Tommo's ascending troubles, feedback welcome!

That’s a good question! @troy posted an “elbow DWPS” video on youtube some time ago, but I think he later clarified that it might not have been fully elbow - actually I missed a lot of that discussion so I’m not sure about the details :thinking: . I’ll link it here even though it will put my previous videos to shame :smile::smile::smile:

I don’t know man, If you had better lighting and an arm-hair wig…

EDIT: Ok I totally missed that thread! It looks awesome, but it is inconclusive. Seems like even Troy is not aware of what he is doing exactly. Thx for the heads up!

1 Like

Unless I am mistaken about the way the elbow works, “elbow dwps” is just not possible given the way most people hold a guitar. As to what I’m doing, my best guess is it’s actually forearm. But if you’re asking can the elbow do dwps, the technical answer would have to be “no”.

2 Likes

Hey Troy, thx for chiming in and clearing that up. It is what I thought to, because I could not make it work, no matter how. That’s too bad actually, because my wrist/rotation movements are simply not very fast.

Yeah @troy, @7th11th, @DJ_Ddawg, thanks for clarifying all this. A posteriori it all seems almost obvious, I wonder why I didn’t get it on my own :sweat_smile:

I’d say that, about one year after the creation of this thread, my ascending “troubles” have been finally understood!

At the same time, they’ve been mitigated quite a lot by now! A 130bpm ascending scale would have been science fiction for me a couple of years ago :sunglasses::metal:

2 Likes

Tommo, seriously great progress man. Really fluid and Gilbert-like sound on those runs. Thanks for the inspiration.

3 Likes

Thank you very much @guitarenthusiast! As a next step, I would like to introduce a few more options in terms of palm-muting and add more comfort to my pentatonics playing.

With the default hand position of the above videos (which I called my Mode 2 in other threads) I probably have the best results in terms of 3nps scales / shreddy cliches playing, but I am limited to an unmuted sound and 2nps pentatonics (starting on a downstroke) are not that comfy as you can see at the end of the videos.

So I am now trying to get two-way pickslanting going also with my mode “1”, where palm muting and 2nps pentatonics are much easier. However, in that mode I seem to have a pronounced dwps bias which makes two-way playing more difficult. If/when I get it to work I may post an update :slight_smile:

3 Likes

@tommo

where r u now with the 2nps stuff? Im sort of at the beginning of starting to work on mine at the moment since its lagging way behind my 3nps stuff

1 Like

Thanks for asking :slight_smile:

With 2nps I still find “inside picking” harder for tracking purposes. Here’s a quick video where I do

Ascending inside - feels hard
Descending outside - easy
Ascending outside - easy
Descending inside - a bit harder

1 Like

what about 2 string patterns (Zakk Wyldeish)…do u have any of those up to blazing speeds?

for example any variation similar to this:

G—7–5-------
D----------7–5

Soz for the delay, was boarding a plane! I just had the time to film that penta video before leaving my parents’ house :smiley:

Yes, these 2-string licks are generally a bit easier for me, because they don’t involve a string-tracking challenge. I haven’t practiced them in a while but with a bit of revision I should be able to achieve decent results with both escaped upstroke and downstroke.

In fact, would you recommend any nice solo that uses these licks? Could be a good excuse to get my 2nps stuff back in shape!

EDIT: this is my favourite variation of Wylde-esque patterns:

G—7–5-7-5----
D---------7–5
1 Like

Damn impressive. Playing all 4 variations cleanly at high speeds is not easy. If you master this… you might want to consider playing around with 2nps, 1nps, 2nps, 1nps… stuff. It may end up being easier than you think.

1 Like

haha, its funny because i was going to put that exact lick lol

off the top of my head I can think of 2 solos that have similar ideas

this lick that starts slow at 4:00 and then accelerates. ultra cool

and then this whole bit from like 2:27 to 2:43

1 Like

@tommo

do you find 2nps stuff to feel way different than 3nps stuff? Lately im extremely happy with my 3nps stuff but 2nps just seems so totally different.

Yeah it’s very different! To me, string changes feel easier because you can get away with single-escaped pickstrokes, however string tracking becomes harder as you tend to move from string to string more often.

2 Likes

Replying from the other thread!

In this case I had to read the notes to figure out which one was the “bad” one, since they all look and sound great!

One obvious first observation is that the first repeition, the one you find more difficult, is more of a wrist / forearm thing while the others are more wrist. Also, the first two attempts — the “USX” attempts — all use the flexed orientation and the last two are straight, no flexion/extension. It could be that some of what you perceive has to do with the form and motion differences and not strictly what is going on with the inside/outside nature of the phrase.

Or not. The first two use the flexed orientation and the second one feels easy. So is it the forearm that makes it feel awkward, or is the forearm only there because it feels awkward, and it’s helping to reduce that awkwardness? Causality is tricky!

As per our other discussion, in my case, the introduction of some forearm is what gives me the greater escape angle, and we think that might actually improve the way these licks feel because the motion is no longer moving parallel with the tracking motion. And this fits with what we see when we look at players like Zakk who are really good at these kinds of lines. They all use the more vertical motion (“more pickslanted”, for those reading along). And that may make these kinds of phrases easier.

Possibly!

1 Like

Love the videos Tommo really impressed with those runs!!!

1 Like

You are starting to convince me that it is the second option: perhaps the hand is telling me that it wants to decouple tracking and picking motions. The angles thing in the gipsy/ Wylde style totally makes sense! In fact I recall practicing a 2nps phrase before I knew about your material, and at some point I sort of managed a few speedy reps, looked down and saw what we now call a pronounced DWPS orientation. I remember thinking “uhm… that looks weird, maybe I shouldn’t do it” - luckily I found the CTC series on youtube a few months later!

The good news is that this is something I can now practice more explicitly to hopefully remove yet another obstacle in my picking. The bad news is that if it works I’ll have to agree with you also on the “inside VS outside” stuff. Would that make me a fanboy? :crazy_face:

1 Like

Not at all. This would mean that you were right, i.e. that there is a difference. The trick is that the difference only becomes apparent in certain circumstances. As so often happens when we look deeper at a topic, we learn that it’s just more complicated than we thought, and that common wisdom isn’t so much wrong as overly simplistic, or only correct in certain situations and not others.

1 Like