Such a thing as FW/elbow blend?

Playing Technique
#1

Hey everyone!

Long time since I’ve been actively posting. With the help of fellow forum member @Tom_Gilroy I’ve recently started to cultivate a FW motion (Tom didn’t specifically show me FW, rather the goal was to achieve a USX motion and FW seems to be what I’m naturally doing to access that movement).

My inspiration for developing this stems from a combination of already having developed the ability to play Marty Friendman-style 2-string sweep patterns along with the style of music I play being old school death metal where a lot of the metered fast rhythm happens in groups of four or six. Previously I had developed a kind of fast but spazzy umetered elbow motion, and as I’ve wanted to refine my right hand approach, a USX technique checked all the boxes for a single system to play the lead lines I like playing along with the rhythm parts I want to get tighter with.

Part of my learning process is watching the technique of players that I can spot the FW motion with, and the magnet footage with Marty and Stump, as well as Troy’s FW tutorials really helped.

I’ve noticed though, when watching some of my favorite death metal players that there seems to be a bit of “wiggle” in the elbow as well when they hit their higher tremolo speeds.

This is super noticeable especially in the first video with Dismember’s Robert Sennebäck, about the :35 mark. With Bill Steer in the 2nd video its more subtle, but I see it at around :21 of the intro.

Just so I’m understanding what I’m seeing here is this more of a sympathetic “wiggle” of the upper joints of the arm or is this some amount of the Zakk Wylde elbow creeping in when the speeds get into the 200+ range?

#2

Gonna guess, but is “FW” flexed wrist?

I would say yes. From what I’ve seen and experienced, when you’re getting to the upper limits of speed / difficulty, “higher” joints (elbow and even shoulder to some degree) are going to be moving, even the slightest bit.

#3

Forearm-wrist. I’ve seen that abbreviated as FW on the forum but I should have been more specific.

#4

I think it’s due to it being a live preformance and going for it with agression.
When you get hyped up playing live your technique goes out the window and you just force it to work. Thats where the elbow is overtaking the more delicate picking, it’s agression.

I doubt he would do this in a studio recording session. Notice most of his playing is far more relaxed using wrist rotation and flexion extension on multiple strings, vs the aggressive part of the song thats mostly on one string.

#5

One thing we need less of around here is acronyms and abbreviations lol! Though, in an act of blatant hypocrisy, for a while now I’ve been wanting to coin “trapped” playing as either TSX (trapped escape) or NSX (no escape)

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