I’m bringing this back because I finally recorded an attempt at one of the things I was working on.
Here’s me blundering through the head of Chick Corea’s “Got a Match?”:
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Hey Timehat - thanks for sharing this, I wanted to say it’s tricky to comment when you’re playing right along with the original recording as it’s hard to hear what’s you and what’s the original, you know what I mean? Just saying this in case you wanted to hear some feedback or something.
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I wrote a little ‘harp scale’ lick last week that was quite difficult to get at the tempo I wanted.
Hybrid picking and a couple of little sweeps:
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Help on the way/Slipknot by the Grateful Dead is on my wish list. I have a guitar pro file I can share if anyone is interested. Just DM me.
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The first sextuplet group of this solo, which is the second solo of the song Nothing to Say by Angra on the album Holy Land. The tempo is around 135BPM or slightly more, which makes it around 13.5 notes per second, let’s say under 14. I usually prefer economy picking, but I can’t get this one going to speed with either hand. It’s nothing fancy technically speaking but the speed and accuracy required elude me completely. My hands just lock up.
The rest of the song has some interesting riffs for the picking hand that border on crosspicking, so it’s worth checking out.
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It’s not easy at all to get fast 3nps scale fragments at that speed, especially when you have to get in and out of them so fast.
Have you tried rearranging them as 4nps? I found that one way pickslanting (without sweeps) is much more suited to this sort of thing.
On my side I’m still struggling with the last erotomania solo and the technical difficulties main riff!
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Well I’m not even trying to get out! 
I suppose it’s worth a try. My left hand won’t like it but it already cannot cope with the 3NPS version anyway…
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Exactly! I usually find it more comfortable to slide with the index for some reason.
Another alternative to make it one way ps is to have one string with 6 notes instead of 3 (and a big position shift) - if that makes sense. I could try to tab it tomorrow!
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Even though I haven’t been contributing, I think this thread is a great idea.
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Fast 3nps picking is so common in guitar that you should try to come up with a strategy to play them instead of reorganizing the notes, imo.
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And yet at that speed it is very rare to see someone playing it cleanly
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@Lukhas, how is it going with the ascending scale? As I mentioned in other threads, the ascending 3nps scales have been my nemesis for ages (both with economy and alternate - there’s no escape for me!).
Things have been improving recently as I started experimenting with “wrist only” motions - see the recent crosspicking etc. discussions. Before that I was using “a lot” of forearm rotation to induce the TWPS motions, and somehow it never felt great (I am talking about executing the line with alternate picking in this case).
As far as I understand there is nothing instrinsically wrong with using the forearm (Troy got some amazing results with it in Antigravity), but it never fully clicked for me.
I don’t know if this can be helpful but I thought I’d share just in case!
I’ve been practising it on and off as I’ve also picked up Symphony of Destruction’s solo to work on (with a completely different set of challenges!). I’m trying to experiment with getting the feel of the economy picking right. How it should feel like when going from one string to another in the ascending direction, working on consistency. It feels easier when descending, going towards the lower strings than when ascending, so I’ trying to see what I do right going up to try to apply it when going down. On the few examples we have of economy pickers, it does look effortless from afar but a lot of techniques, not only in guitar do look effortless but they aren’t always really effortless. When I asked Frank Gambale about it, he very obviously said no, both sides were equivalent in smoothness and that he was picking pretty hard. Sometimes I think it’d be way easier to brute force it with alternate picking! 
There’s also that the rest of the song is pretty much alternate picking, somewhat cross-picking. You really have to switch gears from one motion to another. Like this section before the two solos that’s a good workout… if you try to alternate pick everything! As the tab may suggest, I doubt it’s alternate picked on the recording: some of the sections are globally in time but not exactly on the click, very legato.
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Great choice! This solo and the one from Skin o’ my teeth are also on my list of challenges to work on!
I also have trouble squeezing a fast economy lick in between alternate picked passages. My main obstacle is timing. With a 3nps scale played in 16th triplets, I noticed that having the accent fall exactly on the string change gives me trouble. I find it easier to play these things by conceptualising them as 2+2+2 rather than 3+3, if that makes sense! Again this may or may not help you, but there you go 
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Always wanted to play that on guitar. Might start on it
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I’m still chipping away at “Eugene’s Trick Bag” song is killing I’m stuck between the end of the arpeggio section and the diminished lick at the end so basically the caprice section and directly after. Everything else I’ve got down or can at least play it through. Although the diminished lick is a pain at first my mind keeps trying to play far beyond the sun at that part.
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Hi all,
I have been working on these passages for god knows how long. I come back to them every now and then to see if I actually made improvements. They are my benchmark:
- EJ’s Cliff of Dover intro lick (fully picked, with the EJ system)
- Dream Theater’s Glass Prison Intro arpeggios (fully picked, some sort of cross-picking)
- “Eugene’s Trick Bag” intro arpeggios (fully picked, economy)
My latest pick is:
- John Petrucci’s ‘Universal Mind’ intro. (fully picked).
Anyone working on something similar? Or did anybody struggle with these and find a way to clean them up?
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Now that’s some peak Petrucci picking. The curvature of the motion is so flat I can’t see the pickslant. Even with the nice camera angle, you’d think the strings aren’t there as an obstacle at all. 
Do you also use this intro as a benchmark?
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I know I’m a bit of a broken record on this topic, but I have the impression he is mostly using dwps+swipes!