Great shot of Dallas! Karl, still unclear what his rhythm technique but he looks like he’d be elbow.
@Troy do you think having the wrist consistently in the flexed position Dallas does is a component of getting USX (or at least a flat enough pick path to get a clean upstroke escape, if not true USX) with RDT?
This thread has reminded me that I’m about as METAL!! as a daffodil.
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To each their own, but I’m right there with you. I respect the talent and athletic nature of the music, and appreciate how lots of people identify with the aggression whether just for plain old fun or even an outlet. That screaming though…lol!
I was in a pretty aggressive band for 7 years. Started as hard rock but slowly got more and more metal. I don’t think we ever got to “METAL!!” level, but we were probably at “metal!” (lowercase, single “!”). That experience actually made me less fond of the genre. I’ll still rock out to Metallica, Killswitch Engage and Avenged Sevenfold every now and then, but once that screaming starts…ug.
I get that wrong about half the time still. I know to look for that “wiggle” but sometimes I think I’m seeing it when it’s not there. Or maybe it’s the shadow changing on the arm from the flex/ext that fakes me out or something. I can see it’s wrist here, but I have the benefit of seeing Troy say it’s wrist lol! I may have thought forearm wrist too.
I thought this was a wrist forearm blend and in another thread asked Troy about it and he said this was RDT. Again, I can see that now
I probably shouldn’t have posted that here since he’s only doing 16ths at 195bpm lol
Lots of USX happening in the above Igor clip (though a few notes don’t quite work out and I can’t figuring out if he’s swiping or doing pick stroke displacement).
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I have nothing but respect for the METAL!! players being discussed in this thread, there’s some very impressive skills on display in the videos posted. It just isn’t me.
On topic, I think that some incidental elbow or forearm movement is likely inevitable. The carpi muscles of the forearm attach to the upper arm and have secondary function in forearm rotation and elbow movement. Activating the same muscles in different setups will likely result in a different pattern of incidental movements.
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USX can be done from any RDT capable position. I can do it from the one I use in the lesson. If you use a Joscho-style arm position where the palm is totally face down you can get USX that way as well. But you won’t have muting.
The only two that I ever got into are Scar Symmetry because with that band at least you get a variety of vocal flavor, and Devildriver because at that time I was a little poot head.
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I have a weird relationship with METAL!! I grew up on it, I made a living doing it and I still have a soft spot for it. But I rarely listen to it anymore.
Here I go again…… sorry lol
There’s an aspect of getting older and your tastes changing, and that’s certainly a part of it. But I think the emotive elements are what makes me not visit much anymore. Not how you would think, though. Music is an art form and if art is supposed to be about trying to get an emotion out into the world, Anger is the one that hardest to find in music. METAL!! by nature is aggressive but anger isn’t really in there as much as it seems. It does with the “feeling what you play” vs “playing what you feel”. It may be played angrily, but that doesn’t mean it was written angrily and even if it was, that doesn’t mean it was performed angrily. Riffs and songs go through a lot before they’re finished and some of that gets lost. It’s the nature of the thing.
I don’t “feel” the anger coming across in most METAL!! coming out now and looking back, not as much as I thought was there back in the day. Insanely aggressive, absolutely. But not so much ANGRY!! Vocalist can tap into it, but instrument players, not so much. When the emotional is what I want to hear, I want it pure. Aside from Converge and Nails, and quite a few of the things that Kurt Ballou has recorded, pure anger it hard to find.
It’s a lot about tension and release. It’s why I never got into “nu metal”. That was mostly “release, release, release”, without the build up of tension. Plus, lyrically, that stuff was all complaining without any real solutions. It was a confusing mix from an artistic perspective. I used to call it “mad at my mommy metal”.
This is coming from a total snob and I don’t seek this kind of music out very often. (I’m not crazy you are!!) And there are some amazing bands in the genre. When I want a steak, I want a dry-aged, grass-fed, local-butcher ribeye. But I’ll gladly take a burger!
The only metal bands I like, are metal bands that don’t sound like metal bands 
Novembre, early Katatonia, Swallow the sun etc etc.
Having said that, I do go to a lot of metal gigs. I’m in awe of the musicianship, especially the drummers!
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I’d forgotten, I actually seen Nile live maybe twenty years back… Was intense to say the least!
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Agreed. The bands where METAL!! or even just metal are ingredients in a much more satisfying dish.
And especially agree with drummers. I was lucky enough to play with my favorite band of all time for awhile and they happened to have my favorite drummer of all time. He’s one of those drummers that’s so good it makes me mad. He’s not flashy or as fast as more well known drummers, but he does things I’ve never seen or heard any other drummer do and hits harder than just about any other drummer I’ve seen.
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Yes, there’s definitely some elbow joint motion when I do this. I’ve explained the humeral attachment thing to a few people who have asked on YT. I think people are generally wary of anything that looks like elbow, even when the elbow component is visually small and the hand motion is super duper obvious.
The more relaxed I get at it, the more I am able to trigger the faster speeds with less elbow involvement. So some of this may just be inexperience / all cylinders firing. I’m not sure if the elbow aspect will completely go away but it’s slight and doesn’t feel like an injury waiting to happen. I don’t think anyone trying to learn this should be too worried about doing / not doing elbow.
I’m curious as to what a well refined version of this does tonally. It seems like it WACKS the strings much harder than other motions. Sort of like how funk guitar sounds so much better when it’s picked harder.
Yes, you can get nice large, comfortable feeling motion with this. There is a lot of variability in the attack from attempt to attempt just based on how smoothly you’re doing it. Small variations can make the difference between getting that really even helicopter sound or something less distinct.
Herre’s some 270 from a lesson update yesterday. This is from a brief moment when it was particularly easy. There is also notably less elbow here so I think that aspect will improve with training. You can see there’s still a fair amount of random motion in the trajectory from flatter to more vertical. So the ability to get the helicopter sound on command will probably also improve as that becomes more consistent, with less variation.
Can you hit this speed with any other motion? I’m guessing yes, but I can only hit it with a motion I don’t particularly like lol
No. This is the one “very fast” motion I know how to do. Elbow players regularly hit these speeds, as do dart throwing wrist players. And we’ve seen finger techniques like Danny Joe Carter’s in the 240 range.
Now you don’t have to think of an idea for your next promo clip. Show the meme, cut to the 270bpm crazy helicopter playing and that’s that. You’re welcome 
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I’d be curious what the max finger style speed is. I’d imagine it’s basically as close to a single note ringing out as you can get without actually doing that. We’ll probably know in a few years when Matteo does it lol
Until he plugs into an overdrive pedal and says…
It’s not a tuner!
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This is actually a great idea. We’ll think about it!
We already know what that is:
Let’s try not to derail this thread with fingerstyle questions unless relevant to RDT. If you’d like to discuss, please make a new thread.