Anyone want to analyze this? It kind of boggles the mind!

Playing Technique
#1

I found this clip on YouTube recently:

Pretty crazy to think you can play at that speed with that technique…

7 Likes
#2

Ok, when that started I just said ‘what the f***!?!?’ Really quite loud! I hope no one heard! I was expecting him to do flamenco style two finger picking (can’t remembered the technical name!) but this was unbelievable. Never seen anything like it!

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#3

It’s hard to hear how solid it is when the fierce attack of JP is still audibly the most prominent.

#4

I’ve seen people using this technique before especially in Flamenco. But I’ve usually seen it being used for chord strumming. But it’s the first time I see it being to used to achieve face melting multi string ultra fast shredding. This is almost not human.

#5

Reminds me of Glenn Delaune, who uses a clear thumbpick and picks pretty fast for only using this thumb:

I have no idea how these guys do it though!

1 Like
#7

There’s a guy called Chris Zoupa on YouTube who plays with the nail on his thumb instead of a using a thumbpick which you can see in the video below. I thought this was the weirdest thing before I saw the first video I posted which is even stranger…

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#8

These thumb only guys are on to something.

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#9

holy smokes! Does anyone else think it looks kinda creepy though? Like the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park or something?

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#10

I definitely share the unease sometimes! I love classical guitar but when I see long thumbnails on their picking hand I gag.

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#11

Here is another cool clip, the beginning of Rhode Island Shred by Guthrie Govan played using picado:

And Dweezil Zappa even left a couple of comments which is pretty cool.

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#12

This guy is honestly one of the most impressive players I have seen on Guitar in years. His technique and tone are amazing.

#13

I have a similar technique with my right hand thumb and I can trace the genesis from when I was playing in a church band and dropped my pick and had to execute some arpeggios and the thumb had to fill the gap since I couldn’t bend down to pick it up without calling a lot of attention to myself.

It wasn’t very clean at first but serviceable but found myself doing it more and more.

Now I routinely use my right hand thumb for all kinds of things as part of my regular technique.

He’s definitely utilizing it to run fast scale patterns in a unique way. Nice!