USX + “thumb thing”

Technique Critique
#1

So ever since the USX video went up a lightbulb went off in my head as far as some hurdles I’ve been trying to pass. I think I naturally find speed from wrist deviation, and the kinds of licks I’m trying to learn are DWPS Yngwie “volcano” style licks. I used to keep my fingers out and always had problems
With swiping and string hopping but pulling my fingers in made it feel easier.

Thing is, I developed the “thumb thing” as Joe Stump calls it, and I’m wondering if the two motions are co-habitable or if I’m not on the right track yet.

Here’s a lick I came up with on the spot trying to combine everything.

Hopefully the angle and lighting is good enough. Also, I cannot for the life of me get comfortable pulling my thumb in as close as Troy does in the USX checklist. Is this mandatory?

So… am I on the right track here?

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#2

Thanks for posting! This looks good. The most important thing is that you have no stringhopping problem. It looks like you’re doing some kind of double escape motion when you play slowly in the very beginning of the clip. Whether that’s stringhopping or not who can say. But it goes away when you do the faster motion so it’s a moot point. Andy Wood also does this, for example. The double-escape motion comes back when you do the pulloffs. Technically this isn’t necessary because you should just be going trapped-escaped for those two pickstrokes. You can try rest-stroking those if you want to make that go away. But otherwise if it’s not hurting anything…

We’re seeing a lot of players getting stuck at the stringhopping motion even when they try to speed up, and that doesn’t seem to be an issue here. Good work on that.

The approach angle looks a little high, which technically doesn’t affect the way your wrist moves. But it does force you to use a lot of edge picking when you combine this with the ulnar offset. You might try lowering the approach angle. This way you can stay on the ulnar side and have moderate edge picking. And that ulnar-side motion is where the escape switching comes from, without requiring all the arm twisting and turning do things like three-note-per-string scale playing.

As far as whether fingers are ‘wrong’, no I wouldn’t say that. I’m sure if we had picking technique Cerebro (which is a device I really, really want), we’d see that just about every combination of motions exists for some player somewhere out there in the world who blazes with it. It’s more about if you feel things are smooth and if they’re working. If they are, keep doing it.

Finally, try going a little faster. You may find it unlocks some more smoothness, especially if you get to some of these phrases where the double escape starts to intrude again when it doesn’t need to.

All in all good work here, this all seems to be working.

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#3

Thanks Troy! I recognize that I’m doing something different when I pick slower and do the pull offs, but I wasn’t able to tell if it was a string hop or double escape. It didn’t seem to impede me, so I figured it didn’t make too much of a difference, but I’ll try to eliminate it on the down-up-pull descends, as well as adjust my arm angle, before posting a follow-up.

#4

I think your form looks pretty good, nice and smooth.

As far as the thumb, I love using the thumb along with wrist mechanics.

I’ve found that there are certain combinations that work very nicely together, and sometimes, those combinations can create a ‘hybrid’ sorta mechanic that has both speed and accuracy. But it’s different for different people.

Incidentally, Eric Johnson always said that it wasn’t until he figured out how to use his finger/thumb in combination with his wrist where he had his technique breakthrough. He implies that the combo helped him ‘escape’ a bit more from the strings, which made high-speed 2nps runs much easier and better sounding.

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#5

It’s been a few months of on again off again practice intensity into developing my right hand, but I’ve hit some massive breakthroughs recently in speed.

Here’s some Yngwie licks I’ve been working on.

My one issue seems to be that whenever I alternate pick on one string my form changes. It doesn’t seem to necessarily be getting in the way, so to speak, but I don’t love how it looks, I’d like my form to stay more consistent. I can’t for the life of me keep my anchor points like I have them when the line is mostly economy picking. Any advice?

#6

Hi! Yes, it looks like you’re switching between two different motions — an Yngwie-style “fingers plus other stuff” approach for some playing, and then a wrist motion, maybe with some elbow in some spots, for the single string stuff. I know it probably feels automatic, but this is, at some level, a choice. And players do things like this. EVH has his three or four techniques that he uses for specific phrases and that’s just what he does. The famous tremolo technique is forearm, but he has another elbow tremolo technique that he uses (at the end of Hot for Teacher when Dave goes “oh my god”, for example). For scalar playing it’s wrist. And so on. If it works it works, I won’t judge.

If you feel like it’s not working, or you’re not getting the smoothness or speed you want, no reason not try some other things. For these types of lines I do wrist-forearm, and I use primarily that whether I’m on a single string, multiple strings, or whether I’m alternate picking or sweeping. The last sequence we uploaded to Primer has a very good look at all this, and we cover practical stuff like muting, sweeping, and so on. I think you have access to that already, so if you like Yngwie-type lines I’d recommend giving that a shot. It’s not really either of the techniques you’re using here, so it may present a “baggage-free” clean slate type opportunity to get some speed and smoothness happening.

#7

Thanks @Troy! Took me a while to respond. It feels smooth, I guess I just like the look of one hand position for everything but as per your example of EVH I guess it’s not a bad thing to shift between motions as long as it’s not impeding anything.

I’ll tell you though as much as I’ve wanted to develop the slouch-wrist/forearm rotation, I can’t for the life of me get speed with it. Not even hammering away on one note. Maybe because back in my formative years I thought the “only” way to do it was from the wrist, so that movement just got baked in that much more, or maybe because I’m naturally left handed and don’t have as much natural control of my right hand, but it just feels awkward and “not happening” to get a fast tremolo with wrist/forearm.

#8

Starting to feel confident enough with my right hand technique to start writing more licks and solos with it for my band. So here’s one I did recently.

I started fanning my fingers out a bit and that seemed to help with some consistency, but I’m starting to notice that my string tracking is lacking on the descend than on the ascend. I feel (and I think you can see) my escape motion start to neutralize and I’m doing some little wrist turns to turn get the USX going. It doesn’t look or feel like I do this when I ascend though.

I’m wondering if it’s time to try to slow down a little to refine the movement?

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#9

Great playing, great shirt

But sorry, I can’t add anything in a technical sense. It reminds me a little bit of my own style

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#10

Niiiice, I like how you mixed the 90s OSDM tremolo sound with more of a modern lead approach.

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#11

Thanks man! That’s what my band does, OSDM with the Stockholm Swedish HM2 sound, but my leads are more modern/shreddy.

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