Successful transition to USX from DSX

Playing Technique
#21

I’ve admittedly devoted way too much time to learning motions, as opposed to just leaning into my strength. But it’s fun for me. Some people enjoy sitting next to the water waiting for fish to bite and that’s their hobby. Fine :slight_smile:

I think what happens is that using a drastically different form than what we’re used to, it utilizes a muscle combo we’ve probably never tapped into before. Where we go from there…mileage may vary. From my own experience, I’d say that my sensory perception is just pure $h1+ … so often what I think I’m doing differs from reality lol So that could be another explanation of the morphing phenomenon

I do think that the “drastically different” approach has its merits though. Especially because if someone wants a motion that’s similar to their existing technique – for example, an elbow player wanting wrist based RDT – the chain is so similar that familiarity can take over. Hard to dial out that elbow since its so easily accessed from the same posture as something like McLaughlin style RDT. Trying some totally different can get us far enough away from the rote motions that it encourages learning the new thing.

In other news, why we tend to envy motions we don’t have should be a minor branch of psychology lol

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#22

@siisx Thank you for posting this! I’m actually on the same journey as you, although you are much further along than I am! I’ve had so much difficulty getting myself to go from a flexed floating form to a palming the bridge form, but recently it’s been clicking little by little.

I’m curious how much time a day you spent working on this plus slow vs medium vs fast playing to get the palm to sit on the bridge without wanting to pop back up. Sometimes I just feel like saying “screw it” and go back into the more flexed / gypsy style, but playing metal, I do want to be able to do more than just open tremolo on the low strings at my top speeds.

#23

Hard to say, my practice time in total was anywhere from 4-6 hours per day on the weekends and holidays and more like 2 hours on weekdays. But I didn’t only practice usx, I would mix it in with my dsx and fingerpicking practice. I did slow and fast practice, but didn’t really keep track of time. Whenever I got tired or just felt it wasn’t clicking anymore I would give up and practice other stuff. A lot of time went into rearranging my dsx licks into usx so I could practice them.

Somedays for a few minutes or seconds, the motion fell into place and I could do it, then after a while I would lose the ability entirely. Troy has mentioned this as being part of the process.

Around September last year I became very frustrated and started putting less and less time into it, until stopping completely. On December I picked it up again and it was there. So, this still feels very new to me, some days it’s faster and more efficient, others it’s stickier :stuck_out_tongue: But I’ m very happy I always have access to more than 90% of my ability, even on my worst days.

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#24

That’s definitely encouraging, since it sounds similar to how my progress has gone so far. I’ve only been seriously working on this since around July or so, so I guess I just need to keep plugging away and be patient. As I mentioned my biggest challenge is being able to do the motion while anchoring on the bridge and palm muting, but it also sounds like this is normal to get the floating flexed wrist form first.

#25

After further investigation, I think the issue is not keeping the sweep in time, it’s restarting the motion in time. In other words, my tremolo motion is very solid - up, down, up, down, however it feels like after the rest stroke (down, down) the motion was interrupted and getting smooth is the issue. Not really expecting an answer to the issue, just wanted to document what I meant.

#26

Great playing; sounds fantastic. How did you manage to get ascending economy picking working smoothly? Did it come easily to you or was it a while before you got it working smoothly?

I went through basically the exact same process as you where I had to use the flexed gypsy form initially to learn USX as a DSX player, then later touching my hand to the bridge became possible(though slower and less comfortable than the flexed form).

I’m pretty happy with the alternate picking speed and fluency now, but I’m struggling to get economy picking working, which is the last USX hurdle I have to overcome, especially with scalar lines across many strings. I usually end up either missing lots of notes, or not sounding the notes clearly. I can sort of brute force 2 string sweep arpeggios and eric johnson fives with sloppy timing and accuracy though, but nothing over 3+ strings seems to work at all.

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#27

I could do the down-down-up Yngwie type two string arpeggio fairly early on with good accuracy at various speeds. Same with the Eric Johnson descending fives. Can’ t really say why, all I know is that I tried to dig in as much as possible with the rest stroke and allow the resistance of the next string to bring the entire hand to a stop. Also practiced most of my time unplugged, though this has it’ s own set of disadvantages.

That’ s all really. I think that by focusing on two string arpeggios and pentatonic chunks that involved few number of notes per string while taking advantage of the d-d-u motion helped a lot. When I could finally play entire scales there were very few accidental speed ups on the sweep. There are still some speeds where it’ s tougher to control though, mainly in the 140-150 range.