Anybody into 'swybrid' ? (hybrid plus sweep?)

Playing Technique
#1

Or even just heavy into hybrid, for that matter?

I’ve been digging into it a little bit lately (taking a pause from the crosspicking for lack of progress, but I’m not giving up!)

Because I was thinking about one-note-per-string figures specifically

Kind of easy to do them PIMA total classical fingerstyle but my nails aren’t strong enough to get a great strong sound doing that.

And sweeping is ok but the ‘turnarounds’ when you’re not doubling the top and bottom string are tricky (kind of requiring a ‘mid air’ slant change,) and of course with sweeping it’s harder to have a really strong, driving rhythmic feel for each note.

So swybrid brings about an interesting approach:swybrid1nps

I’ve been playing with this and other similar figures. Just kind of interesting what’s possible, especially combining knowledge of slant changes and noting the things that I know are most difficult to me personally.

I was doing stuff with this fives motif as well which I found kind of easy to get some gas on:
15%20PM

Anyway, anybody spent time with these kinds of things, or even more ‘advanced’ hybrid stuff?

I always find it interesting to weigh the pros and cons of the different approaches.

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#2

Thanks for the great examples, and excellent point on the problem with sweep turnarounds. I really love this style of playing, and it was really my go-to thing before CTC launched. Marshall Harrison is the modern godfather of “SWYBRID” and ridiculously effortless with his technique. Before discovering pickslanting methodology, I used my middle and ring fingers to cross strings when doing ascending lines (alternating the right hand middle and ring fingers kind of the way Brent Mason does with a thumbpick – thumbpick-middle-thumbpick-ring-etc) and descending with pure economy. So basically, I was pure UWPS and using the fingers when my pick got “trapped”.

I couple of years into CTC, I’m pretty comfortable with DWPS and getting there with crosspicking. But swybrid is still so much easier for me with regard to anything arpeggiated or pedal-point.

Have you checked out any of Gustavo Assis-Brasil’s books He’s an amazing jazz-oriented hybrid picker.

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#3

Yeah, I’ve been playing more country gigs lately and the chicken picking thing is basically percussive sounds executed with hybrid picking.

Assis-Brasil’s books are cool, as is Tim Miller’s Creative Arpeggio Design course.

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#4

What is everyone’s pick position when they attempt hybrid picking? I find that mine goes into UWPS because of the repeated downstrokes.

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#5

I’d say I am at this point, into ‘swybrid,’ Jake. Though I have a now very old background in classical guitar, and though I’ve always hybrid picked chords in an all at once style, I’d never really incorporated the middle and ring fingers sneaking in there to grab outliers. You mention Marshall’s advocacy of it. Rick Graham’s certainly using it. That said, it doesn’t really feel like a diversion away from all my time doing strict alternate picking. My fingers feel smarter now, but there’s a whole lot of alternate picking in between the “escape tricks,” at least for the improvisation I work on. Cheers, Daniel

#6

Interesting @shredDon ! How would you compare your abilities now with swybrid vs crosspicking? How would you compare the timbre, accuracy of rhythm, etc?

Harrison, yes he has a long video on YT on swybrid that’s now on my to-watch list, I skimmed it and some really interesting techniques.

I checked out Gustavo’s book only a little, but it’s something I want to look at again more thoroughly (I was borrowing it at the time.) I think the thing that didn’t grab my attention is that on the surface it seemed to be more like a lick book rather than going over mechanical things, which are usually more interesting to me.

Re: the turnarounds, it’s definitely interesting to compare the pros and cons of having to jump over that string vs getting a right hand finger in there.

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#7

I’m trying to get good at both! It’s a big part of the swybrid thing, to mix both slants and the hybrid. Interestingly I find it works best when the slants are somewhat dramatic. Activating that other finger or two definitely changes a lot of things though.

#8

Thanks Daniel. It’s also interesting how it seems like it lends itself to a different kind of playing, but in theory it…shouldn’t. At least for me. I wonder if that’s because when my right hand goes ‘hybrid mode’ I think of more modern fusion players and immediately do larger intervals and such, or the timbre and articulation of that right hand approach really sounds like that kind of music.

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#9

I’m definitely quite a bit better at swybrid than crosspicking as this point. Crosspicking sounds more rhythmically even to me with that consistent pulse you get with alternate picking, but I do like the “snap” you can get when using fingers. So pros and cons for each, and I’ll keep using and developing both.

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#10

for the right hand fingers, do you use nail or flesh?

I ask because I’m a bad nail biter, so only have the option of flesh, which always is softer. Sometimes I hear hybrid pickers with strong nails (or of course fingerstyle players too) and it just sounds so much stronger and sharper.

#11

I can’t stand having long nails so it’s flesh by default. I’ve read about how Brent Mason uses acrylic nails, but it seems like a lot of effort for a mere noodler like me to maintain. I do think nails especially sound great with acoustic guitars (which I primarily use), but I kind of like the difference in attack you get between pick and flesh of the fingers. I think Dave Martone and Brett Garsed (both primarily electric hybrid pickers) play sans nails, but I could be wrong.

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#12

Where steel strings are concerned, I keep my nails super short to minimize nail interaction with the strings.

Been learning about how top classical guitarists approach filing their nails, but yeah, I mostly use flesh.

#13

Amen. Yeah, I think of swybryd as a problem solver with fast lines, and if I can strictly alternate cross pick something more tonefully, I’m going to cross pick. For those of us that missed out on pick slanting and tradition early in our development, I think we’re more likely to one, bring something else to the table, and two, not be famous for blazing runs. :wink:

More and more lately I find myself listening to clips of music without looking at what is being done. Whole different ballgame when the audio is the only reference point in evaluating a piece.

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#14

Revisiting this - playing around a bit with mixing slants and hybrid I find that some slants and strokes are harder to maintain while doing the hybrid. For example, below is a little line that in theory should work well with downward slanting, but trying to grab the plucked note pushes my pick out of the plane of the strings.

Anybody spent some time working on these issues? Almost like you have to train your pick and the slant to stay still while you pluck with other finger(s)

Of course, adding slurs to this makes it easy.

     D  U  D  U   M  U  D  U
E --------------------------------
B ----------------5---------------
G --------------------------------
D ---------5--7------7--5--7-----
A ---5--8-------------------------
E --------------------------------
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#15

Great observation, Jake! I’ve always noticed how the plucking action pulls the pick out of the plane of the strings as well. It probably accounts for me using only UWPS when doing hybrid picking. Consequently, I find myself naturally using the plucking fingers in interesting ways. Here’s how I play the phrase you posted:

 U  D  P  D  M  D  U  D

E --------------------------------
B ----------------5---------------
G --------------------------------
D ---------5–7------7–5--7-----
A —5–8-------------------------
E --------------------------------

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#16

I would also do this lick using UWPS. I find that when I use DWPS there is not enough space for my fingers to pluck the string as the pick is now resting on the string lower after downstrokes. Whereas if I am in UWPS then I can use Hybrid after either Down or Upstrokes because there is space. The downstrokes lift into the air allowing the fingers room to move, and the Upstrokes travel in the opposite direction than the string that will be hybrid picked.

For me the picking pattern would be
UD UD M UDU (sweep on last note- UU)

I’d check how The Marshall Harrison interview (something I will be watching once I start my membership up again)- dude is pretty much The Godfather of Swybrid.

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#17

I have the same problem with my nails, i use flesh, that brings me a softer sound and I like it, I spend a lot of time practicing Swybrid and there are so many things you can do, I see the examples at the start of the post and I think maybe the picking and plucking patterns are no right.

#18

For the First Example I’ll use U-m-r-D-U-U and for the second one U-m-D-U, is the way Marshall should so it. If you not do this that way you are not doing Swybrid, the technique is about doing the upward sweep just before the pluck, maybe you can do in some cases just normal Hybrid picking and comeback with a upward sweep.
About the picking grip I tried a lot of different positions but the Marshall Harrison way is the best because the distance between the Pick and the middle Finger is short and the finger pluck the note with less unnecessary tension.
The principal advantages I found in Swybrid are the easy jump between strings, there are many picking patterns that are to difficult to do without Swybrid and very noisy, the fluid sound of the fingers, and of course the improvement en relaxing playing and speed especially en Arpegios and 3NPS patterns.
Sorry because my English is not perfect. I’m Cuban and I want to post more but is a little difficult for me.

#19

U-D-D-U-m-U-D-U I think is better

#20

No worries - there are generally a lot of different right hand ‘fingerings’ possible for this stuff, pros and cons of different approaches. For example there’s this guy memo Hagig that does a lot of this stuff: https://www.instagram.com/memohagig/ - he’ll even use his right pinky, but I just don’t have a ton of facility with that stuff, and I usually want more ‘pick sound’ so I’ll personally go for a fingering that has more pick and fewer fingers