplet example. If you watch closely and in slow motions his full speed demo, you’ll be able to spot how he uses sneaky hammer ons and two consecutive upstrokes to play this example (in slow motion you can even hear the hammer-on as opposed to a pick attack):
I have attempted to notate example 14, but the palm muting is kinda whatever, so just keep in mind there’s some palm muting being used here:
Keep in mind than when he plays examples slow he uses alternate picking but when he plays fast it’s not the same as his slow demonstrations, so you have to pay attention to his full speed ones to see how they are really being played.
For us DSX or downstroke escape players or upwards pickslanters however if you wanna play it; it’s better to reverse the picking pattern, starting on an upstroke and doing two consecutive downstrokes instead of upstrokes so it is like:
U-D-U-D-hammer on, and on the next string you start D-U-D-U-D- here the pattern resets to U-D-U-hammer on, to prepare the new string switch.
There’s a reason for this and there’s a reason why SYU does consecutive upstrokes instead of downstrokes. Let me try to explain.
In Syu’s case him being an USX player or a downward pickslanting player, let’s take a look at a three note per string ascending pattern played in different ways:
If we alternate pick everything it would be:
D-U-D
on the next string now you have to start on an upstroke
U-D-U
and on the next string after that it’s a downstroke again.
D-U-D.
Syu being a downward pickslanter, he wants to avoids the downstroke string change since the downstrokes are trapped, this means, if he doesn’t avoid it, after the very first string change that ends on a downstroke D-U-D, he would have to attack the new string starting on an upstroke U-D-U, the opposite of what he needs as a downward pickslanter (USX), therefore his solutions I have been able to identify (notated on the tab above), are as follows when it comes to playing three notes per string patterns or uneven notes per string patterns (even note string patterns like 2 or 4, don’t need double escape motion since the new attack on the string is always the same, that’s why he heavily plays two notes per string on his riffs and solos):
D-U-Hammer on
on the new string now:
U-D-U
on the new string he is in position for again, without needing to use legato here, since he is set up perfectly to use his regular primary motion:
D-U-D
Another way he might do these 3 note per string patters using consecutive downstrokes or upstrokes (again notated on the tab above), for this one it doesn’t matter that much which one, is the Yngwie solution for 3 notes per string playing but rather than descending where Yngwie uses it ,since ascending he uses economy picking, we can do it on ascending scales like SYU. Now this one sounds a lot more legato rather than fully picked, because there is a lot more legato being introduced:
D-U-hammer on
D-U-hammer on
D-U-hammer on
or the reverse
U-D-hammer on
U-D-hammer on
U-D- hammer on
Now there are other examples where SYU might choose to use hammer ons for example the classic Paul gilbert pattern:
first notated as for alternate picking and then how SYU does it:
He for example uses this kind of pattern with some variations on the Flag of Reincarnation solo:
Now again, to be able to play these kind of examples as an upward pickslanter, simply reverse the pick attacks and you got it, when it comes to SYU licks, this usually means starting on an upstroke instead of a downstroke and doing two consecutive downstrokes after hammer ons, instead of two consecutive upstrokes like Syu does.
I would advise you to get the metronomic rock dsx tutorial and see how @tommo teaches playing three notes per string scales using hammer ons and pull offs for upward pickslanters.
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