Anyone else don't like the sound of swiping?

I’m not sure I’m loving the sound of swiping, it’s pretty abrasive in times where I don’t want to be abrasive.

Well, I think the best swiping happens when the player isn’t trying to swipe, they’re trying to get over the string and just don’t quite make it. With proper muting, this can be nigh undetectable.

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How do you know when it’s happening? I’d be hard pressed to hear the swiping here:

Edit: Second example, not swiping, displacement, but similar idea, picking on the “wrong” string. Also from slow motion I can see what looks like one swipe pickstroke but would be equally hard pressed to pick that out at normal speed without a Magnet.

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I with Troy on this one, it’s not really noticeable and many good players (i.e the majority of USX players) use it to some degree or another.

A great example is ascending sixes (starting on a downstroke) as you can sweep over the next higher string to get the pick in position for the upstroke (instead of using mixed-escape)

At speed, I don’t hear a difference, but even if there is, the ease is worth the trade-off.

I can’t even hear that at 50% speed :sweat_smile:

Maybe it’s me who’s confusing things or my playing is still too lame. In my mind, it was like a “rougher” version of whatever you were trying to do when you use more angle. Best example I can think of right now is how Dave Mustaine plays sometimes. Maybe that’s just poor synchronization, then.

When I was a teenager, I was always annoyed that I couldn’t get the Paul Gilbert lick to “snarl” the way it does when Paul plays it.

It turns out that the “snarl” was swiping noise. It’s an articulation, the principle is basically the same as a scream bend (which I understood and knew how to do).

I was annoyed because I wasn’t swiping, but I didn’t know swiping was a thing.

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Swiping, when it is audible, is often an open string being hit. As @Tom_Gilroy is pointing out, the “classic” example is when a DSX player hits the next lower open string during string changes.

When Al does the repeating sixes pattern descending across the strings, right at the moment of the string change, you’ll hear a muted open B, then a muted open G, and so on. This is a worst-case example since the open note is far enough away in pitch from the fretted notes that it sticks out sonically.

Swiping when it’s NOT audible, you won’t always know when it’s happening. The stealthier cases are where the pick actually changes its escape path in some way to make the attack smoother. You can see when I do this how the pick just barely flops over the string because it’s no longer following a strictly USX escape path. In combination with the edge picking I’m using, there is sound, but it’s dramatically reduced compared to just playing througth the string with USX:

In the fast high gain version at the end, I transition (subconsciously) almost completely to displacement where I don’t even pick the third note on the low string any more. That’s even stealthier. I’m not trying to do either of these things, and I can’t tell when I’m doing one versus the other. It’s a skill that is learned over time because it sounds better not worse. So it really blurs the line between an error and a technique.

More generally, if you play something and just decide it sounds “off” in some way, you can’t really assume anything about what’s causing that. Looking at the technique and the phrase, up close, is the only categorical way to verify mechanically which type of picking “error” is happening, or whether what you’re hearing has anything to do with picking at all.

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