Related to that motion used by Dallas: check out Paul Ryan of Origin. Here’s a previous post where you see him use both extreme wrist angles within a few seconds:
Excellent — yes, the first motion has that dart thrower appearance for sure, which seems to be the less common of the two.
Your recent critique was all about basic motion and my advice is still the same. For the most rapid improvement, I’d still suggesting following that checklist. Your flexed form motion is a reverse dart motion, so if you’re concerned you’re not doing the cool new thing that all the kids want to do, not to worry — you are.
Excellent — as long as you’re making progress. When in doubt, always compare your latest attempts with your earlier clips and make sure the direction you’re headed really is better, and not just newer. Be ruthlessly honest about that because it’s easy to fool yourself. Ask me how I know!
As far as your DT technique, we now have two examples in this thread that look and sound great, on top of what we already know from John Taylor. So it’s not really that unusual of a technique — it’s just a wrist motion, and possibly a pretty common one among faster players. I would see if you can get two-handed playing locked in and synchronized on pattern-based single-string phrases. Any gains you make will benefit all other techniques you want to learn down the line.
Is the wrist motion, in the forearm/wrist blends we see with Malmsteen, or with the flexed Jazz guys RDT?
I’m not sure if I’ve seen anyone who plays in those ways reach the same speed 
If it is RDT, what would likely be slowing it down compared to the Dsx wrist RDT in the latest videos?
Gypsy jazz players - starting each string with a downstroke - sometimes end up playing two consecutive downstrokes (going from a high string to a lower one) very quickly. So there has to be a mechanism which allows them to do this. If it’s RDT, then they can in fact do it very fast.
During the really fast ones i would have to see it under a microscope to see if its more of that knocking tap motion, or if it is still the turning key motion. I would guess it is still turning because they likely start very young, but again I wouldn’t want to say one way or the other. I feel as the tapping is probably faster from an economical ergonomic perspective than a slinging turn key motion. Although for myself the turning motion is much less tension at all compared to my knocking tap motion when I try to do them fast. So it is either a slightly lifted elbow turning key motion, or it is a feather swipe brush diagonal knocking tap non 9 to 3 oclock motion.
Yes I think so. I don’t know what speed differences if any exist between these techniques and why — too many variables. Igor Paspalj appears to have some forearm involved and I think we’ve seen him go in the ballpark of 240 . I’ve seen pure forearm players do tremolo at 250+ but more for tremolo.
Jimmy Rosenberg was probably the all time best at this and his motion looks a little more metal-y than the other players in terms of the fast wristyness of it.
In general, with most of these players, even very famous ones, this is usually a point of failure in the technique. Yes, you can find examples where great players do it and it sounds good. But once the tempo gets up there, most of these players can only do the motion once, i.e. one isolated downstroke, sandwiched in between other strings. And that note is likely to be played more softly, missed entirely, etc.
If nothing else the pure wrist version makes a very large motion where the attack is not compromised even when going fast, and you can do it as many times in a row as you can do alternate picking. There is almost no difference in the motion.
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This definitely is not “there” yet but I gave the new speed-form a go at 222bpm, playing a tremolo for 1.5 measures (13 total down strokes as I hit beat 3 of measure 2 once)
The thing that bugs me the most is how rusty I am at playing to the grid. I have this tendency to start early, sometimes finishing late, sometimes early, occasionally nailing it. Couple of measure below looked like this in the DAW
I’ll try to film some stuff over the weekend. I wanted to go DAW first just to make sure I wasn’t fooling myself and dropping back a subdivision to triplets or something. I’m using the trailing edge 3 finger grip, though I think I get similar results with just a normal 2 finger trailing edge grip. Gotta say, so far, I can’t imagine going much fast than this. But, it’s new. We’ll see what happens.
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I’ve been messing with this, too, and it’s a little easier for me to stay in time if I add something with the left hand, instead of just doing a single note tremolo, even just something like D C B C over and over again.
But even if you don’t want to do that and prefer to keep with tremolo, you could try starting a hair late on purpose for a bit - that might even cause you to start on time. lol
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Lol I notice the more of it I do, the closer to starting on time I get. And that’s been a historical issue for me in general (I’ve done a LOT of recording). I stopped caring and started slicing and nudging a LONG time ago haha!
Nothing but respect for Kevin Heiderich
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Is the timing coming from timing or is it because you’re trying to keep up with the tempo? Everyone will be off a little here and there. But if you find that you start early and finish late, it’s usually because you’re lagging.
When this happens I find that it’s usually because I’m just not doing the motion well enough. It’s not a timing issue, per se, it’s because I can’t hit the speed. When the motion feels fast and easy, then I don’t lag any more. i.e. You might still have timing issues, but you’re more likely to start early and finish early, or start early and finish on time. Or start late and finish late. The motion is not struggling to reach the speed.
In general, for the “death metal” version of the motion, I don’t have lag issues until I get to 250 or so. If everything is working, 250 doesn’t lag. If it’s not, I’ll have the lag issue. By comparison, I can do 220 with that technique even if it’s poor and feels like I’m trying too hard. That’s why the lagging isn’t as obvious at the slower speeds. I think that just speaks to the general efficiency of the motion.
At very fast speeds like 260-270 the lagging is more obvious. Some of the 260 clips in the lesson were actually me trying to do 270. And some of the 270 clips were actually trying to do 280. They felt very athletic, probably again not doing the motion well enough.
Yep, that all makes sense. I think I should just chalk it up to the first time I’ve tried the motion maybe? What are my chances I’m doing it 100% correct? But it couldn’t be totally incorrect either or I doubt I could even be in the ballpark of the 210+ neighborhood. Maybe!
EDIT: also I was just sort of gunning it. I’m going to give your Primer chapters another watch, guitar in hand, and make sure I’m not doing it wrong.
“Wrong” is a loaded term. There are different versions of this, perhaps with different levels of speed they can achieve. We don’t know 100% for sure what is going on. But there are only so many ways you can hold a pick and move so at some point we just have to try them and see what happens. Even still, this can be confusing and it can be easy to lose sight of what you’re trying to achieve.
With that in mind, we did a new intro for the whole section which is now live:
This came about when I was doing the motion in the air and realized that this is probably something people should see. There are lots of steps in this sequence, with various tricks we’ve come up with to help teach the technique. But at the end of the day, there is one very simple goal and it’s to learn to make the wrist motion I’m making in the air in this video. I thought everyone should see that in case they fall down the rabbit hole.
So this lesson now has some cool POV shots of the wrist moving which I’m hoping will make the objective clearer.
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I see what you mean. BUT, say we’re trying to hit 250 and we can’t. Doesn’t that mean we’re not doing something correct? I’m definitely with you in your theory that this stuff isn’t “freak genetics”, just a matter of unlocking the coordination and motion.
I think I’m gonna make a t-shirt that says “If your wrist can’t go 270, it’s WRONG” and see what type of reaction I get in the grocery stores.
What I mean is, maybe there are slightly different versions of the technique. And maybe there are anatomical reasons for this. So, for example if you choose “small mouse” technique, doing it correctly means getting performance similar to McLaughlin and U. Rajesh, 220-240 approximately, with good endurance. That would be doing the technique “correctly”, if you want to use that term. Instead, if you choose “tall mouse”, you can perhaps expect more speed and endurance. So “correct” for that technique might be a bit different.
I just don’t like the term “correct” though since it implies a fixed way and who knows what that is. Based on what we know so far, I think the simplest thing is to note that there appear to be different ways of doing this, and those ways may have different performance characteristics. So you can try to optimize as much as possible for each, with a rate of diminishing returns above a certain point of optimization.
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I’ve experienced this with DBX. There are some motions that I can get above string hopping speeds, but they have a lower ceiling than something like the Morse setup, or even that new way you showed us to get an RDT based DBX motion with that “adjustment” you explain here:
I see what you mean, because the ones that “work” but have a lower ceiling aren’t necessarily “wrong” (because they are usable), they just aren’t maximally efficient I guess.
Anyway, thanks for all the updates! These chapters are all awesome.
Right. As a few YT commenters have noted, the death metal setup isn’t ideal for hybrid picking because of where it places the fingers. And some people may not be able to get those speeds without trailing edge (possibly), which some people like the sound of and others do not. So that technique might not be optimal for everyone. So it’s worth thinking of some of these various permutations simply as techniques in their own right, and not just “worse” versions of other techniques.
If there was a way to get 270 with with an index grip setup, with that tone, that edge picking, that arm position for hybrid, etc. that would be great. Then you could have whatever reverse dart combination you wanted. So far I haven’t figured out how to do that. It may simply not be possible. Edit: To clarify, dart thrower can get close to this. But I’m just referring to reverse dart since we’re discussing why its variations seem to have different performance.
Just looking at what all these death metal players are doing, I think there’s a reason they all use the form they do. Terrance Hobbs, Dallas Toler-Wade, and John Taylor don’t look typical. But the speeds they reach aren’t typical either. I think we can consider certain musical styles almost like a mass trial and error experiment on how to do certain things on the instrument. Once a genre has been around for long enough, you can guess what the most optimal way is just by looking at the best players in that style.
Great video recommended by YT commenter. This is OL Drake from the band Evile explaining his picking motions. It’s got a lot of stuff we’ve been talking about:
His downstrokes technique is tall mouse DSX, but with a downward pickslant. So he can only use it for downstrokes because of garage spikes. For alternate he switches to three-finger tall mouse, and his motion switches to a very nice-looking DBX.
I love how he presents everything like he has no idea what he’s talking about — and yet does a better job than just about every instructional video made back in the day in terms of showing his actual mechanics. This includes the camera angles, which are great.
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I don’t know anything about him but he’d be a super fun interview (as if you need more stuff to do). Seems like a very cool and funny guy, and as you mentioned, pretty aware of mechanics.
Technique #2 (around 2 min mark) looks like his index DIP joint is almost hyperextended when he starts playing with it. Recently in some of the DBX setups I found one that’s seems just like the Morse setup, but I can do it just pad-to-pad with my thumb and index, so no middle finger needed. It felt really great playing-wise, but I noticed how that joint would hyperextend without thinking about it and after about a week of doing that my index finger started getting pretty sore. So that one’s tossed out. I wonder if some people can just get away with that? Like a hitchhiker thumb except the index can do it?
I’ve got a hitchhiker thumb and I can press pretty hard on it. In fact, back in the day, I played with a trailing edge grip, hitchhiker thumb, pretty pronated. Looked like Shawn Lane, sounded…nothing like Shawn Lane lol!