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@tommo’s new seminar, Metronomic Rock | DSX, is in the wild. Sorry for the delay on doing a forum post about this — there are just so many steps involved in getting large items like this on the site, but the forum post was always on the list.
Why DSX? In our teaching, most players that come to us for instruction are DSX players. We think this flows from simple mechanical origins: the most common postures and joint motions that people are likely to stumble across when self-teaching are elbow motion and reverse-dart wrist motion. Elbow motion is exclusively DSX when operating on its own, and reverse-dart wrist is usually DSX, just given the arm position most players use. In particular, the “2:00” motion used by Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin appears among players of just about every plucked instrument on earth, from guitar to mandolin to domra to electric bass (Chris Squire, for example).
So obviously this is a starting point we need to address in our more musically-focused lessons. We already have two seminars on USX technique in the form of the Eric Johnson and Yngwie lessons, and we do plan a Metronomic Rock | USX as well. But if we’re addressing immediate need, DSX players are a big one. They need music to play to help streamline and expand the basic motions they learn in the Primer, and Tommo’s many fundamental applications — from arpeggios to scales to pentatonics — provide ample grist for that mill. There is plenty here to work on, and players from other musical styles can still employ the strategies. Here’s a really nice one which we just put up on YouTube:
It took an extremely long time and lots of work to put this together, and Tommo did an amazing job on this. He has a true instructor’s mindset and carefully chose subjects that serve as foundations of a picking style for someone who is still building out that platform. He’s currently working on some single-string etudes for a hand synchronization lesson, which is another big need. After that, we’ll put him on Metronomic Rock | USX.
Shout out to Jeff Black aka @element0s for his truly excellent drum programming. Jeff’s work really elevates the excitement level in both songs. If I could clone myself and create more free time, it would be a fun exercise to try and learn the parts.
On the subject of free time, and the pace of adding new lessons and interviews to the site: it’s just an enormous amount of work and the timescales for a small team of people are protracted. This is why we’re not dropping new interviews and seminars every couple of weeks. It takes essentially months to edit something of this magnitude, because the video editing process is also compositional — this chapter is really two chapters so let’s split it, let’s omit that subject it’s not needed, let’s add this other subject which is needed, and so on. And many of these decisions don’t become obvious until you start editing.
Even something as simple as naming the chapters somehow requires several decades of highly specialized industry experience to figure out what technical subjects should be highlighted in the instructional flow via the naming conventions. There are large parts of this that are almost impossible to delegate since you need to be, essentially, an expert in the technical subject matter, an expert in writing / scripting, an expert in instructional video editing, etc. It’s kind of hilarious how un-scalable the content creation side of this is. But we do it because we think we’re building something meaningful that hasn’t been done before.
So we’re definitely motivated to get more interviews edited, and we will get back to that. We’ve got another really great seminar coming up and some more Primer updates, so we’ll be pumping out new stuff on a regular basis. And yes, we have hundreds of Magnets to prep and box, somehow, alongside all of that. We’ll be busy!
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Great work @Troy and @tommo ! Will give this a binge this weekend! Even though I’m Usx player, I’m sure there will be plenty to take from it 
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The new seminar is so cool! Hats off to you and @tommo on a job well done.
Also, as a self proclaimed fairly dedicated member of the forum, I just want to echo your sentiments of how much work is on your plate and why things take time. Since I’ve had a peek under the hood when I helped out with your platform Technique Critique feature, I was pretty humbled by seeing everything you have to do (and have done) to keep things running smoothly, as well as your continued efforts in putting out high quality products. I’ve seen firsthand that you don’t do anything without lots of careful consideration, and that you put everything you’ve got into everything you release.
Thanks again for having a such a great platform!
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Okay, I just viewed this last night, and I just wanted to say what a great resource featuring our awesome dude Tommo! DSX for the win! Some super tasty and fun riffs and licks! Thanks to all who put that together, it’s really cool to have material created, almost custom designed for how I play - Like right out of the gate that stuff jives for me! Awesome! As always, very well played and presented!
Anyone who even slightly suspects they might be a DSX player should check this out! (Has it been announced yet? Have I let the cat out of the bag? I just don’t know…)
In other news, I bought a new pedal for my board, a Boss MD500 and daaaaang is it ever fun! The only problem is that I kind of want the DD500 to go with it now hahaha Or wait, do we still care about pedals and amplifiers these days? 
Okay, back to regularly scheduled programing!
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I’ve been going through the lessons here this evening, this is fantastic and gives a more focused approach to learning and refining techniques. I already recommend this site to all my guitar player friends, and this really makes the tuition more than worth it.
I can’t wait to see more things like this, and more interviews. I would love to see similar on the different techniques, also left hand technique and downpicking/uppicking, and of course a newer better approach to theory.
Awesome work and thank you Tommo and Troy!
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I missed that this had been released.
For anyone who was in the same boat as me, there’s a blog post with more info about this new seminar content:
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I can confirm this 
But I could not be prouder of what @Troy @Adam and I achieved here!
And the fantastic drum programming by @element0s [https://www.jeffblackmusic.com/] really elevated the songs.
I also wanted to share that working on this content was probably the most fun I ever had playing guitar. Like many of us, I spent a lot of years practicing complicated combinations of different motions (USX, DSX, mixed escape, etc.).
For a change, it was incredibly liberating to just focus on a single “basic” motion and just trying to squeeze a lot of different musical examples (and even entire songs) out of it.
Provided you do have a DSX motion, you can basically “set and forget” your picking hand and just focus on all the other aspects of music.
And honestly, we just started scratching the surface of everything that is possible even without getting out this “single escape universe”. You can totally build a “guitar virtuoso career” out of these techniques.
Stay tuned because we’re working on more stuff like this!
PS: Metronome not needed 
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Hi there! Apologies in advance for the basic question but I’m a mixed escape / double escape player; neither DSX or USX… will I still benefit from going through the new program?
Should I be able to adapt and play DSX or should I keep focusing on zero slant mastery?
Thanks and congratulations on the new program!!
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Hey @aphasein ! I’d recommend posting a quick videoclip of your tremolo picking and we’ll be able to advise based on what we see 
PS also, try the pentatonic example linked above by Troy (following the picking instructions in the YT description) and let us know how that feels
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More generally this is a great question so I’d like to add a couple of more detailed / technical comments for the benefit of anyone else with similar questions.
First of all, if you decide to dive into the course, all the techniques and vocabulary that you will learn will only add to what you already know, it will not replace them. So, after working through the seminar you would have all the DSX-specific vocabulary AND the mixed escape vocabulary that you have now.
I.e., you’ll just end up with more options for your playing, not fewer
Secondly, most great double-escape or mixed-escape players that we have seen and interviewed (e.g. David Grier, Martin Miller, Andy Wood, Carl Miner) tend to default to a single-escape motion when they pick past a certain speed. Additionally, 9 times out of 10 that motion will be DSX. Therefore, even though these players can do a wide variety of complex picking patterns, it seems that single-escape motion is really the core of their top-speed picking technique*. Note also that all the 4 players mentioned above are DSX when going top speed.
Ergo, even if you are a mixed escape player there’s an extremely high chance that you will have a single-escape motion that’s immediately available to you. There is also a pretty good chance that this motion will be DSX, so that the vocabulary we teach in the seminar should be easily accessible to you. However, it is of course a very good idea to still check that you can do a DSX motion before buying
*Note: an interesting exception is Molly Tuttle, for whom I think we only have footage of double-escaped motions. However, if I remember correctly Troy did not ask her to do “max speed picking” in the interview, so we may not have seen what her “max speed picking motion” looks like.
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Thank you for the responses, Tommo! OK, I recorded tremolo and then tried the pentatonic run. I realized that I really struggle with 2NPS scale - Maybe it’s because I am used to 3 note runs but maybe my picking style has morphed to more of a USX (going from high to low strings are much easier when playing 2NPS. I uploaded a new technique critique if possible to get your thoughts.
In the meantime, will definitely start going through the new Metronomic Rock DSX - thank you !!!
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I just bought this course and am downloading the files now. Looking forward to learning a thing or two from Tommo. ;o)
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Awesome! If anyone has any specific feedback (things that worked particularly well for you / additional things you would have liked to see) it would be great to know, as we’ll soon begin preparations for the next episode
PS: I may have forgotten to mention this, but all the parts of the songs (leads, rhythms, harmonies and even bass) are playable with DSX motion.
Drums may be an exception
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This course receives a lot of plus points from me
First, because of its Italian flair: everybody knows that Italians shred better 
Second, because it oozes love for the Irons 
- and the fabulous Eighties 
Third, because it’s chock-full of useful melodic ideas and super well crafted in the exposition, examples, tabs… All in all, really fantastic work Tommo, I’m impressed!
Rock on!
Michele
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What about triads? I was doing extensive work with them before starting your course. I know them well in CAGED positions but I don’t think those are optimal for DSX picking. Thoughts?
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Glad you asked
The general idea is that every typical “building block” of music (diatonic scales, triads, 7th arpeggios, pentatonics, etc.) can be adapted to DSX by choosing appropriate patterns and/or fretting arrangements.
Going back to triads and the MR|DSX seminar, I think you’ll find the lessons linked below useful — PS: and as usual the possibilities are pretty much infinite, once you get familiar with the basic principles of DSX-ification
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Thanks, Tommo. One thing I love about the material you’ve put together for this course is that it is varied. After the first few videos (-making clear what DSX picking is and how it works), a student can “follow his heart’s desire.” I went to pentatonic lines first because I started out playing pentatonic scales and wanted and “DSX-ify” them. Today I looked at the two-string arpeggio lines and am starting to get some of them under my fingers. Next I’ll look at the string-skipping ones. So much material here! I can’t thank you enough.
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I love this seminar!!! Still a few bpm’s behind the master (@tommo) but after just a couple days I’ve at least got the ascending 5’s under my fingers.
I’ve never really messed with a pattern like this. He makes it look so easy, and let’s not forget he can do similar 5’s patterns even faster with mixed escape
Such insanity. 
But oh well, at least I’m a little bit closer than I was back before I’d tried anything like this
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