3NPS Riff that Ascends AND Descends

Playing Technique
#1

Hey All, one of my band’s songs has a short 2 bar fill that is primarily 3NPS ascending with some “restarts” every nine notes. Essentially, it’s incredibly similar to the beginning of Cory Beaulieu’s solo in Trivium’s song Anthem.

For the past several months since we wrote the song, I’ve gotten by on the fill by just doing straight hammer-ons to make up for my lack of technical ability, but I really want to be able to alternate pick this. I currently top out at around 80 bpm sextuplets on a good day, even slower on others. The song itself is played around 90 bpm though.

From looking at covers and tutorials of Trivum’s song, it seems like everyone just alternate picks it straight. No sweeps or secret legato notes from what I can tell. Any tips on what motions I should try and work on to get this under my fingers? Any ideas on small tweaks where legato may be able to be inserted to make this work with a DSX/USX?

For reference, a play through by the guys in Trivium. The part I’m looking to replicate is at 1:42. Trivium - Guitar Lessons (2007) Anthem - YouTube

#2

Consider posting (a) TAB for how you’re looking at it now, or (b) video of your doing it (as some of the eagle-eyed people here might help you bump up from 80 to 90bpm).

You mentioned DSX/USX, does that mean that you’re comfortable with both?

#3

You could certainly use a single escape and sneak in a hammer-on here and there, which probably won’t be too apparent if you’re using distortion - if you were DSX for instance, insert a hammer whenever the last note on a string would’ve been an upstroke. D U D U D H repeat

Or you could just floor it and pick it all, trying to clean it up at speed. Some setups/motions will work better than others for that. And keep in mind that the Trivium guy is swiping quite a bit when he plays that example fast.

Really, you should get this sorted first. I can almost guarantee that you can do some motion that’s way faster than that, even if you can’t pick this particular run super clean yet.

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#4

This!

80bpm sextuplets is quite slow, I’m sure if you worked on your single note tremolo you could find an efficient motion that would make your playing a lot easier :slight_smile:

#5

Thanks all for the replies! I’m new to CtC and have been diving into the material for the past few weeks. So far, it seems like my default motion for speed is a lot of string hopping but my tremolo picking is a type of UWPS

At this point, I lack any true technique for playing something this fast, so I’m sort of using this lick as a goal to give me some direction in picking a motion to work on and want to refine this lick around that. I attached a tab here:

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Below are videos of me doing my best tremolo picking and then also an attempt at the lick. Their appears to be significant breakdown and a return to string hopping when I attempt the lock, so I feel like I’m going to have to break some bad habits with whatever motion should be used.

Tremolo Attempt: User Video Player Page – Cracking the Code
Lick Attempt: https://troygrady.com/users/Wolfman/video/595/

I’m a bit directionless at this point and not sure if I’m trying to tackle to many things at once. Any tips or guidance will be greatly appreciated!

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#6

You’re not alternate picking that 3nps lick. This is what you’re doing:

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It looks like you’re trying to economy pick but without the rest strokes

#7

Welcome to the forum!

Your tremolo looks fine and capable of much faster than sextuplets at 80 :slight_smile:

The problem with the lick you want to play is that it requires escapes in both directions. There are some amazing players that don’t have the ability to do that. It can definitely be learned, especially since Troy has outlined all these concepts for us and given us a nice target. However, it is recommended to first get good at fast phrases that escape in one direction. Since you mentioned you gravitate to UWPS it is clear you have a DSX motion. Try a similar phrase that changes ONLY after downstrokes (like ascending Gilbert 6’s) and you may surprise yourself how fast you’ll be.

Once that is in place then you can learn how to occasionally add a “helper motion” where needed on phrases that require some upstroke escapes.

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#8

I’m going to look at @D.Llewelyn’s analysis of your picking as our foundation as he likely did an amazing job. The first three notes make perfect sense, but at the end of the third note, is your pick resting on the next string (a rest stroke)? If not (what I understand), you might want to try “rest strokes,” where you push the pick until it is naturally blocked by an upcoming string. It is at the ninth note that things get interesting: It looks to me that you want to start the tenth note with a downstroke to continue as you did when you first started your ascent on your very first note, but you’re doing an upstroke! So, I would consider making the ninth note be a HO to give you plenty of time and the opportunity to start the tenth note with a downstroke. (And there are many other such steps that would work.) So, it is right at that point where I suspect some thought can get you regularity and uniformity where all of your ascents start with downstrokes.

Indeed, you can figure this out yourself: The question would be, “if I view this piece as four ascents in a row, should they all start with a downstroke?” I’d guess “yes,” but that depends on you, the artist!

Note that there are many other ways to skin this cat, including some that will work totally with alternate picking, but it might be good to start with small deviations of what you do and then branch out from there. From what I can tell around here there are people that can play EVERY technique (Troy is one such example), but most seem to have a basic technique that isn’t general, and some clever “escape hatches” to handle degenerate cases, where the most impressive example of that is probably how YJM plays.

Have fun!