The biggest eye opener so far - Racing the Devil video

Playing Technique
#1

Since my very first days on this community, experienced members and Troy analysed my playing as “downstroke escape, kinda like Al Di Meola and Andy Wood”, but unfortunately I wasn’t familiar enough with the terms and process of finding how that works for me.

This morning, I saw Troy’s new video on YT about Al and it just clicked. This is the EXACT motion I use when playing at my fastest. Shocker, despite having that info from Troy himself close to a year ago haha.

Something was different though. I attribute that to the change in terminology, everything just seemed way simpler with Troy’s current way of teaching it, to what it was a year ago. Yes, I had the info, but I didn’t know what to do with it, how to use it to my advantage and how to make it even better.

The main takeaway from the video for me is trying to start licks on an upstroke. Despite being a typical case of this motion, starting on an upstroke just seems alien to me. Maybe this is one of the reasons I’m a bit stuck in my technique lately. I’ll start practicing that and see if it clicks with me.

Thank you for your work Troy and crew!

4 Likes
#2

Great to hear @BillHoudini :smiley:

Try them upstrokes for sure, and (as usual) feel free to drop a video in technique critique if you want us to have a look :slight_smile:

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#3

I definitely need to shoot some video samples of my motions. I certainly don’t do the same motion when licks end on a upstroke, but I can’t tell what I do and how I change between them.

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#4

I find two-note per string pentatonics licks really quite comfortable using this type of motion, starting on an upstroke. Because I’m an idiot, I though, I have always told myself that I MUST also be able to do them with an USX motion starting on a downstroke (like Eric Johnson). I’ve been trying to adapt to this for years and never been able to - it always feels ridiculously awkward. So seeing Andy Wood play these licks and sound great is encouraging - maybe I should just stop trying to force a motion I’m just not comfortable with for these types of sequences.

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#5

I spent more than a year having similar thoughts and banging myself against this mental wall of “I MUST play this like Yngwie, EJ or what have you”. You can play the same notes with different picking patterns, different fingerings, different place on the neck, etc.

The point is to be served from your technique, not serving a benchmark you set yourself, which might not be suitable for you after all. I’m glad I’m not the only one that benefited from this video.

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#6

The best players find work-a-rounds for their best playing! Probably because we all simply just can’t play exactly like each other

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#7

Totally! Andy James is quite open about this: in some interview he mentions that is playing is “a series of workarounds for things I can’t do”… or something like that :slight_smile:

I’ll find the interview and link it later!

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#8

Yeah would love to hear that.

#9

Here it is (Edit: 4:50 is the quote I was thinking of)

2 Likes
#10

ahh yeah i remember this now… Probably worth a revisit! Although kind of a hard pill to swallow when you also have to listen to Rick Graham who can really play anything as good as anybody. Monsters exist from both fields I guess, but I think guitar freedom occurs when your brain accepts it doesn’t matter which one you are hah

#11

I’ve been thinking a lot about my playing ‘career’ lately and this may be my biggest problem. Whenever I’d find something that I couldn’t do well, I’d just try harder and harder thinking some day it would click for me. Practice makes perfect and all that. Ha. Probably not the best attitude, but I often feel like it was wasted time. Knowing what I know now (even though I’m still tying up lots of loose ends)…the days when I get it right, it just feels so easy. I love seeing people on this site in their teens/early 20’s who get Troy & Co.'s good advice early enough to not waste time like I did.

The universe tends to unfold as it should :slight_smile: lol! For whatever reason, I was meant to toil away for year haha! Onwards and upwards!

#12

I am not that much into the whole terminology for some reason because I got to a - what I think - decent level of picking before I learned about cracking the code. But after watching the video a few questions did come up:
I always tried to “imitate” Paul Gilbert because I generally like his playing style and the music he put out (Scarified is a monster…). But I would say that my hand position, although I always thought it is similar to PG, is more similar to Andy Wood. Which is odd because I always considered myself to use the upstroke escape, just because I didn’t think about any of this but noticed that upstroke escape licks are a lot easier for me.
I practice sometimes on a steel string acoustic guitar, which gives me a better view at the tip of the pick, and tremolo picking on a single string definitely shows that the downstroke escape is there. But for some reason, if I try to do something where I need the downstroke escape (like Gilbert’s descending sixes lick of Technical Difficulties) it is not really working, my hand (or my brain, I don’t really know) seems to struggle with the movement. That may be because I never really practiced licks that required this movement…I will spend some days practicing those and maybe post a short video under the Technique Critique section.

Looking at my right hand in the mirror it looks veeeeery similar to Andy Woods’ position, and my pickstrokes seem to be extremely shallow. Otherwise, an ascending 3NPS scale pattern is no problem, even at 130bpm sextuplets pretty easy at most days, so maybe I use two way pickslanting (or double escape?) at some points? At the moment I am confused.

Edit: I just noticed (in front of a mirror) that, when I play ascending six notes per string, starting with downstroke (which would lead to using/needing the upstroke escape I believe) there is definitely some kind of escaping motion for the string change going where I seem to turn my hand slightly…have to make some videos soon I believe…