As I'm working through the Yngwie 6's

Playing Technique
#1

…I’m a little surprised to find that as I start moving it around the neck, it’s not my picking hand that’s holding me down, it’s my fretting hand. This, from a guy who’s mostly leaned on legato for faster stuff.

I’ve always considered myself a fairly bad alternate picker, but I’m increasingly starting to think it’s less a matter of picking technique, and more just poor coordination between the two and a fast-but-loose fretting hand. :rofl:

Ahh, guitar… If it was easy, it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun, haha.

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#2

I have exactly the same problem with many licks. Especially the descending sixes from Antigravity get really bad when I start to move that pattern up and down the neck.

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#3

I have had the somewhat same issues! My picking was terrible and my fretting was slow. I attribute my fretting slowness to an injury to my elbow 23 years ago. I fell and broke my ribs and landed on my elbow which caused some numbness in my fingers. Over the years it cleared up for the most part but my third finger was so much slower than the others. I’ve been told that this is actually common with a lot of guitar players anyway, so the injury just compounded it. But, good news! Since I’ve been working on DWPS/UWPS, I’ve also been working on fretting techniques as well. I used to have those fly away fingers which slowed me down. I am retraining my fingers to be more spider-like. In other words, I try to use minimal movement off the strings, especially when moving to an adjacent string like in 6 note licks using two adjacent strings. What actually helped, believe it or not, is the cascading 5 Eric Johnson licks. And on top of that, a positive consequence of learning the spider technique has helped me gain speed, accuracy and a new found excitement. I’ve been working on a Doug Aldrich lick that he does in a Betcha’ Can’t Play This video on YouTube; it’s a pentatonic lick that has been kicking my butt for 5 years. My guess is that it took him a few years to get it up to speed as well. I will say this…the “slow” method does work at least for me. When I learn something new, I play it slow and precise with some pressure in my fretting fingers and I concentrate on accurate DWPS/UWPS as well. This helps to synchronize both hands in my opinion. I gradually start to speed up as I feel more comfortable with any lick. One thing that helps as well is to put your guitar down, close your eyes and visualize yourself playing the lick. If you can see in your mind that you can imagine playing the lick up to speed, hearing it and seeing it, then you should be able to play it. I hope this helps!

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#4

…or even that repeated 4-note two string lick presented as part of the Trilogy lick, or the Trilogy lick itself - that stretch, 9 with pointer to 12 up a string with ring, just feels a little awkward.

The good (I guess) news, I suppose, is twofold - I’m not really influenced by Yngwie so a lot of these patterns are just things I’ve never spent any time on, and I’ve seen pretty clear progress in even 48 hours, working on moving the sixes across strings. And, after some time practicing earlier this afternoon, I fired up a backing track and just improvised for a while, and I think overall my picking AND legato is way more controlled for it (to be fair, I also spent two weeks practicing with a Gruv Gear fretwrap doing fretting-hand-only legato licks while in the early days oof recovering from shoulder surgery, and that DEFINITELY helped my fretting hand control - I wouldn’t recommend having surgery, but find some way to mute your strings at the nut and then try taking a solo legato only, without using your picking hand at all - it’s eye opening).

So, starting from a low bar, and making progress. But it’s interesting to think, I’ve played more than 20 years now, and for thew whole time I always thought, “oh, I suck at picking, but my legato is pretty good.” Turns out my picking wasn’t entirely the problem. :smiley:

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#5

I ve got the same problem with this lick, synchronisation is hard, cant pick faster than 130/140 bpm per group of 4, whereas for simplier licks, mainly pure ascending or descending I can go faster. I guess it takes time to master complex chunks with the fretting hand.

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#6

Figured I’d bump this rather than starting a new thread.

I’ve been taking the Yngwie 6 motif and applying it to diatonic scales as a practice routine, and while god knows there’s enough blame to go around in my playing, the fretting hand is definitely a hindrance. Simply repeating the pattern in a number of diatonic “shapes” across the neck (for example, two two-fret intervals further down the neck, say 7p3h5h7p5p3 on the D or G string) is helping.

However, one thing I’ve found is thhe string changes get a little tricky playing these legato, particularly where it comes to the pointer finger. For example:

|-------------------------------------------------|
|-------------------------------------------------|
|-9p5h7h9p7p5-------------9p5h7h9p7p5-------------|
|-------------9p5h7h9p7p5-------------9p5h7h9p7p5-|
|-------------------------------------------------|
|-------------------------------------------------|

…the pointer finger movement, getting it clean especially when moving to one higher (in pitch) string, is actually a little tricky for me, doing this unpicked.

Has anyone else tried practicing these legato? Any thoughts on this? I guess in partiicular I’d ask what part of your finger you’re trying to fret with. My default instinct here is to kind of half-bar the higher note using the side/pad of the finger, but that makes for a fairly unclean transition where the note doesn’t really sound - to my ears - acceptably clearly. I suspect the right course is to use the very fingertip, and it’s just a matter of practicing until I’ve got that movement committed to muscle memory, but that kind of a jump is something I’ve never really practiced much of, somehow, so I thought I’d ask for a consensus before jumping into it.

Thanks!

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#7

Yeah I practice legato all the time, here is a video, sorry the sound isn’t good and the camera is a bit shaky - it’s hard to film yourself with one hand while playing legato with another :stuck_out_tongue:

I show a close up of what part of my finger I fret the string with. I’m not using the fingertips, I feel it’s more the pad of my fingers. I don’t barre strings when playing legato either.

Damn, I filmed vertically!!!

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#8

I’m noticing my fretting hand is slowing me down, also. I can keep both hands synchronized up to 180 bpm (on one string) but after that it starts falling apart. I can do 170 bpm moving the pattern across all strings, although it gets harder as I work across the fretboard towards the bigger strings. I can hit 220-230 with my picking hand but my fretting hand won’t keep up. Not yet. I do believe, though, that consistent practice with a metronome will allow me to have both hands sync’d all the way up to my picking hands speed ability. I plan on practicing it everyday and (hopefully) gradually increasing the speed on the metronome. I may only be able to increase 1 or 2 bpm per day or week. But I believe it’s achievable. It just doesn’t happen as fast as I wish it did.

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#9

Will watch a few of these tonight, but it sounds like the consensus is you DO want to have the dexterity/independence to cleanly fret with just the tip rather than utilizing a partial bar… Thanks!

#10

180 in sixtuplets???

#11

Oops sorry! No. I guess it would be 90 bpm sextuplets. I have Cubase set to 180 bpm with a beep on every quarter note and I am able to achieve 6 notes for every 2 quarter beats. So I guess that equates to 90 bmp sextuplets. I guess it was wishful thinking on my part.

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#12

Like this

#13

Sounds pretty clean!!!