It’s more that Arch Enemy has a very melodic sound so you aren’t gonna get a lot lot of the dissonant diminished style stuff that you got with Nevermore and his solo projects. When Chris Amott was in Arch Enemy he played circles around his brother. Mike Amott is very much a Michael Schenker style player he’s super melodic but he’s never been a “shredder.” Great songwriter though.
It’s similar to the situation with Chris Broderick in Megadeth (or In Flames). He’s not going to unleash the full arsenal as it doesn’t fit the band’s style.
Even when Marty Friedman was in Megadeth he wasn’t going full out like he did in Cacophony and on Dragon’s Kiss.
I’d be curious to know how Jeff Loomis is playing that lick, or at least how he’s changing strings. It looks like a very definite DSX motion to my (extremely untrained) eye.
It is DSX, starting with an upstroke - you can see when he hits the first longer note, it’s also an up. Jeff is almost like backwards-Yngwie, technique-wise: lots of descending economy, instead of ascending.
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Thank you - I was watching on a tiny phone screen so could only see the broad strokes, so to speak. The man has a great technique, no doubt!
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No problem! Jeff is awesome, and can be a great source of inspiration if you’re primarily DSX.
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It really is - and a great example of Yngwie’s precision. To get it to sound like Yngwie in my view you have to execute with zero errors - otherwise the flow is lost and the Yngwie sound is lost.
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What about when Yngwie himself doesn’t live up to that impossible standard though? lol! I agree he’s super accurate but there’s nothing wrong with this performance, even though the error count is well above zero. I lost track because I ran out of fingers to count the errors on. I was about to undo my shoes to keep counting but the solo was over by then lol
There’s nothing wrong with expecting a lot from ourselves, but zero-errors is a long shot. I beat myself up about this all the time. I maintain a good attitude because I enjoy playing the guitar whether I suck (normally the case) or not (I have my “lucky days”). But I bet I’d be even happier if I stopped caring about little mistakes and just rolled with it. It’s seemed good enough for Yngwie to take that approach even early in his career where he was really on fire, but certainly nowadays there’s virtually nothing he plays that’s error free. In all cases, he is, and sounds awesome.
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I agree, not even the best players are going to come out error free. Way to many variables, like what if the player is fighting a sickness that can mess up your senses big time. Here is a video of Christiaan Van Hemert talking about the safer play, and the hardest difficulty of phrasing on his tutorial of La Gitane. He calls it high and low percentage play.
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I really like the way Loomis plays that song/section. I was attempting to pick similarly when I first started working on USX but for some reason my low-E is insanely resonant. I had to alter my approach a bit, thus slowing my progress down, just to keep a piece of my palm on the edge of bridge to mute. I can mute with my fretting hand just fine when I’m playing normal at whatever speed. But not when I’m practicing hand sync exercises, YJM6’s-style licks especially.
Yes good point - I maybe could have expressed it that you need to have a very low error rate to sound like Yngwie. To get the Jet to Jet intro to sound like Yngwie you need to have the majority of reps clean. If you have a mistake in sync in the majority of reps it won’t sound like him. At least this is the case for me and all this is just my view on it… The only way I can get to sound like him is to eliminate almost all mistakes - verified on 25% slow down. I found this on the Steeler style descending 4’s I did. Unless I nailed basically all the notes - it didn’t sound like early Yngwie. It was only when I got all the notes did it sound like him - to my ears anyway 
I agree it is a very high standard - but early Yngwie was in my view playing at an extrememly high standard of sync.
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I know what you mean. Speaking of high standards, Anton gave Yngwie huge props on hand sync. So he’s obviously very good in that department.
And ha…check this out. I think it sounds awesome
Down to 25% speed…hand sync is clearly all over the place. Why is it when my hand sync isn’t rock solid, I sound like $h!+, but when Steve Vai’s hand sync is questionable, he still sounds awesome 
I guess it’s because he’s awesome! lol!
EDIT: this also gives me some ideas on how we might “DSX’ify” this phrase without having to start on an upstroke. I don’t know if that’s what Steve was going for, but just trying to imitate what he’s doing with this made me stumble upon something like
e|-----------------------------------17 | 19 15 17 19 17 15 | 19 15 17 19 17 - -|
B|19 15 17 19 17 15 | 19 15 19 17 15 - -| -----------------------------------15-|
Obviously it changes the pattern a little, but it might sound cool.
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I love Steve Vai - am seeing him live in next few weeks!
And this of course proves the point that sync is not everything! I get caught up on it because it is something I am working on improving. But from a musical perspective it is just one aspect of playing.
Great points!
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Yeah Steve is just amazing.
To be clear with the hand sync stuff, I really do think it’s critically important. Pre CtC, it was the main thing I’ve learned was lacking in my playing, right behind the whole “escape trajectory and efficient motion” that is the cornerstone of CtC. It wasn’t on all patterns, but definitely when playing straight 16ths cycling 3 fingers, or patterns that didn’t begin on the index finger. It’s gotten much better lately, but I still have to be aware of it.
I suspect the whole thing is pretty nuanced, mainly because of the players who’s hand sync is not 100%, yet they still sound amazing. I wonder what the “degrees” of hand sync are. For example, I could see it being desirable to really nail the notes that happen on either the beat or even just the strong beats in the measure. Maybe that derails the listener away from the little sloppiness that may happen between the accents??? I dunno. It’s interesting though. Maybe if we learn more about it, we can have a healthy balance in our playing and what we focus on.
maybe i am confusing things more than usual but wouldn’t you be on the downstroke escape of dsx if you started with the upstroke so why the need to abruptly end the pattern on the upstroke on beat grouping 2?
here is a big question for dsx players do you guys always start with your stronger upstroke or do you start with a downstroke? or maybe better way to ask the question is which do you feel is more dominant? say unplugged or on an acoustic which stroke is louder or more full?
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I think starting with an upstroke is very important for learning DSX but once you have it down you can start on downstrokes. You have to work a little to get them sounding as powerful as your upstroke though and it also depends on the phrase. If your gonna play 6 note licks like the YJM lick and move it across strings starting with a downstroke and using a helper motion is easy but if you were gonna play EJ pentatonic lines then it doesn’t work well
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but why if the upstroke is the powerful tone stroke wouldn’t it sound more full to start the pattern on the upstroke. is that how loomis did it in his cover? its so blurry its hard to tell but when he rocks back to the b string it looks like he is starting it with an upstroke. and in the end starting on the upstroke will lead to even faster speeds.
I don’t know, I think I just like starting on downstrokes! I think you can get them sounding pretty close to your upstrokes but your upstrokes will probably just naturally be faster and more powerful.
since i got you here do you do more descended arpeggios or ascended when doing more than 3 string arpeggios?
Oops I got dyslexic. I meant to say “without having to start on an upstroke”
About the same as before I had the motion but I haven’t worked a lot on economy with DSX, mainly just DSX and mixed escape lines