Slow with one escape, fast with the other? Then the CTC team wants your footage!

Technique Critique
#11

Here is a quick clip which hopefully demonstrates, i wasn’t going to post as i know its not the best light, frame rate and angle but im at work and quickly edited a vid on my phone, and think ill now be more likely to follow up with a proper video!

First clip is starting on an upstroke, more or less 2nps.
Second clip is starting on a downstroke, i can probably do it a bit faster but am definetly in Tension City if i do so.
I have left a few licks in which are typical of the sort of lines i play using DSX, I think of it as reverse yngwie/Eric Johnson.

Im happy to film properly with more specific examples if you think it will be useful?

Thanks

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#12

That’s awesome playing @Joep36 :open_mouth: \m/

filming -wise this is perfect - only minor issue is that maybe the audio is out of sync?

for our purposes the contrast between the first two example is what we’re looking for. If you have a chance to film a longer USX example that would be great!

EDIT: I mean the exact same USX example, but where you loop it for longer

Thank you!!

#13

@tommo I’ve made a test shot, please let me know if this is something you’re looking for.

2 Likes
#14

Would you believe that’s the first thing I tried, and it’s STILL awkward as hell? :rofl:

2 Likes
#15

This is awesome playing. What you’re calling “USX” isn’t really USX, it’s double escape and looks like the good (i.e. correct/efficient) kind used by Andy Wood and others. This is totally something I would encourage by applying to phrases that don’t have any kind of obvious downstroke-switching organization.

If at some level this motion still feels awkward to you, some trial and error may lead you toward a version of it that feels less so, i.e. by trying to go fast on mixed-escape patterns and until you feel any sense of resistance go away, sloppy or not.

2 Likes
#16

I think this may be the case also in @gabrielthorn’s video. I.e. it doesn’t really look like “badly done USX”, more like “potentially promising double escape”. Further evidence is that we’ve seen Gabriel play the intro to tumeni notes pretty well :slight_smile:

#17

Thanks Troy. I see exactly what you mean there, bit of an oversite on my behalf, i should have just labelled it ‘Starting with a downstroke’.
I will film properly over the next few days in slow mo. I have messed with other motions/escapes before, however i have just found it easier to play licks/lines that escape on downstrokes or utilise upwards sweeps or hammers/pull offs, so i haven’t put much time into the things im not so good at. That being said it would be nice to unlock those tools!

The attempt starting on a downstroke which i labelled ‘dsx’ is far from the fast smooth feeling you describe when talking about various picking motions, so i’ve just asumed it is fundamentally wrong.

I will get some videos to you as soon as i can.

#18

This is probably too close to be useful, but I’m using one of those little tripods with bendy legs wraped around my upper horn to film this so there’s only so much I can do, I’m afraid - I could try breaking out my real camera and manually slowing it down, though, if that might help.

This also came across as full speed when I uploaded it to youtube, not slo-mo, but you can slow it down quite a bit on youtube so hopeflly that works.

The biggest thing jumping out at me, on the opening escaped downstroke section, is how irregular my timing is on the escaped downstroke on the low string, transitioning to an upstroke on the higher string - it’s like a full note longer than any of the other notes and I have no idea why. That motion just feels really awkward to me.

The escaped upstrokes, it looks like I’m going through the higher string, as often as I’m hitting it an bouncing off.

This is actually pretty awful, watching it slowed down. :rofl:

1 Like
#19

Thank you @tommo for checking the video. I think my upstroke escapes are pretty awful, especially when I try to play pentatonic stuff. l’ll have nightmares about 2nps licks forever. :sweat_smile:

1 Like
#20

Hey everyone, so I’ve had a chance to film some slightly longer clips.
This first one is a 2nps pentatonic phrase. Starting with a downstroke, this is pretty much it speed wise, its worth pointing out that it feels pretty awful, quite tense. I’m assuming that this is string hopping as I know the feeling of smooth and this isn’t it lol. At about 40seconds I go into the Yngwie pattern from fire and ice, 12nps before changing string. This is using my default picking, however there is a helper motion when it comes to changing strings. The helper motion isn’t smooth, sometimes it works other times it doesn’t. Also worth noting, if the nps decreases and the help motion needs to be used more often then the speed generally drops and tension sets in.

Next is a similar picking pattern starting with an upstroke

Yngwie Fire and ice starting on Upstroke

I hope these vids are ok, @tommo I’m not sure why the audio would be out of sync, it’s just using the phones mic, so hopefully it is ok, if not ill see what i can do.

Here’s another example of a lick i’m comfortable with using DSX

The last one definetly recorded in 240fps, i thought the rest of them did but watching them back i am unsure.

Let me know your thoughts, Thanks.

3 Likes
#21

@Drew thanks for the extreme closeup :rofl:

To be honest none of the two examples looks like stringhopping to me, and none of the two sounds as bad as you think! In fact I thought that at full speed they both sounded pretty good!

Sure maybe the timing could be improved a little, so I guess that’s good to know :slight_smile: But I don’t think the timing errors are as big as one note duration. I think that may be an artifact of YT’s slow motion mode. I’ve seen cases before where the full speed video sounds evenly aspaced but the 0.25 version sounds all messed up. It’s usually more realiable to check the slo mo in a proper video editor.

@Joep36 thank you very much, the filming on these is fantastic! And no worries about the sync, it’s again reated to YT’s encoding and it can be corrected in an editing software.

DSX is awesome as usual. As @Troy mentioned before your “USX” is really double escape (DBX), and it looks potentially useful. Form the close-up you can see both pickstrokes clearly escaping even without the slow motion. I’d definitely try to apply this to DBX phrases (e.g. bluegrass tunes and stuff) and see what happens.

Related to the last question, I think an interesting question is whether this is efficient double escape (or close to being efficient). The best test for this is to just try and use the motion for some fast 1nps licks (like a banjo roll), and see if you can speed it up without feeling like you are working super hard. If you feel like you have a speed wall around 120bpm 16th notes, with lots of tension / fatigue, it is the typical indication that the motion is inefficient.

In any case thank you so much for filming these! Ironically you are maybe a bit too good at the “other escape” to show the contrast we were looking for, but this is really great footage and I’m pretty sure we can find a use for it at some point :slight_smile:

@gabrielthorn Indeed in your case I’d start these pentatonic thingies on an “Up” and just blaze away :slight_smile: At the minute you don’t have “bad USX”! You have “good DBX”, which is great for many things, but not “mechanically optimized” for 2nps pentatonics. Your situation is similar to Andy Wood (not a bad place to be!): he does not really have a USX motion: he has DSX and DBX. When he plays pentatonics super fast he often ends up starting with an upstroke or adding a pulloff to turn the lick into DSX:

1 Like
#22

I’m starting all the pentatonic stuff with an upstorke these days, definitely better than before. Still feel like I’m handicapped some way, as I picked up the guitar again after all those years to learn Malmsteen and EJ stuff, but that’s life :sweat_smile: I need to learn to accept this for now and enjoy I can do some stuff with DSX. But the demons are still lurking deep down.

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#23

I’m sure that with some clever re-arrangements, pulloffs etc. you can re-arrange almost all YJM. and EJ licks for DSX.

Or in some cases you can modify the lick to sound 90% similar but be DSX. In fast playing usually not all the notes are that important, the less improtant ones can be changed and no one will notice.

Who knows maybe you’ll come up with stuff that is even cooler than the original :slight_smile:

#24

Thanks @tommo, yeh the double escape motion is definetly tense even at speeds around 120, its not mechanically smooth feeling at all and i cannot speed this motion up. I have messed around a fair amount with banjo roll type ideas, ive had a few moments where it feels right, but the speed is still much lower then any single escape motion i have.

I do have an usx motion which is smooth, however when it comes to synching with the left hand even on a single string everything falls apart…i havn’t put loads of time into it so i think theres potential there, i’ve just been focused on building a vocabulary around my dsx.
Heres my Usx trem

Heres attemting 2nps with this form.

Its not there yet, but i think i see potential. The strange thing is i can be in perfect sync using my Dsx on a single string lick, however i can barley sync it using my Usx. One thing ive noticed is the Usx on its own has much less control of timing/tempo.

Thanks again for taking the time to watch these.

2 Likes
#25

Ha, great tremolo @Joep36
Long story short, the two most recent videos use two different motions. And the good USX motion is of course the one in the first video :slight_smile:

Probably the only way forward is to play the lines of the second video at (or close to) the speed of the tremolo video. Then there’s no way the inefficient / more laboured motions can creep in.

1 Like
#26

Gotcha!! Will give it a go in the comming weeks! Cheers @tommo

#27

Huh, that’s interesting… I went back and watched the slo-mo footage off my phone, and sure enough, the timing is a lot more even, still not perfect but not so exaggeratedly bad. Odd, that sort of temporal distortion is new to me.

I’m definitely still lagging a hair on the escaped downstroke as I move over the higher string and then reverse course to catch it with an upstroke, so that’s somrthing to work on (probably metronome/drum track work with a 16th note click), but it’s not nearly so exaggerated as it appeared here.

On the escaped upstroke bit, I’m pretty consistently picking through the higher string, muted, rather than rest stroking into it and stopping, but I’m actually a little less worried about this since this is a motion I basically couldn’t do at all with any sort of speed until a couple weeks ago when I finally sat down with the “test drive different motions” video and how it was supposed to work, mechanically, clicked. So, thanks, CtC! Some woodshedding should clean that up.

And yeah, sorry for the insane closeup. :rofl: I’m in for a Magnet on the Kickstarter campaign and things should improve on that front after that.

#28

To be honest, if the “one” is in time who cares if the notes in between are not exactly evenly spaced? :smiley:

1 Like
#29

Well, serious answer… They’re two very different sounds. There’s a very almost clinical-in-a-good-way “smoothness” and kind of machine-gun-like precision that comes from extremely even alternate picking, whereas less rhythmically precise but still squarely on the 1 picking has kind of a raweness and a raggedness to it that, again, can also be musically appealing. Not taking a side on which is better, like I’d hazard a guess that Lynch’s fastest alternate picking isn’t metronome precice and that’s part of what I love about his playing … but I’d really struggle to get that sort of ultra-precise in the pocket machine-gun-like smoothness out of a fast picked run because my timing isn’t meter-perfect within the beat. And, end of the day it’s probably not the end of the world because I’d say that’s maybe a little more appropriate anyway for the sort of stuff I write (I wear my rough and ragged bluesier influences proudly), but it’d be pretty cool to be able to do both.

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#30

Not sure if this helps, but:

I’m at this point both usx and dsx - when I first starded playing all my tremolo picking was usx and I was wondering why I had difficulties changing strings, then i tried dsx and it clicked for me then, it was prior to seeing CtC.
At this points it doesn’t really matter to me if it’s 2/4nps or 3nps. In fact I can do 3nps scale runs faster that the pop tarts lick.
But then again, I’m not the fastest guy out there.

Back to the video:

image
This thing going indefinitely, a left hand mobility exercise/warmup. It’s most suitable for USX, but - I noticed that I’m slower going to the next string than the rest of the notes on one string.
I don’t really know if that’s relevant to this topic, but better to share just in case.

EDIT:
Now that I read the topic more carefully I see that what I filmed and posted is not that much relevant to you guys, so pardon me for intrusion.

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