I’m totally new here. My question is this, Since the 3 notes per string is a odd number of notes do I have to incorporate rotation points between DWPS and UWPS or can I exclusively use one or the other?? Just trying to find the best way to bring in Troy’s technique into practicing scales.
Thanks
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If you start the pattern with an upstroke then you can retain a pure DWPS approach for the first two strings worth of notes but after that you’ll have to do something to bust outta there.
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It doesn’t say in your post, but if you want to play strict alternate picking, it’s very doable to play the whole ascending part of the scale using DWPS and swiping. The inside changes are clean by design and the outside changes can be swiped as long as you really listen and minimise the noise. For me that was a revelation and after having worked on it for some time I can actually not feel (and often not hear) the swiping in DWPS mode.
By the same principle it should be doable to do the descending part using UWPS and swiping. That is for example how MAB does it. For me though, this have never worked for some reason. I can never get it to feel effortless and sound clean. But it’s clearly working for MAB so definitely try it and see if it works for you.
Also, don’t confuse swiping with sweeping. Sweeping is also a possibility but that would result in what many call economy picking. This also works great and uses DWPS and UWPS in the same fashion. But it has it’s own set of challenges.
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The Yngwie and EJ approach is economy (minisweep) on ascending. Hammer/Pullof on descending and force an even number of notes.
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Hi and welcome to the forum!
I think it highly depends on the lick. If you are navigating the strings strictly up all the way to the high E then I guess 2WPS (UWPS + DWPS) or cross-picking are necessary (look at this thread if you are not familiar with what cross-picking is or watch the Martin Miller or Steve Morse interviews in Master of Mechanics).
Some licks could be solved by swiping (Master of Mechanics: Anti-gravity Seminar episode 15). But if the lick navigates back and forth between the strings in an up and down fashion like this descending fours lick, then it’s way more complicated and I am not even sure if there is a perfectly efficient solution for this.
I think you will find a lot of interesting discussions about the topic if you browse the forum.
Good luck!
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It seems that most players would do this by maintaining their preferred orientation most of the time, only rotating briefly to the other orientation when needed.
E.g. in an ascending 3nps scale (starting on a downstroke on the low E string) Batio would maintain an UWPS orientation at almost all times, only quiclky rotationg to DWPS when moving from the A to the D string, and then from the G to the B. When descending, he just uses UWPS + swiping which is very efficient, provided you can do a good muting as others mentioned.
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Hmmm I need to revisit the MAB material myself as I can’t remember the bits about him swiping when descending!
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Hey, welcome! Thanks all for some helpful responses here! From the OP I can’t tell if you’re familiar with two-way pickslanting yet (you’ll see it abbreviated here as 2WPS or TWPS) so I want to make a couple suggestions for getting started there.
The Batio section of the Pickslanting Primer is a good intro:
https://troygrady.com/primer/two-way-pickslanting/michael-angelo-batio/
And the Antigravity seminar goes into more detail:
https://troygrady.com/seminars/antigravity/
As others have mentioned there are lots of forum conversations you may find useful as well. Indeed crosspicking is another good technique to know about — we don’t yet have good intro tutorial material on it, but several players we’ve interviewed use this technique, and you search the forum there’s good discussion on it for example the one @kounistou posted, or this one:
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Really want to stress, as some others have pointed out, that it depends what the DIRECTION is - if you’re just doing the scale from low string to high string you can use DWPS and economy pick. high to low then UWPS and economy pick. Going either direction you can pure alternate pick but will either have to swipe or use 2wps, or ‘crosspicking’
But if the order of notes zig zags (as it would in an actual melody) then it’s just going to depend a lot on what the actual notes are, how many notes per string, which direction the string changes are in, etc.
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Thanks everybody. The input has been helpful.
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If you’re improvising a solos you’re not going to know how many notes will be on each string, etc. The technique needs to be done without having to plan it out or even think about it. You just adjust the technique to whatever you’re playing as you’re playing it.
Hi!
I think a lot of a people will disagree with you here including myself. If we’ve learned an important thing from CtC, it’s that pure improvisation (coming up with new notes in real time) doesn’t really exist, or is incredibly hard to achieve.
We have seen that even super gifted players have their own vocabulary that consists of phrases that fit their technique that they invoke during improvisation. There is even a mention of this in the Strunz and Farrah interview where they say that if a lick doesn’t fit the technique, it’s written off. I think that if you want to play fast, you need licks that fit your technique. Even if you’ve mastered all the techniques, I still think everybody would have a preference, a main technique where he is comfortable and keeps coming back to. You don’t want to be switching slants and techniques a few times per second. Playing will become hard work, and the margin of error becomes too thin!
I also recommend the second Martin Miller interview “playing through the changes” where this topic is also discussed.
Cheers! \m/
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You can use that mentality if you want but you sacrifice the freedom to play whatever comes to mind which is what pure improvisation is. If you master 2 way pick slanting and sweeping you can play just about whatever you want.
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I understand your point.
But to me this sounds like the perfect (and unrealistic scenario). Like if I had to program a robot to play any (any!) lick on the guitar, that’s what I would teach him (I might teach him cross-picking as well :D).
That is why (and here again, I refer to Mike Stern from his Master in Mechanics interview), I believe it is important to know when to stop pursuing mechanics for the sake of mechanics and try to make music. Something that I try to teach myself.
Again, I think that if you master the tools you mentioned, you could in theory play “any lick”. But I think there is no guarantee that one would manage to get there simply because it’s too demanding and not so efficient to do 2WPS.
All of the above is my opinion. I might be wrong about many things. I am open to change my view once provided with real proven examples. Nobody knows the full truth and this why this CtC journey is so amazing to me because I discover new things everyday.
Peace!