Trying to USX, but string hopping

Technique Critique
#1

Hi All,

Longtime player, and big fan of the site. I have always struggled with playing cleanly at speed, and have made some progress with the ideas taught on the site. I’m doing a video collab of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing, and am trying to get the intro lead lick, which Neil Schon plays as two notes per string on the B and G strings. Down up on B, down up on G. Simple lick, and perfect for pointing out the flaws in my technique. I’ve recorded this a couple times, and what I seem to be doing is string hopping. As I hit the upstroke on the G string, for example, to transition back to a downstroke on the B string, I do this little hop, where I raise the pick in an arc to bring it back down. It looks like I even miss the upstroke on the B string a lot. I have tried all kinds of picking angles (Troy shows 10% in his USX video, but I feel like I have at least that, and probably more), supinating my wrist more (feels odd), wrist placement on bridge, etc., but no major differences yet.

Here’s the video, and for some reason, the audio is out of sync (I used Shotcut with a GoPro video shot at 120fps), but you can get the idea from the video. How do I stop myself from hopping? Thanks in advance for looking and any constructive advice!

Btw, I’m playing the lick much lower on the neck to keep my left hand out of the way.

#2

Hi JD! Welcome to the forum!

Nice playing! Ok so there is some hopping here as you said. This is what we used to call a one way pickslanting lick. Nowadays we don’t really use the word pickslanting but instead we talk about downstroke and upstroke escape, since the pick escaping the plane of the strings is what really is important. So if I’m not totally incorrect we can call this a one way escaping lick.

Just like you said, this is normally a USX lick but can be played just as well using a DSX if one just invert the pickstrokes. But since your motion isn’t clearly either USX or DSX but a little stringhoppy, this is where the problem arises.

What you need to do is to first find a good fast alternating picking motion on one string, aka tremolo picking. Chances are you already have one if you just go for it. The idea is to use that motion for your fast picking licks. And since our fastest picking is often one way escaping, this lick will work well with that whatever fast one way motion you use.

So please could you post a video where you play your fastest tremolo? Then we could go from there :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#3

Thanks for your reply @qwertygitarr. Here’s a video of my tremolo picking. I figured out my audio sync issue, but I used my front-facing camera, so it’s reversed. I thought I had a DWPS, but not sure I see it in this video.

#4

Ok thanks! That’s a great tremolo picking motion!

You’ve also great camera angle and lighting here but even with that it can sometimes be hard to really see whats going on. But at my first look this seems to be a downstroke escape motion (DSX). This means that the pick leaves the plane of the strings on downstrokes which makes it ideal for string changes efter downs strokes.

Since what you were doing in the first video was changing strings only after upstrokes, this might be the reason why it didn’t feel good. So try to inverse the pick strokes, in other words, start the lick on an upstroke. This will cause the string changes to happen after downstrokes.

Starting things on upstrokes can feel a bit alien but if it’s correct that your picking motion here is DSX, you will get a big speed boost. Of course the string switching takes some time to get right as well but you should be able to reach speeds close to your max with some practise. This is how I play it when I’m using my DSX motion. Even If I can’t reach the speed of your tremolo picking (my DSX tremolo simply isn’t as fast) you can see that I’m using the smooth motion of my tremolo picking.

3 Likes
#5

Thank you @qwertygitarr. Your version sounds great! I tried a DSX, but I’ve been trying to do USX for so long that it is a struggle, probably mostly mental. I had a deadline to record the part, so I focused on supinating my wrist a bit more and working on the USX motion, and I was able to get a decent take. Not quite Neil Schon speed, but passable for this scenario. I’ve had a few moments that felt clean and fast, so hopefully I’m on the right track. Thanks for your help!

-JD

#6

To close the loop, here’s the take I ended up with. This isn’t the final for the project, just me throwing it in the DAW. That slight supination made a big difference, as I’ve never been able to play anything that fast across two strings. Super grateful for the work that Troy and others have put into helping others learn. Thanks!