Any Examples of *really fast* asc/descending diatonic sequences of fours?

Playing Technique
#1

Its funny, even the videos that show how to play these rarely get out of second gear.

I know they can be done on a single string ala YJM, but has anyone devised a way to speed through these?

I can play them pretty fast, and am working on strategies to play them even faster without any slop. The back and forth string switching is irregular and doesn’t seem to be served by changing slant. (I’m trying to unpack how exactly I do them quickly… seems like the only way to go faster is economy… but its starting to feel like math… dont want to skip any scale degrees.)

I can’t remember seeing anyone play these with any great facility. I’d love to see someone that can do them faster than me, who has worked out a better way.

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#2

How fast is really fast? I can do ascending 4s at 180bpm, maybe a little higher on a good day and I’m no shredmeister by any means. Swiping with DWPS is the key for me to get them cooking. I’m not great at UWPS so descending is a bit of a train wreck. Think I’m hitting over 160 bpm at the end of this little clip.

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#3

Thanks. I said not skipping any scale degrees which means playing at least an octave across 3 or 4 strings.

#4

3, 4, or more strings is not a problem once you have the 2 string section down. It’s just moving positions and repeating the picking pattern.

#5

I disagree, the leap to the third string represents a change in movement.

I was hoping there was a video of a pro player or a song that someone knew where this technique was used to shred across octaves. Its commonly used at medium speed.

#6

What about Batio? The shred at the start is more or less a descending 4 sequence with UWPS + swiping. I can more or less play it, if you are interested I’ll try to magnet a good take… at some point :smiley:

Also: note that the swipes can be heard in this case, if you listen closely.

#7

Thanks, I’ll take a closer look at this later. It may be that he is just using fragments with position shifts to avoid the more difficult movements.

I can play this quickly too, but its not 100% reliable at the fastest speed. I’m trying to unpack what I’m doing and it may be swiping. I’m searching for a potential organization of the notes that avoid the need for gratuitous slant changes and that can go beyond the top crosspicking speeds when the motion flattens out.

#8

You mean more difficult for the right or left hand? Once you lock into UWPS+swiping mode, the right hand “plays itself”. You only have to be very careful with the left hand to have very tight muting.

#9

Right hand. I know about swiping. Only LH difficulties are when crossing between 2nd annd 3rd string.

I asked for a video because I’m less interested in pontifications on the internet when I know that its a very small % of players (maybe none) that can do it above crosspicking speed.

With uwps its possible to play the first descending cross with economy picking which may yield more speed and less clank(swipe).

I’m working out a way that involves 2 string sweeps that may be faster than AP.

#10

Just out of curiosity, what speeds are you thinking? (e.g. 16th notes at Xbpm)

#11

The same speed that YJM can do ascending fours on a single string.

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#12

@ChrisX : I’d be curious to see with what pickstroke pattern you come up with this.

Actually what I find myself after toying with it is that an economy picking version would have as much 2wps requirement as a straight forward alternate picking, because of the back and forth required between 2 strings. It would sound a little bit different but I see it equally challenging wrt string crossing.

But maybe I miss something and there are clever way to sort it out. Again I’d be curious.

#13

Not sure what you mean by a leap to the third string but if you’re doing 3nps shapes, going from low E to high E or vice-versa isn’t really much of an issue. Here’s an E phrygian example over 4 strings that spans an octave and a half. It’s the same basic pattern repeated three times…
image

…and across 6 strings with the pattern repeated five times. Quick tip - on the fourth beat of bar 3 finger the F (10 on the G string) with your middle finger instead of doing a finger roll with your ring finger.
image
If you want to go longer than that insert a 4 note on one string sequence between each box (e.g. 7-8-10-12) and move the next box up a scale degree.

There are lots of players that can do 4s, but you don’t hear it played over multi-octave spans much because it gets a bit repetitious. Off the top of my head players that I’ve heard shred them are DiMeola, Batio, Vai, Satriani, Joe Stump, Michael Romeo, Troy :+1:, Petrucci, and Johan Reinholdz from Andromeda.

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#14

Ian , nothing more infuriating than having someone with less experience try to teach you a lesson.

I’m attempting to take this technique “next level”. I’m at the point of integrating sweeps to see if it can be played faster. I asked for video to see what organizations and rh techniques they best players use to streamline this and to see what their absolute fastese speed is.

Your advice is straight from Troy Stetina’s book.

#15

I’ll be civil but less experience? Doubtful, very doubtful. 30 years playing, 5 years touring. Anyhoo, good luck to you and hope you can find a better way to tackle them 4s.

Ps. Stetina’s book is pretty damn good.

#16

I’m no moderator but I’m not sure what your issue is here? You mentioned that the 3-string version would have a substatial difference to the 2-string one, and Ian produced a couple of good tabs and explanations to show how to stack together the 2-string segments to cover an arbitrary number of strings. There is no reason why this could not be played at 200bpm or whatever, especially if you use swiping.

Perhaps you want to refine your question and ask for solutions that do not require swiping? We’re all just trying to help each other out here.

#17

What’s the fastest speed you know of that YJM plays those at (converting into 16th at a certain number of bpm)?

#18

My guess is something like 210-220bpm.
For sure he has hit 200bpm 16th notes in the album version of Evil Eye: he plays some very fast 4s in the part where they exchange solos with the keyboards.

#19

That seems very likely. In Willjay’s list of the fastest alternate pickers, he had Yngwie listed at a top alternate picking speed of 15 notes per second which converts to 16th notes at 225. Are you familiar with the research Willjay did? It’s pretty interesting. This guy actually had the desire and the motivation to listen to hundreds of different recordings of the world’s fastest ( and in some cases just famous guitarists) and painstakingly listened as closely as he possibly could to determine that all the notes in a particular recorded segment were all picked and that alternate, rather than economy picking was used. I don’t know exactly how he was able to discern between the occasional economy picked note vs. all alternate picked notes, but for him to put in the massive amount of time and effort into that project that he did is quite remarkable. BTW, Shawn Lane was clocked at 18 notes per second, topping the list. The fastest guitarist alive, whom he clocked at 17 notes per second is Dannyjoe Carter. Are you familiar with him? Here’s a very impressive video display of Dannyjoe’s guitar playing. @Troy You might enjoy this!

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#20

I see somebody has already liked this. I’m glad. It’s unfortunate that Dannyjoe Carter isn’t a better known name in music but for those who are interested, he has two albums which are available for purchase. The first is “The Collection” and the second is entitled “Minuets.” Dannyjoe wrote all the music on those, played all guitar and bass and did all the vocals as well. He’s currently got a brand new band together and I’ll let you know more about them when I find out more about them! They’re based in Las Vegas.

BTW, regarding Yngwie’s top speeds, I would think that some of his top speeds would be in the unaccompanied guitar solo from the Steeler album. Have you heard that solo, @Tommo? It’s a great solo. Very impressive. At the time that album was released there was literally nobody playing that way! It was to its time what Eruption was to its time and it influenced a tremendous number of guitarists, far more than it’s sales would indicate. Yngwie doesn’t particularly like that album but I do!