4 string arpeggios with barres

Playing Technique
#1

So I’ve re-learnt my 3 string arpeggios the “yng-way”

My question is… what’s the idea for 4 strings? Upstroke, pulloff, upstroke, upstroke escape, downstroke? I find I’m doing this weird hybrid of—
Upstroke, pulloff, upstroke on b, hammer on (I’m missing the G string with my pick) and downstroke on D.

I can do this to 210bpm comfortably with all my patterns but one… barre shapes.

Obviously the hammer on was made evident by trying barre shapes, I wasn’t aware of the hammer on until I tried barre shapes and my G string was “dead”. I hit it sometimes but it’s not a guarantee where the rest of the pattern is autopilot. The more I focus on it the more it seems to be present.

I’m going to film when I get the chance (I have a toddler and can’t film today but it’s eating me up)

What’s the thought process to actually hitting that string? I can do it up to gross speeds by returning to uwps and doing an upstroke on the D, essentially sweeping through and alternate picking the high e string but the tone is so much worse to my ears than the yng-way with dwps.

I’m extremely frustrated and feel like I’m banging my head against a wall with this movement.

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#2

That’s what Yngwie does, which he demonstrates on one of the Japanese instructional videos. However, Yngwie doesn’t really have an upstroke sweep mode like a two-way economy player, and I recall his take on this not really working in some way — I’d have to find the clip and watch it again to remind myself what I didn’t think was working.

Anyway, moot point. For a look at a two-way economy version of this, you want to look at players like Gambale or Oz Noy. Oz is the most “two way” player we’ve interviewed, and he does all kinds of cool arpeggios that combine sweeping and alternate picking in both directions in the two interviews we did with him.

The explainer on how this works is here, with a clear example from Oz:

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#3

Sorry I didn’t really answer your question. Or I only answered one of them!

I don’t like barre shapes and personally I avoid them. When possible, I just fret each note individually, even for the typical “E Minor” shape with the barre on the top three strings.

However Batio is great at this and you can check his finger mechanics in slow motion here:

He gets good separation on the A Minor shape.

Frank Gambale is also great at the barre stuff but uses more jazzy shapes. There are many examples of this, and we do talk about rolling the fingers for barre playing in his interview, so you can check that out. This particular example is one of my favorites and has a bunch of three-string barres in it that you really can’t hear at all:

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#4

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#5

you can also do it without a barre, good lesson here

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#6

Thanks @troy and all! Especially for the in depth information!

I did decide to return to my “original” motion (attached here)

I almost always upon slomo inspection hammer on and jump the transition stroke on 4-5 and 6 string arpeggios so I’ve gone back to how I did it originally.

Still came out of it a better player, can’t imagine not doing the “yng-way” for multiple patterns. But not everything is a nail and not everything needs a hammer :wink:

#7
#8

Sounds good. It looks like you’re doing the “inside” version of this which is pretty much what I use exclusively, only because once I start sweeping I like to keep sweeping until I run out of strings. So the turnaround is always one alternate picked inside string change.

One thing I’d suggest is that it looks like you’re doing a lot of grip change there, which may not be entirely necessary. One of the things I try to do with this type of playing is make these form changes less dramatic, without quite as a big of a difference in the finger orientation between the two directions of the lick. There will usually be some, depending on the kind of picking motion you’re using. Gambale’s form change is obvious under the camera, as you can see in the clips in our interview. But even there, if you look at the fingers his movements aren’t really that dramatic once you get more than few inches away.

This is an old video, but we actually cover this four-string arpeggio and a bunch of other combinations, including scales and three-string arpeggios:

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#9

Thank you for the video! Lots to unpack in that one! The journey continues.

Just to make sure, my grip is in regards to my thumb movement right?

I actually seem to only do this dramatic movement when my arms are exhausted (usually after a long work day, I’m a handyman) my thumb seems to overcompensate when my forearms are tight and aching. Or if I’m REALLY trying to get some extra speed. It’s kind of like a nervous tic.

When I’m on point or rested it stays much more “locked” and much more in the wrist and arm. It seems the better I’m playing the less I’m actually doing.

#10

Your thumb movement probably isn’t really happening because the rest of your arms are tired. What I mean by that is that these movements aren’t actually the picking motion, so if your picking motion was tiring out, adding in these motions wouldn’t help, the pick wouldn’t move anywhere. So you’re still making picking motions, you’re just also making these thumb/index motions.

The motions are correct, it’s what Frank Gambale does to re-orient the pick for sliding in the direction of the sweep. So it’s not a picking motion per se, it’s more of a “changing the pick attack” motion. You still have to have a picking motion operating alongside that, which again, you do.

So the finger motions are good. I’m just saying, you may be able to get by with less dramatic ones. But rather than try and micromanage that, maybe just try and “do less” overall, in terms of the feel of how much you’re changing the fingers around. That may pay dividends in terms of relaxation and smoothness at the same time.

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#12

Update!!

You were right @Troy it seems to be an over exaggeration I start to do when I am really “trying” to play clean.

Relaxing and focussing on keeping my thumb “rigid” and doing less has made a huge difference.

Basically a “f— it if I crash and burn I’ll still walk it off” turns out that mindset has given me some massive breakthroughs! I had all these extra motions and tension I didn’t need.

Also, @Insanefury the triplet you noted made me break down my entire arpeggio headspace. I have always used a triplet (knowingly and unknowingly) in my chunks to increase speed and make up for slower areas. What a difference in overall fluidity this revelation has made! I’ve always had a hell of a time playing strict 16th notes at any tempo with arpeggios and I never knew why.

I didn’t even realize until I spent time humbly looking at it that I’d chunked things wrong so the triplet was always occurring. I’d land on the one but the timing in between was off.

I’m not trying to erase it, it’s a big part of my sound and in improvisation and song writing I tend to enjoy that “drama” of accelerating and decelerating. But having the choice and control is never a bad thing!