Challenging downward pickslanting arrangement - The Grid Tigran Hamasyan

Playing Technique
#1

A student was messing around with this (originally a piano part) so I tried arranging it for him in the way I thought was the most playable…it’s pretty cool…and tough…but playable!

there are of course speed challenges for both hands but I think a bigger hurdle is properly feeling theses five and seven note groupings

it’s 5, 5, 7, 5, 5, 5, repeat

interesting a lot of people notate it in different time signatures, like this:

or as measures of 5/8, 7/8, 5/8, etc.

I find 4/4 simplest for just first wrapping my head around it and getting familiar, but then after that it’s helpful to see all the odd groupings and I can see playing it with a group wanting people to feel it in odd times

Been working on a bunch of stuff with it, it’s not all that crazy to play it fast, but to play it really locked into uh…the…‘grid’ is harder, to mix the sweeps together and stay tight in the time.

Been experimenting with different things, one of which is just making a much simple scale run out of the 5/5/7/5/5/5 grouping to take out a bunch of challenges and focus more on downward slanting+odd groupings

For me I’m finding the hardest thing is just staying locked in through the sweeps and especially accenting the bass note - as my tendency is to accent the last upstroke.

Let me know if you try it/what you think

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#2

LOVE THIS STUFF!

Here’s another killing tune from Tigran with one of my favorite cats on guitar: Charles Altura. No picking though hehehe.

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#3

Your kinda touching on the reason I gave up on economy picking. I just couldn’t get the timing and dynamics right. And when I listened to it slowed down… it was painfully obvious that I still hadn’t mastered it. But I am sure there are others here who can do this with DWPS/economy.

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#4

Same here, it’s way too had to be consistent with the timing in my case. I like to try and get my notes as evenly placed as possible. With economy I can hear some notes are rushed.

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#5

Not sure this will help you or your student. But whenever I have to tackle odd-note repetition… I just tremolo it… and accent it at the beginning of each grouping. So if the 5 5 7 5 5 5 were completely alternate picked… the accent would of course switch each time from upstroke to downstroke. I’d do that a few times… and then immediately switch to the helper version. I just tried it… it sounds nice.

But I know that doesnt answer your question about doing this with DWPS/economy picking… but I’m just putting it out there.

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#6

I think the advantage of seeing it as measures (5/8, 7/8, 5/8, etc) is that the foot can help keeping the time. You will have to change the foot accents for every measure though. Complicated song :astonished:

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#7

that’s sick! Sounds like a damn fun band to be a part of, too.

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#8

Your kinda touching on the reason I gave up on economy picking. I just couldn’t get the timing and dynamics right. And when I listened to it slowed down… it was painfully obvious that I still hadn’t mastered it. But I am sure there are others here who can do this with DWPS/economy.

I mean, the way I look at it, it’s hard to master crosspicking at fast speeds, and it’s hard to get master dead-on timing and accents for sweep stuff at fast speeds.

I might go out on a limb - and happy to be wrong - that more guitarists could play it the way I arranged (or some variation) it clean and in time than could play it at that tempo w pure alternate picking.

For me, at these tempos I’m personally much more comfortable with DWPS/sweep-ish type of arrangements than alternate picking everything especially cross picking.

I think we’ve seen with Gambale and others that you can get the sweeps tight and we’ve seen with Andy Wood and Troy that you can get the crosspicking pretty blazing fast too, so it’s a little pick your poison.

I’d say for a long term versatile picking strategy, being able to alt pick these kinds of things are superior. If you’re like me and not that great with alt, but would like to play the lick sometime this month, haha…

Not sure this will help you or your student. But whenever I have to tackle odd-note repetition… I just tremolo it… and accent it at the beginning of each grouping. So if the 5 5 7 5 5 5 were completely alternate picked… the accent would of course switch each time from upstroke to downstroke. I’d do that a few times… and then immediately switch to the helper version. I just tried it… it sounds nice.

yeah I’m doing various things to feel the groups. I’m finding there are a few different elements to it:

  • Internally hearing the groups/accents
  • Internally hearing the groups at full speed
  • Physically dividing the time properly on the instrument
  • Doing so evenly and with the right accents

But I know that doesnt answer your question about doing this with DWPS/economy picking… but I’m just putting it out there.

Haha, there wasn’t a question! Was just sharing an arrangement I thought was cool, and doable for those who aren’t master cross-pickers.

But I appreciate your points. I’ve paused on my crosspicking explorations for the time being, too many other things going on and I was not seeing enough progress through any of my experiments, but I’m keeping my ears and eyes open to the developments here on teaching the technique. Until then, I gotta be clever, hah…

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#9

Yeah, they’re basically headbanging and all smiles by the end, great live band vibes all around hehe.

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#10

ok, work in progress for sure:

the guitar i normally play is at my teaching studio but really got antsy about wanting to practice this, hah.

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#11

First off… you’ve got awesome fretting skills. Very impressed. I just tried it as well… and I couldn’t transition as well as you.

As far as the X-picking vs eco-picking… there’s no question that more guitarists know the latter. And that’s probably because it takes 10x longer to learn the former. It took me a year to convert to double-escaping, and then another year to fix my tracking for the 1NPS stuff. That’s quite a commitment of time. (I’m guessing others can probably learn it quicker than me.) But once you get passed the initial learning curve… it makes things easier in almost every area of playing. I’ve gone back and tried all the old stuff I couldn’t play… and suddenly now its playable.

But I don’t know how you would approach a student who wants to learn this kinda thing. Maybe if they already have a bit of a double-escaped stroke… it might be worth it for them to fine-tune it. Otherwise… I guess econo-picking is probably the way.

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#12

First off… you’ve got awesome fretting skills. Very impressed. I just tried it as well… and I couldn’t transition as well as you.

Thank you! Yeah like a lot of folks, lefty is in better shape than righty.

As far as the X-picking vs eco-picking… there’s no question that more guitarists know the latter. And that’s probably because it takes 10x longer to learn the former. It took me a year to convert to double-escaping, and then another year to fix my tracking for the 1NPS stuff. That’s quite a commitment of time. (I’m guessing others can probably learn it quicker than me.) But once you get passed the initial learning curve… it makes things easier in almost every area of playing. I’ve gone back and tried all the old stuff I couldn’t play… and suddenly now its playable.

But I don’t know how you would approach a student who wants to learn this kinda thing. Maybe if they already have a bit of a double-escaped stroke… it might be worth it for them to fine-tune it. Otherwise… I guess econo-picking is probably the way.

Here’s how I approach it as a teacher, and I’d actually be interested in feedback from @Troy, yourself, others.

And I’m really transparent with my students about this:

I, me, Jake, I have had a lot of success with pick slanting, hybrid, etc, re-arranging fingerings of things to make them more accessible for my right hand bag of tricks. It’s all stuff I’ve worked on a lot and I feel good about what I can do with the techniques. Cross picking, I personally have devoted a tiny bit of time to it and wasn’t making a lot of headway so I decided to put it on the back burner for now but definitely want to revisit it.

I feel like I see and have heard of a lot of players re-learning slanting techniques (and avoiding the most difficult picking motions for non-crosspickers) and having a lot of success with it, but to this day I haven’t seen a ton of people learning crosspicking for the first time in their lives and then developing abilities to really blaze with it.

I see clearly what Troy has developed for himself with the technique, and I also see that Troy and others are continually trying to refine how to teach and explain the technique.

So I tell students what I have had success with, and what I have seen other people have success with - not just “Batio does it this way” but rather instances of people who struggled for a long time and then found solutions. When I tell them about cross picking I basically say I think it might wind up being the answer to a lot of picking problems, but A. I personally don’t know how to do it at a high level B. I don’t know a lot of examples of people who have changed their pick style to this and had a lot of success with it C. I don’t know of a consistently successful method of teaching the technique, and I certainly am in no position to develop my own…seeing as I can’t even do it, hah!

So I basically have a set of processes I use with them to develop their vocabulary and get their stuff up to tempo and I’m clear with them about all this and invite them to explore crosspicking, but that I won’t personally be able to help them with it at this time.

That seem fair?

I’m really hopeful that in, say, five years, this won’t be the case, at least for the guitar community in general if not for my own teaching and playing.

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#13

I love how you’ve presented this in detail, with alternative ways of writing/feeling it AND with the “training wheels” version to help get the timing.

I wonder if you could do away with that double downstroke on the A string Eb to G? Fret the Eb on the low E instead? Maybe that’s too much of a jump.

#14

shit! haha that’s just an error. down on Eb up on G. fixed

#15

Well, I think Troy has been thinking about the same thing as you… how on earth is this supposed to be taught… especially to beginning guitarists who want speed. Also keep in mind that Troy didn’t learn this quickly either. It sounds like he’s been working at it for a few years. Also, troy’s mechanic doesn’t utilize fingers and forearm rotation like mine, so I can’t really compare my form to his.

I would also say that if it were genuinely easy… way more people would be doing it. I really don’t think it’s something that a pick-slanter can switch to in a few months.

The fact that I was never an ‘ace’ pick-slanter… might have motivated me a bit more. I was frustrated, and never able to play 3NPS lines cleanly, and my econo-picking was pretty average… and I’d get ‘stuck’ between the strings too much… so I was pretty motivated to find something new.

On the flip-side… X-picking is a rewarding learning process. Even though I coudln’t do 1NPS runs throughout my first year… I would get little ‘dividends’ out of it… like learning 3NPS runs and rotational patterns runs cleanly. Also… it really forced me to fix problems that I’d neglected in the past… like outside ascending transfers.

But I sure wish I were a more proficient ‘fretter’. I think I’ve been neglecting that a bit over the last few years.

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#16

Is it possible to tag stuff on soundslice so that we can find all examples like that with a search ? This tool seems insane !!

EDIT : tagged with #DWPS for instance.

#17

You can simply use their search feature and it covers any words that are used anywhere in the score or description - but alas I didn’t use “DWPS” there, hah.

#18

I think your “The Grid” slice might by private or non-referenced, because I can’t access it via search, but only by using the link.

#19

Ah yes, it is not on my public channel. It’s shareable by link only. I guess that’s the difference.

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#20

I know it´s been a while since you started this topic but thank you for posting this. i hadn´t heard of Tigran befor and i love this stuff.

Since the economy version of this lick is simply unplayable for me. I tried to come up with a picked version of it and therefore had to rearrange it a bit and transpose it a whole step to avoid all too stretchy fingerings.

Though… no sweeps but still super challenging for me to play. Awkward string skips, muting and the ever changing number of notes per string make this really hard to play and a nice exercise.

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