Question on hand placement with DWPS (Steve Morse, Troy Grady, John Petrucci)

Playing Technique
#1

Hi everyone,

I have a question regarding the hand placement/ positioning in the following examples. I am not sure whether the outside of the picking hand (the side where the pinky is) is resting on the strings or rather on the bridge. In the latter case, the palm wouldn´t be muting the strings.
The reason I´d like to get clarity on this is that I can´t play strings openly whenever I play with DWPS. I´ll have to put my hand on the bridge, so that the palm is not muting the strings. I know that Anton Oparin magically manages to play strings openly with an upstroke escape, but for now I´d like to get clarity on these three other players.

The first example is this shot of Steve Morse´s hand. I guess the white line you see there is the bridge, so the strings are not muted…?

The second example is from Troy (the Yngwie lick at the very beginning):

Also, if you pause at exactly 3:00, you get a very good shot of the hand - I am still not sure whether the palm is resting on the strings or not…

The last example is from Rock Discipline, though I am actually not sure whether this hand setup can even be considered DWPS:

Regards,

Dairwolf

#2

On many guitars, you should be able to do both without drastically altering your technique, by shifting “the whole apparatus” slightly to the left or to the right without changing any other variable. If you rest slightly on the strings you’ll get the palm muted sound, while if you rest on the bridge only, you can get the open sound.

Other players instead flex the wrist a little for the open sound (so the palm lifts away from the strings).

A lot depends on what your specific setup looks like… you know where I’m going with this :smiley:

#3

Thanks for the reply.

The point I was trying to make is that there seem to be a couple of players that can create an open space for the strings that are played while at the same time having the lower part of the wrist rest on the lower strings. So it´s not binary anymore (palm on the strings or not on the strings), it´s rather “palm on the strings while some strings remain open”. I think that´s what Anton Oparin is doing when he does upstroke escapes.

In this video here, John Petrucci talks about exactly what I mean.

At 4:24, he says that he side of the palm goes on the bridge, so I assume for the shreddy stuff he´d do exactly as you suggested in your reply - move the whole apparatus to the right. Then again, at 4:38, he explains what I just wrote about (what he calls the “little cave”). I assume that he doesn´t use that hand posture for the fast, shreddy stuff, but rather for melodic playing??

I figured out how to do the “cave” by first putting my palm on the strings over the whole length of the side of the pinky and then slightly rotating the hand towards the body of the guitar. Sometimes I can play with DWPS that way, sometimes the upstrokes just don´t escape. It´s a little shaky and rather unstable, compared to the version of DWPS where I have the whole fleshy side of the palm rest on the strings or the bridge.

#4

You need to make a video to see

#5

Hi everyone, I finally managed to shoot a short video of what I am trying to get at.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EPuDbQNMOco

I wanted to display two different hand placements with DWPS. The important part here is that the wrist stays on the strings all the time, either muting all the strings or only the lower strings, so that the higher strings ring out. If you rotate the wrist only to a certain degree, you create an angle that is sufficient for the upstroke ecsape without muting the higher strings. You can also see what John Petrucci calls the “cave” in one of the videos I linked above, the open space between the guitar and the spot where the pinky connects to the palm.

I assume that this half-muted-half-open position is what Anton Oparin is doing when he goes into the USX position for his TWPS. I have no way to prove this though. Troy might have used this in the videos of the Antigravity series where he plays the notorious Paul Gilbert lick. I personally can´t tell where exactly the palm is and if it is muting strings or not even with the closeups from the magnet.

The open setting is admittedly shaky and I am basically always worried that I´ll flex/ rotate the hand too much, so that the higher strings will be muted again (EDIT: or that I don´t rotate enough in order to have a steep enough slant for clean USX). So from a psychological point of view, it does not feel comfortable to me. What I´d like to know is if other players are applying this type of positioning and whether it is necessary for TWPS.

Maybe I am just pointing out something that is obvious to everybody, but I haven´t seen anybody adress this directly. What I do come across are the three other options: 1. no contact of the palm to the guitar body at all, 2. muting all the strings with the palm, or 3. muting no strings by shifting the palm over the bridge.

#6

I don’t think it has ever been binary, but I do think there is more than one way to achieve it, and sometimes the adjustment is really subtle, and sometimes it’s not depending on who you ask and what the scenario is.

I can tell you what my preference is and how I do things, but it may differ a bit from how others attack it.

You could be very right that to some it’s a very obvious thing or rather so automatic and ingrained in their playing that it’s not something they consciously keep track of,

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#7

Thank you for your reply.

Did you mean sometimes it IS depending on who you aks and what the scenario is?

Please tell me your approach! I am actually really struggling with this. I´d like to know what the different approaches are.

#8

I would say all three examples are on the bridge. With the cave if needed.

So from what I understand of your post, you are correct. There is an inbetween right near the edge of the bridge and strings that all players are playing around, that sweet spot.

If I’m misunderstanding, I’d need a much shorter question, as reading this gets confusing and I’m not 100% on what you’re asking. What you did in your video tho, was perfect, a space where you can mute and open up.

That area between the bridge n strings is a great spot to anchor your palm. You can do both open n muted.

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#9

Yes and No. I meant to imply it could be either a very subtle move/adjustment, or a more overt one depending on how the individual player came about incorporating it.

It’s not too, too different from what you are outlining but let me see if I can be more exact and possibly attempt to show it as well as explain. There are some finer details when it comes to the high strings.

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#10

Thank you very much for the video! Even I myself find this post that I created confusing. :sweat_smile:

My initial problem is that I´m struggling with USX, and I think I tried to “mainly” adjust the escape stroke via the angle of the slant, while imagining picking in a “straight line”.
The problem with this is that a lot of times, I would rotate and flex the wrist too much, so that I would dampen the strings at that spot Petrucci describes as “the cave”. I want to be able to play with the palm on the strings, while “keeping the cave open”, if you will.

I experimented a little bit with the “smiley face picking motion” and I realized that I don´t need that much of a slant if I engage the blended movement of forearm and wrist more. The idea of “playing in a straight line” as opposed to a slight, shallow curve is one of the technical culprits here.

That would be great!

#11

So just for context; is this something you are trying to pick up or is this the escape you naturally gravitate towards?

So I think that the idea of maintaining a strict diagonal trajectory to maintain an escape (in this case at least) may be a little unnecessary. I personally feel it’s is a little more dynamic that that, and most people don’t really use rigid enough movements to really facilitate this. I know some content may show this, but I think the purpose is more to illustrate the point, than to goad anyone into a rigid form. It can be much more nuanced.

I’ll try to do some work on that this weekend hopefully.

#12

Yes, it is my natural form, except for the three highest strings.

The supinated form is my natural form when I play on the lower strings, up to the g string, and it feels natural for me to play it with my hand on the strings, so that the strings are muted.

I noticed that I´d change my hand positioning for the three high strings (starting on the g string, which I can play well with a pronated as well as a supinated placement) and I tend to play them with a pronated wrist, so that the downstrokes escape.
The change from supinated to pronated was never intended, I just noticed that instead of “tracking” the strings properly (keeping the supinated position and moving the whole apparatus), I´d… do that change.

I´d like to be able to play the high strings with both hand placements. I actually prefer the USX escape version because it gives me more preferable muting capabilities together with the fretting hand.

I totally agree and I think my brain latched on to this idea of “playing in a straight line” in an unfortunate way. Right now I am seriously wondering whether any guitar player actually does that, except for maybe a trapped pick stroke where one intentionally tries to get rid of any kind of curvature of the pick stroke.

#13

OP, have you tried anchoring your pinky and/or ring finger near the volume knob? Some players do the wrist anchor (which is what Troy does, right?) but many do the pinky anchoring, especially for USX.

Assuming we’re talking about fast alternate picking, I mostly anchor the ring finger, and the only time I wrist anchor is DSX on the low strings. The ring or pinky anchor creates a fulcrum with which to raise/lower the palm for muted/non muted, both USX and DSX. But obviously some players shred with wrist anchoring only.

I find that with pinky anchoring, USX is easier with more of a trigger grip as opposed to your grip in your video, so index finger rolled up even more, but YMMV.

The sliding the hand fore/aft over the bridge is completely foreign to me but Rusty Cooley and Chuck Schuldiner do that and shred.

#14

WhammyStarScream did a video of what you are describing here. See the 8th post from above.
Yes, I have tried that and I am able to do that. I think it´s a comfortable hand posture.

The reason I want to be able to do USX with the lower part of the palm on the guitar is because I believe I´ll eventually need that for TWPS in the style of Anton Oparin, and also because John Petrucci might be doing it like that. I might be mistaken about both though.

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