This is what I had noticed as well, keep us posted if you keep up with this technique if you notice the slower speed much easier to fire off with zero tension as well as if the coordination and stability become much clearer.
This is what I struggle with on the twitch turn motion, I don’t really do it all that often. I just couldn’t see anything gaining much from doing it often. So I don’t fire it up all that much these days. But if I gotta kinda tense force that twitch motion maybe I should try to work on it for a few weeks to see if it builds up anything when doing a more relaxed spastic motion of it.
Do you think that when you force the speed higher it is maybe working on stabilizer muscles that help with coordination and mental awareness of the motion?
Is it possible that it’s compensatory tension due to me reaching my physical limit with the wrist joint? Taking the RDT index finger grip form for example, is it possible that the maximum speed my wrist can physically move along that particular wrist trajectory happens to be around 180bpm, and beyond that point my body is forced to engage other compensatory joints and muscles like elbow to push beyond this (possibly genetic?) speed ceiling? There are lots of people that engage elbow after a certain speed to get to hyperspeeds, so maybe i just have a particularly low maximum wrist speed inherently along certain trajectories? When deliberately trying elbow motion, I can’t really get it working right without bicep fatigue and tension, so it makes sense that it would feel unpleasant once it kicks in as a compensatory mechanism.
I can see how with a forearm technique like the EVH tremolo, you’d simply reach a limit and that’s that, because other joints and muscles like elbow physically cannot interfere to assist beyond that point.
On the other hand you could very well could be right that it’s just a relaxation problem and that I’ve somehow ingrained a propensity towards tension over the years, which is certainly possible given I played for years with a stringhopping technique due to the “start slow and build up” dogma I was exposed to from day one.
Probably not. When people are good at elbow motion, there is no unpleasant feeling of tension like you’re describing. It’s really smooth and fast. It’s very cool to watch it go. I know this because my partner Reyenne is good at elbow. I’ve posted clips of this before:
I’ve seen her do this as fast as 270-280, and one time it was on mandolin, where the strings are doubled!
By comparison, I can’t do elbow at all. When I try, it feels the same as you. Just contraction, but not speed. Does that mean I have reached my genetic limit for elbow? At this point I highly doubt it. I just think I don’t know how to do elbow.
To bring this back on topic, notice that with enough experimentation with these reverse dart motions, you got a large immediate speed boost. Who knows what more training will bring!
Edit:
Also, another thing I can mention which is relevant to what you’re describing. While you do tend to see players like John McLaughlin reaching 220 / 230 / 240 range with the “small mouse” motion, that range with that motion is not that common. And I really can’t think of anyone who does 250 / 260 / 270 with that motion. They may be out there, but I can’t think of anyone. So my guess is this motion is not as fast, and getting those faster speeds requires more specific form and is harder to figure out.
Personally, I could never do small mouse faster than about 200 or so. And it wasn’t a super comfortable 200 where you felt you could do it forever either. I could play complicated things with it — there was just a speed limit. It was only after learning to do the trailing edge tall mouse, feeling what that feels like, and then trying to mimic that using the index finger grip, that I was able to do it faster.
This was also after experimenting with the general form to make sure I was getting the most supination I could get while still having an index finger grip. Note that as of this week we also have an updated set of instructions for this to make certain things clearer. I do some things with the grip which are not obvious, even from Magnet view, without explanation.
As a result I have now been able to get the index one up to 230 or so, give or take. And when I reach that speed it is specifically a DSX motion, moving mainly along that axis, because that’s what feels easiest. That said, it still doesn’t feel as easy as the tall mouse motions.
So this is why I’m saying, this complaint that the Andy Wood / small mouse motion is slow is much more likely to track with the way you are doing it. If you’re not using the right form, and moving along the right axis, while also not firing up unrelated muscles (“tension”), then that’s a very good explanation for why you might not be getting maximum results.
Conversely, it doesn’t sound super plausible that you would have a genetic limit that somehow only reveals itself with that specific motion and not other wrist motions, even though it’s the same joint, powered by the same set of muscles.
If you have to hunt for it, don’t worry about it, but if you know off the top of your head, what tunes did JM get that fast in? I’ve only casually listened to his stuff and was of course always blown away (not just the speed, his overall playing in general, note choice expression, etc…MONSTER). I wasn’t clocking it and he always sounded “fast” but I’d have suspected he lived more in the 180 - 200 range. There’s this weird garbly/crunchy sound that I associate with how I hear Rusty Cooley’s playing when I go “ok…this is REALLY fast stuff” and that’s the playing that’s in that range you mentioned that’s 220 - 240. I’d love to check out some JM in that range.
I think I need to watch the whole wrist section again. There have been a lot of updates. and BTW one of my favorite site updates you’ve done is that feature where you are displaying our “watched video progress”. It makes it so easy to see what we’ve viewed and what we haven’t, easily spotting the “new” stuff like this.
I’ll try to find some particularly freaky stuff later, but you can check around for Guitar Trio (Di Meola, McLaughlin, De Lucia) live footage from '80-'81. That’s like prime McLaughlin speed.
@joebegly check this out. Just in the first 35 seconds or so he has parts where he’s hitting around 16ths @ 230bpm by my count. Beautiful stuff, I love this era.
That’s the show I was thinking of! We’ve used clips of this in some older lessons. I don’t remember the exact example but the whole thing is blazing. And especially, considering the fingerings he’s using have a lot of awkward finger reuse, it’s stupid fast. The picking side is super optimized, of course — it’s heavily evens.
Jesus… I’ve always been impressed by him on a strictly musical level, and honestly never heard much truly blazing things from him. I was wondering why he was always so lauded for his speed and… yeah… My bad, Mr. Laughlin…. Sorry, lol
To give my fretting hand some rest, I’ve been goofing with this motion a bit and it’s… Interesting… It’s easy to go really fast the very first time you try it and, the more interesting aspect, it sounds better on the lower strings. I haven’t tried much fretting with it, and damn sure not any traveling, but I like that it’s sounds almost… Sharper? If that makes sense. Maybe, more… intentional? I don’t know the exact word for what I mean, but I dig the tone lol
Check out some classic early 70s Mahavishnu Orchestra live stuff. He’s a monster. He and Al Di Meola were playing at speeds in the 70s no rock/metal player had even dreamed of.
Forgive me if this has already been asked and answered… But @Troy —at what angle is your pick crossing the strings, i.e. parallel to the pickups or angled in one direction or the other?
Al Di is one I heard plenty about but not JM. I did get into his Orchestra a bit in the early 2k’s but the whole thing was crazy so I never focused on just the guitar. The more I heard of him, the more I was intrigued but I never gave him the attention he deserved. I shall be rectifying that post haste, lol
If I understand what you’re asking, you want to know, when you look at me playing from audience perspective, which path does the pick trace relative to the guitar body?
The wrist moves relative to the arm, not the guitar. If you can do a motion fast in the joint motion test or in the air, then that’s the wrist motion you want to make on the instrument. You don’t change it to try to make it follow a certain path against the guitar body.
Obviously, that path will appear different to the observer based on your approach angle (low strap, high strap, etc.). But it should not actually be a different wrist motion. It should always be the same — the fast easy one.
Let me know if I’m understanding your question, and if I’m answering it!
Actually this time I do want to know the angle that the pick is crossing the string….I’m trying to find the sweet spot where it doesn’t snag. I know that there are other elements of geometry at play as well, and ultimately I’ll know the right spot when I feel it…but for now I’m just trying to start by copying what you’re doing as closely as possible to get me in the ballpark. I have a feeling that the path needs to be diagonal but I just can’t tell from the video.
The latest updates for the RDT motion tutorial are fantastic, so I recommend anyone who hasn’t looked at it in a bit to check it out again. It’s extremely well thought out in detailing the acquisition, and honing, of the technique, in part because this is a relatively-new technique for Troy himself, I’d say. There’s lots of details that might have been overlooked had he been using it for thirty years or whatever. It’s all very cool.
There is no single answer to this! Especially in your case. Because…
If I remember correctly, after a lot of experimentation, the best motion you stumbled across — by a wide margin in terms of performance — is the one Dallas Toler-Wade is doing here at the 50-second mark:
It’s cool to see someone do this out there in the wild, because to date I’ve really only seen John Taylor play this way up close. And then of course you stumbled across the same motion. In both cases the performance is awesome.
If this is the technique you’re still experimenting with, we actually don’t have a set of step-by-step instructions for this yet. This would be “Dart Thrower” and we just haven’t started that section yet. Just visually, you can see that the positioning he’s using is pretty radically different from the John McLaughlin / Andy Wood Technique, and for that matter from the “death metal” reverse dart techniques that we profile in our YouTube video, which Dallas himself also uses and is great at. So I wouldn’t try to apply any of the information about positioning in our latest tutorials to this technique.
That said, you were already sounding great with this. So I’d also be wary in changing anything about it in general, because of “fixing what ain’t broke” reasons!
Since the cat’s out of the bag, we have * four * new lessons in this section as of this week, plus some key updates to the other existing lessons. In total it’s 10 lessons and forms a pretty comprehensive sequence for learning the most common reverse dart motions.
The sequence includes detailed, step-by-step instructions for doing the Andy Wood / McLaughlin “small mouse” motions, the middle-finger grip “tall mouse” motion, and the trailing edge extreme speed “tall mouse” motion:
Small mouse + middle finger tutorial:
Trailing edge extreme speed tutorial:
Then we have two new lessons on increasing speed and endurance, with ample slow-motion closeups showing what happens when motions go wrong as I try, and often fail, to reach higher speeds! These subjects have a history of being a little “woo woo”, with questionable analogies to gym training and the like. To cut through that, I demonstrate 220 bpm and 230 bpm McLaughlin motion with the Magnet. In the slow motion footage you can see exactly what is happening and why things can’t go faster:
Finally, we made some key updates to this pick grip chapter based on TC feedback, to make it more obvious exactly what I’m doing to make the arm position as “tall mouse” as possible:
These grip details probably depend on individual finger and hand geometry. So you may not actually need to do any of this at all, based on your initial tests. I discuss this in the lesson.
On a related note, the reverse dart techniques profiled in these lessons all have very specific positioning. So the tips we provide won’t necessarily relate at all to other motions you’re trying to learn — even other wrist motions. Original dart throwers, we’ll get to you eventually!
If you’re still working on basic wrist motion, let us know if any of this is helpful. Feel free to post general questions here, but please don’t outline the whole sequence on the forum — I think we’ve been very generous with the YouTube lesson already.
For more specific feedback on your playing, definitely make a platform TC — we’d love to help!
So, actually I have lots of great news since the last time we “spoke” !
I’m not really using that DT motion so much. But-- finding it and then getting your positive feedback about it totally cracked the code for me! At first I was really frustrated, thinking “how am I going to ever put this weird motion to any practical use?”…but then I just started thinking about how it sounded and how it felt-- and I made those things the #1 focus of any other motion I tried, and what do you know-- I can do all kinds of other motions now. Like you told me, I just needed to feel what ‘fast’ feels like and then I can re-create it in a number of different settings.
For me, I think the biggest thing was learning to look for the smoothest pick attack across the string in both directions. Ironing out the garage spikes. I know that’s CTC 101, but apparently I didn’t take it seriously enough. So that’s why I was asking about your angle of attack for the tapping motion. Because I think I can make my hand move that way, I just need a smooth pathway to do it.
I still use that JT motion sometimes when I just want a quick bit of tremolo that I know I can count on.
But also shortly after I learned that motion, I figured out that I can do the EVH forearm rotational tremolo really well. That joint has always naturally moved really fast for me, but I had never really tried seriously applying it to picking. But it turns out I just needed to work on it for a few days and then I could really get it going fast and smooth, increasingly on-command. Now I’m working on flattening it out so I can rest my hand on the bridge and palm mute ala Nuno. It’s probably becoming a different motion now…I guess it’s technically FW…but the twitchy feeling motion is the common element that’s letting me do it.
I know you advise against trying to master too many different motions at once, but honestly since I’ve been having so much success with experimentation lately, I want to continue searching for the one that’s going to suit me the best.
I can kinda do something similar to your tapping motion, but I still kinda need to be more vertical where I’m actually tapping against the body after hitting the string. It’s kinda like a rest stroke! Yours looks a bit more angled across than straight into the body. I mean I’m less supinated in other words but I wanna try and do what you’re doing because the speed of it is insane!
I was wondering if you feel a lot of contact with the side of your middle finger sliding against the string?
To be honest, I wasn’t before. But I damn sure am now. It’s putting me quite a few steps back on what I initially came here for but I think the benefits might outweigh it…
…and by that I mean specifically these 2 videos. If I’m understanding these videos correctly (I’ll be deliberately vague because of:)
…this is basically the foundation of safe, long-lasting and proper picking technique, right? I have no problem dropping a ton of BPM working on it if that’s the case. I posted a video the other day that was at the tail end of long session and I didn’t realize how much I was slipping. But I did know that I was a bit fatigued. You mentioned in my TC that I use elbow, forearm and finger and these are in the way of what I think these videos are saying, correct?
And speaking of foundation, with what can be achieved in the above videos, would that make DBX, USX and DSX easier? Or at the very least, less… wasteful? It seems like that might be the case. If so, screw it! I’m on board! If I have to ostensibly start from scratch, so be it! My fear of re-injuring myself is constantly on my mind when I play, so I think it’s worth it.
BTW, if I divulged too much, feel free to delete this comment asap!!
