Reflections on changing to reverse dart thrower from USX

[Blahfingers]

So, for years I had no idea what motion I was using. I’ve been following CTC for ages and convinced myself I was probably a mostly wrist or maybe forearm player able to ‘two way pick slant’ and even crosspick, because my speeds seemed pretty good. Things seemed a bit inconsistent in how fast and clean I could play day to day, though.

Finally I got around to filming myself- HORROR.

Scale runs 2 720

I was swiping all over the place, hitting wrong strings and doing weird little finger/thumb flexion movements to try to get over the strings.

I think I was muting well enough that I couldn’t clearly hear all the swiping, and I obviously can’t feel what I’m doing!

I put in a TC and it turns out I was playing basically gypsy-style, which obviously wasn’t going to work with mixed escapes and the kinds of things I wanted to play (3NPS) unless I tried to work out planned runs or maybe legato tricks to avoid the wrong escapes.

I decided to reinvent and change to DSX/mixed (basically aiming for the Andy Wood form).

For those thinking of changing technique, it certainly doesn’t happen immediately.

I spent at least a week or so just getting to the point of being able to tremolo and clear the strings consistently.

Getting the correct setup is one thing, but convincing my wrist to move in a ‘reverse dart-thrower’ motion is another. Every time I’d speed up it would revert to USX motions and bury the pick between the strings. I suppose that’s probably what it’s being doing for 20-30 years.

I had to make a conscious effort to retrain to learn that movement, and made a point of just doing the correct wrist movement throughout the day from time to time, even away from the guitar. I think that helped.

The other thing that made this possible was the magnet- I just couldn’t tell what I was doing until I saw it and wouldn’t have known when I was improving (or not).

I’ve also found sorting out the tremolo isn’t enough. Initially, with each new type of lick, even if it was a ‘DSX’ lick, my wrist and arm motion would try to revert to gypsy, even if my anchor points and setup were correct. I had to teach myself to do the correct wrist motion again for each new lick I learned. Sometimes I had to deliberately use large motions at slow speed, maybe to train the motion itself, or maybe so I would notice when I was correctly escaping or doing a rest stroke with the upstroke.

I also found I couldn’t do it as easily standing as sitting, presumably because the angles all change slightly.

After about a month, I think I got to DSX.

DSX 720

I’ve just managed yesterday (I think) to get it to do mixed escapes for 3NPS runs. To do this, I just played a lot of stuff, while consciously maintaining the ‘feel’ of the correct dart-thrower motion, now that I can feel what that is. I actually just played through all the tabs for the Andy Wood clips, which gave me some material to work on. I think the next hurdle once I’m sure I’m doing mixed escapes on scale runs will be cross picking, which I don’t think I’ve cracked yet.

Anyway, thought someone might find some of this useful, and it’s interesting to see there’s now an update to the primer talking about exactly what I’ve just been doing!

[CyborgCutie]

You should look into Yngwie’s system for USX (which also works with DSX), you can always combine your technique with economy picking and a few hammer-ons/pull-offs to clear the strings quite easily. I’m also a DSX player and I usually either play 2 notes and sweep up for 3nps descending or play 2 notes and hammer-on for 3nps ascending. This allows me to have a 30-45 degree diagonal escape motion 95% of the time and clear the strings in a breeze. I have one secondary motion that I use whenever I have to play something like this (which I totally stole from Andy Woods):

You should totally look into incorporating sweeps, economy and hammer-ons/pull-offs into your picking (if you want to) as you get to clear a lot of tricky 4 note patterns pretty easily which means you can go faster easier and while not tiring out.

[Troy]

Excellent feedback! Thanks for posting this. I’m sure this will be helpful to others.

Btw you didn’t really switch from USX to reverse dart — you were already making reverse dart wrist motions before, along with a little forearm. The real issue, as you’re pointing out, is the overall form, where you moved away from the Gypsy form to a form that’s more common to players who only do wrist motion.

Even with the new form, you could still play USX-only lines if you wanted, by making a very small tweak to the form. We talk about this in the new lessons. But because the tweak is small, that form would be much closer to mixed escape form so moving between the two wouldn’t be so night and day any more.

[Blahfingers]

Thanks, yes, I have noticed while playing through the Andy Wood stuff that he frequently uses that sweep when changing from a higher to lower string. I found that a little surprising, because going into it I thought he was all mixed escapes.

In general, I want to avoid having to learn extra ‘tricks’ like sweeps and legato like Yngwie uses. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, obviously, but it just seems additional work.
I’d much rather learn a completely mixed escape style.

[Blahfingers]

Thanks Troy. I had been wondering about this, especially when playing standard box pentatonics. I had wondered whether I should just revert back to gypsy style for those sort of lines but having watched the new primer stuff, maybe I’ll give that a try. I’ve only watched it once but from memory, it would be just supinating slightly more, right?

[Troy]

That’s it, yes, you could do that. And it would be a much smaller tweak than what you were doing prior.

But I wouldn’t worry about that right now. I would just continue to work on what you’ve already working on, which is getting familiar with your new home and just using that one overall form to play everything, no matter what kind of phrase it is. This will generally work for anything that’s alternate picking.

The only phrase that would really force a slightly different posture would be anything with economy. I don’t think you have a choice there but to change the posture a little to get the sweeping to work right for something like an Yngwie phrase or Gypsy line. Other than that, if it’s pure alternate, I wouldn’t even think about it.

[Blahfingers]

Sounds good. While I’m happy I’ve burned in how to do DSX lines, I agree I’d like to make sure I’m using the correct form for other mixed escape lines before making further adjustments.

I only very rarely use economy picking or sweeping, so that isn’t a huge loss for me (funnily, though, I did catch myself using it without conscious thought at times with my old gypsy form)