Take a look at one of my idol’s picking, Joe Diorio.
I’m trying to quiz myself on other people’s techniques by watching.
To me it looks like DBX. Does anyone else dis/agree?
Hard to tell from that angle alone, but it looks to me like dbx for controlled lines and then economy/sweeping/legato for anything faster.
The advantage of a dbx approach is that he can go in any direction he wants at any time, but it can be difficult to throw speed in.
I could be wrong though on what he is doing, all I can say for sure is that he is smooth as anything.
Hmm, I went looking for any better angles of the guy, and I really couldn’t find anything “down the neck”. However, I think this angle helps illustrate things:
The following is kind of stream of consciousness as I watch him play, and pause to take notes:
The little forearm rotation he does at about 0:35 leads me to believe he might be primarily a USX player, (that’s the same kind of helper motion I do when I’m playing primarily USX and doing a descending run eg downstroke on a high string, then upstroke on a lower string), but the runs and arpeggios he’s picking make me think it’s DBX. The ascending arpeggios at 1:10 are DBX (I think), using his wrist and forearm. The section at 1:35 is definitely USX. The section starting at 2:12, he sweeps lots of ascending arpeggios, then follows them with alternate picking without changing his hand posture or pickslant (as far as I can tell) - this seems like more evidence of USX. The descending arpeggios at the end, around 2:45 (some of the only ones in the piece) also come with a pretty big forearm/wrist posture change.
He really favors ascending arpeggios, which might just be a stylistic choice, but it could also be mechanical. Because his ascending sweeping and alternate picking forms are so similar, I think he’s a wrist/thumb USX player who uses forearm to do DBX. But he also uses his elbow to track string changes, and I think that he might be using that motion to pick some notes sometimes.
If he were DSX, I don’t think you would see quite so much supination in his picking form. Not that you can’t have lots of supination and do DSX, but I think the DSX motion would be very “obvious”, ala Eddie Van Halen. You would see his hand move in that “tall mouse” form, and I don’t think I do.
That’s a tough nut to crack! I’m really not sure. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he ended up being DSX and I was totally off the mark, but this is just my initial impression.
All that aside, he’s an amazing player. Fantastic tone and phrasing. I really need to listen to more solo jazz guitar!