I could always do the motion in the air and in the table tap test I hit pretty high on it, but I could never figure out how to put it to the guitar. I actually took some lessons from @Tom_Gilroy who showed me how to work on finding the motion on the instrument and now it’s more reliable than what I did before, which was an ok wrist deviation motion. I don’t know if that counts as putting a lot of time in or just learning how to figure it out by working on it in a deliberate fashion (which, isn’t that what all these tutorials are for, anyway?). Either way, I’ll still try the blade of death exercise and do a proper technique critique.
Hi @Troy Through the novelty of experimenting with the trailing edge RDT form, and some persistent relaxation training I’ve managed to finally get the index finger grip version working quite smoothly at a reasonable speed without tension, but I’m having trouble achieving mixed escape. I have the correct form and pickslant, but the USX changes always seem to swipe, with basically a 0% success rate despite trying many different licks. There doesn’t seem to be enough randomness in the motion to get it working.
What general method would you recommend for achieving mixed escape capability with RDT when the smooth, fast and sloppy route doesn’t work? For clarity, when I say mixed escape I mean specifically a primary DSX system, with USX capability through altering the wrist motion trajectory from the same unified form.
I’ve thought of two preemptive methods that might have merit which I think might help to get mixed escape working eventually and I’d be interested to hear if you think they’re worth trying:
I’ve had marginal success with trying the classic “two way pickslantling” method you used to use; that is, flip flopping between degrees of supination to access two slightly different RDT forms to achieve both escapes. For clarity this is NOT a forearm helper motion that I’m talking about, it’s intentionally switching your form by a few degrees as required for the line to allow upstrokes to escape, then returning to baseline neutral pickslant DSX form. I can kind of get this working a little bit at speeds like 140-150bpm, but when I go into shreddy tempos it falls apart and becomes a swipey mess since I can’t consciously control the slants at those speeds, but maybe if I push the tempo and embrace the randomness I can get it working. I was thinking maybe getting this method down first would be a useful segue into later learning the more static mixed escape form without needing the constant flip-flopping form changes since it will at least familiarise my brain with the concept of mixing escapes through mixing wrist trajectories?
Another method would maybe be trying to learn continuous DBX technique first, through rolls and 1NPS arpeggios. From there I’d assume it would be fairly easy to transition into the typical mixed escape method of primary DSX + occasional USX using a different wrist trajectory, right? From my initial attempts I feel like I’m not too far off from this and might be able to get rolls working if I put some effort in. So maybe this method would work to get mixed escape working eventually?
Given that just gunning it on mixed escape lines results in the USX portions very consistently being swiped, do you think either of these methods might help in being able to achieve mixed escape ability down the road, and if so which one should I put the time into? (Sorry for the long post)
Happy to take a look at what is going on with the techniques you’re describing, but I’d need video for that. Just make a TC and include a good tremolo, and some phrases that are really working, and at least one that isn’t. Please plug in so we can get a sense of tone, attack, noise control, etc.
Otherwise:
I don’t know if your platform videos are up to date but, I just re-watched those and there’s a bunch of really nice stuff in there that looks to me like the beginnings of things. But I can’t tell if any of those are at the point where you can play through whole tunes.
If not, that’s what I’d recommend doing. Get at least one technique to the point where you can do a whole song, plugged in, where you don’t have to think about the technique at all. It can be a ‘boring’ single escape motion of any kind, that’s fine. I mean, look at Andy James. Few players sound better!
I say this because it’s easy to get stuck in limbo where you’re halfway with all techniques and no music ever gets made. Plus, as far as learning new techniques, it helps to be in a totally habitual state with at least one of playing style.
Thanks for responding. Those videos aren’t up to date any more thankfully. The motion back then kind of worked to some degree, but was full of tension and unsustainable, but experimenting with trailing edge RDT and then going back to index finger grip finally made it click, so now I can finally say I have a properly working, smooth and tensionless DSX wrist motion so I’ve got step one down. It’s basically identical to the index finger form you use in your RDT tutorials, just with slightly less supination.
Basically what happens is when I try to play mixed escape lines the DSX parts escape fine, but the USX portions always swipe. My hand seems to just stick brazenly to the DSX pathway and bruteforce its way through the USX parts. There doesn’t seem to be enough/any randomness to it, which is what you want when learning an unfamiliar motor pattern obviously, so in order to artificially mix things up, I was wondering if learning continuous double escape or the flip flop form method first, then coming back to try the typical mixed escape method again might be a good method to provide my brain with enough data points to get the mixed escape stuff working.
Since I seem to potentially be on the cusp of something with continuous DBX rolls judging by my recent attempts, and maybe might be able to get somewhere if I try to do the flip flop thing, do you think these are useful pathways to eventually achieve the more typical unified form mixed escape ability?
Without video I really can’t comment on what you’re doing and whether it would be helpful to keep doing that. Not trying be evasive! I just know that I’m no good at guessing from textual descriptions. If you’d like to make a TC, of course, happy to take a look! If you go that route, definitely show us the new motion that you like, preferably plugged in on phrases that are working — that would be awesome.
That’s fair enough; text isn’t much to go by. I think I’ll hold off on a technique critique until I’ve put a lot more time into it in as it’s still a fairly recent endeavour.
Edit: By the way, sorry, didn’t mean to derail the thread into a mini-technique critique request, I more so intended it as a general question of whether these would potentially serve as supplementary back-routes to get fully fledged mixed escape RDT working.
Another great user-submitted example. This player tagged us on Instagram. I dropped it into Final Cut and lined it up with a click — he’s going 260 sixteenths here. Sounds amazing!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CzNuy9xyz9F/
I love how people are just waking up with super powers they didn’t realize they had.
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I’ve been speaking with Matt Wallet who posted the earlier 260 clip. He found some old video of his downstrokes technique which appeared very rdt-like, so we had him film an update with a more down-the-strings perspective. Sure enough, the rdt-ness of this is super obvious:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cz-z0ikyGsn/
This is a good example of the fact that whether you’re doing upstrokes or downstrokes, the faster you go, the more the motion will begin to approximate the linear back and forth motion of the rdt alternate picking motion in the same plane. So this basically looks like DSX alternate picking — just very vertical due to the arm position.
It’s also a good illustration of why downstrokes are possible from this posture with an index grip, but not pure alternate. Trying to come back through the strings like this would garage spike, so trailing edge is needed if that’s what you want.
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That’s the wildest angle I’ve ever seen!!
Hi everyone I think this is my first post here even though I’ve been a long time lurker. I am the Matt Wallet guy from Troys last couple of posts in this thread.
I started working on the tall mouse form again and am getting a lot more control with the technique. As I am a metal player I see this as a very useful tremolo technique although my left hand is going to need to do alot of work to use it for anything other than trem picking. I’m starting to hit around 300bpm with it, both in Up stroke only and with Alternate which is a good 80bpm fater than any tremolo I ever did before being introduced to this technique.
Here’s a rough take of some 300bpm bursts. I play with a 150bpm drum beat as its easier to follow.
Also on this topic, I’m not sure if anyone’s shared this before but it didn’t look like it from what I could see. If you skip to 2:10 on this video Mike Mangini does a table tap test of 360bpm! So potentially he might be able to translate that to a 360bpm tremolo. It’s interesting to see that it might be possible.
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Awesome, thanks Matt for the update here!
Rough back of the envelope, I think the upstroke speed here is more in the ballpark of 250 or so. I’m just going by the motions and they sound they are making, not the click. I could be off by 10bpm either way just a rough estimate based on a metronome on my phone.
Does the discrepancy matter? No. As a general reference, 300 is very, very fast for eighth note down/up picking. If you just set up an 8th note midi track at that speed you’ll hear this. It sounds like a fast bluegrass alternate picking speed. Whereas the tapping in this clip is a bit slower than that and still reads somewhere in the mid 200s. Still a terrifying speed, to be sure.
The real money with these techniques is actually being able to use them in musical situations, especially with synchronized fretting that actually sounds like something. This is why people freak out about Shawn Lane. It’s not hard to find people who can pick faster than what you hear in his playing. It’s much rarer to find people can actually play coordinated lines at that speed. Not because it’s “hard” per se. If you can do the picking you can do the fretting. It’s mainly because people don’t know how. It’s hard enough to know these picking motions exist, then to know they have an escape, then to know how hand sync works, and so on. It’s just too many things and most people don’t figure that out.
Your alternate picking clip was super good — very smooth-sounding, and in a similar 250-260 ballpark. If I were you I’d work on doing some simple phrases with that prodigious efficiency and see if you can get simple lines happening. This is where four-finger shapes like 1234 and 4321 can provide a lot of economy and make things easier. These don’t have to be “chromatic” sounding — they can sound plenty flavorful when played over cool chords if you create shapes where the target tones fall on downbeats. The listener will fill in the blanks against the harmony in the track, whatever it may be.
Nice work here — tons of potential!
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Excellent, Mike is great! Had no idea he was doing the pick tapping thing, I swear I didn’t crib this from him. But proud to know I’m following in worthy footsteps.
One thing, that’s dart thrower wrist, not reverse dart. This is how I think Shawn Lane’s technique worked, with trailing edge grip, to get USX. Not so extremely vertical as Mike does it though. Not sure if he could really transate that into a functional picking motion coming straight down like that with DT motion, which is why flatter DT (Lane, John Taylor) and RDT seem to be more common on guitar.
FYI another great drum reference for Mangini speed is Riccardo Merlini. He gives a very simple hands-on description of how the motion works and how he figured out:
It’s not immediately clear if it’s reverse dart but it could be one of the two — dart or reverse, based on his “in the air” demonstration. He explains it as wrist and not finger-related but then appears to have finger motion in some of the clips — not really clear! These things are tricky.
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I don’t follow drummers, but the guy who played drums in my band was SUPER into the technical aspect and I remember him telling me Mangini had the record for fastest single strokes (this was YEARS ago). And I remembered Tom Gilroy posting about how drummers make a DT motion with their overhand grip. It made me wonder if that’s what Mike was doing in that video. Guess I wondered correctly!
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