Thanks for the update!
Re: smoothness and attack, these are just things that I evaluate because often they are connected. For example, in the very first video at the top of this thread, the high gain one where you’re doing 1nps stuff, the attack sounds very aggressive to me. And I can see that there’s variation in the motion — there is more forearm at some times than others. This makes me think there is something going on with the motion, the pick attack, or both, that might be making things less smooth than they could be. Attempting to play those phrases with the most even attack you can get, with the gain on, might lead to figuring out something about your form or the motion that improves it.
For the latest clip, there’s less top end distortion / harmonic content on clean tone so that aspect is harder to judge. However this clip is particularly staccato sounding. If you look in your DAW close up at the waveform, do you notice gaps between the note bellies? That’s something I see for example if I use a lot of edge picking - the waveforms of each picked note are distinctly separated from each other, like a string of pearls. Using a lot of edge picking with a lot of pick can make things sometimes feel more effortful and less smooth. Reducing the edge pick or attack a little can connect those notes together a little more.
As a test, can you do the clean tone clip where you’re picking all the notes but the sound is as “legato” as you can get it? Not necessarily quiet or light, but smooth and connected where there isn’t as much of a gap between them.
The other thing I’ll point out is that there are some hand sync issues in this clip as well. More so on the USX takes than the DSX takes. That’s another thing that might improve by feeding it a wider variety of single-escape stuff where you really focus on chunking, and getting in and out of those phrases on a dime, without having to think about it.
To be clear, you can play any way you want, with whatever level of aggressive attack, in your music. I’m obviously fine with that. Ultimately we want to be able to do all attacks, all edge picks, all dynamics, etc. These suggestions about attack are more for the motor learning experience, as an exercise.
With that in mind, again, I think it’s a good idea to try to write songs and lines for whatever your best techniques are right now. It’s not because I want you to only play single escape forever, or single escape with a little outside picking. It’s because I think there is real motor learning value in taking these techniques the final mile, and polishing them to a level where you can dash off an Andy James-style song and solo with motion smoothness, perfect hand sync, with exactly the attack you want. This does pay dividends as far as learning other techniques. It is real progress, I want to stress that.
Also, consider that even if you are a double escape genius who can “alternate pick anything”, the odds are that are you are still going to write lines that are single escape occasionally. Even if only by total chance. I myself have done this while not paying any attention at all to what “escape” I was using and just coming up with cool patterns. Ignoring even-numbered patterns would would be creatively limiting just as much as the reverse. Forcing yourself to exclusively write lines that have the Paul Gilbert picking pattern in there somewhere is just as arbitrarily restrictive as forcing yourself not to, if you want to think about it that way. What I mean is that the single escape stuff is not some dead end that you want to get past, it is a thing that will always be there, so this is not wasted effort.
Anyway, those are my suggestions. I know you’re looking for the magic bullet that makes you do these particular picking patterns yesterday. But to me, if we can’t have that, but we can have progress elsewhere, that’s just as good. Everything you get better at is a win, filling in the boxes of the crossword you eventually hope to complete.
