I have been going through CTC for about a month or two. I understand that we are advised to start with the picking technique that feels most natural to us. But if I begin with USX or DSX then how do I play runs with mixed notes per string? Wouldn’t it be best for us all to learn DBX first since it could be applied to any run and then work on USX and DSX later to optimize for runs that work specifically well with those techniques?
In my experience teaching, most people who try to learn DBX first will usually end up stringhopping.
Learning an efficient single escape mechanic first teaches you what efficient picking “feels like” rhythmically. Having this feeling as a reference is very helpful for learning DBX.
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What @Tom_Gilroy said. Also, single escape motions go faster than double escape. I don’t know what the speed threshold is, but I don’t think DBX motions can hit speeds in the 200+ range. I know not everyone cares to play that fast, but you’re not gonna be using a DBX motion to do shreddy metal leads.
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Thanks @Tom_Gilroy and @BlackInMind. I understand what you are both saying but if I learn DSX or USX first then how do I play runs that don’t accommodate that? For example 3 notes per string moving from the G to B to high E strings?
My recommendation would be to worry about that later. Focus on getting a solid single-escape mechanic and playing lines/patterns that fit with it first.
Learn the single escape rules. Remember the “escape hatches” for phrases that don’t quite fit. A well placed hammer, pull-off or slide will help you to handle most 3nps vocabulary l.
You need to know what efficient picking feels like rhythmically, and you need to know how it feels when an efficient push/pull picking cycle is synchronised to the fretting hand.
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Thanks @Tom_Gilroy, so are the “escape hatches” the hammer on and pull offs, etc… or are there other techniques for jumping over strings when needed?
Tommo details some “escape hatch” strategies in the first half dozen chapters of Metronomic Rock:
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Yes, the “escape hatch” is usually the inclusion of a strategically placed hammer-on or pull-off which allows for a single-escape picking pattern for some (not all) situations where it’s not strictly possible.
The basic single-escape system is a blend of alternate picking even numbers of notes per string to end on an escaping stroke combined with sweeping in the direction of the trapped stroke and the “escape hatches” for some of the bad cases.
It was covered in the Volcano seminar of I remember correctly, but there’s probably a more recent video somewhere in the Primer. Or look at the Metronome Rock sections that @AustinK suggested.
There are still some bad cases that need to be solved in either system, usually involving situations with one note per string. For example, in USX we have what @Chris_Brooks calls “the lone note exception.”
Depending on your fretting hand, you may be able to incorporate some hammers from nowhere, but this isn’t always feasible (on an acoustic with heavy strings, for example).
Depending on your picking movement, you may be also able to incorporate some hybrid picking.
In any case, it’s strongly recommended to learn the systems so that you can take full advantage of your single-escape movements.
I used to think that DBX was a general-purpose technique and that USX or DSX were specialized, but now I think it’s the opposite: DBX is the strange one.
DBX is awesome to be able to hit isolated strings with 1 NPS. This is important for certain types of music, where they can’t get away from this problem with hybrid picking (using a finger) or a hammer-on from nowhere. But the cost of DBX is massive － it seems a lot slower and more complex than the alternatives － all to handle this special case of isolated 1 NPS. While I am not an expert on Steve Morse, he likely has isolated single strings to hit?
USX or DSX alone seem good enough to cover most things, and when combined with 2WPS, there is little that they can’t handle. Naturally, those isolated single strings can still pop up, depending on the music, but it might be possible to work around them and avoid DBX entirely.
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Beyond Tom’s excellent points, I’d also add one further:
Maybe you just don’t do those things, or don’t do them at high speeds. There’s a lot of things I’ve learned here that have really helped my playing, and a lot of them are mechanical, but one of the most powerful has been behavioral; we have this image of a really proficcient alternate picker as someone who can pick any combination of notes, but I think in practice the guys who we think of as amazing pickers often don’t do this, and instead have a vocabularly of lines that work very well for their default escape strategy.
If it helps, think of it as a form of creative limitation - if you naturally favor upstroke escapes, what sort of runs can you come up with where your’re always changing strings after an upstroke?
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For my personal use case, DBX is just not worth it, and I would dare say most professionals tend to get very good at a single-escape motion and adjust their vocabulary to it, even if it means committing the “sin” of adding a sweep or legato note here and there to adapt some phrases to their style. 