Cliffs of Dover intro cover

Thanks for listening Joe :slight_smile: You know I thought getting comfortable with both usx and dsx would also ‘automatically’ sort double escape for me as well… but I was wrong :stuck_out_tongue:

Disqualified! You used DSX in the last run, and EJ would never do that.

I called the EJ police and they’ll be at your door soon.

Joking obviously, amazing performance and proof that you don’t always have to imitate every single detail of the greats, you can find your own, equally effective methods :+1: :+1:

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:rofl: Thanks Tommo :rofl:
In the past I’ d devised an all-dsx fingering for the entirety of this intro, I kept this last part as i found it provides better muting right after switching techniques from hybrid.

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Awesome playing! Love the tone also :fire:

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Thanks a lot! That’s Archetype: Nolly by Neural Dsp, amp 2 with an overdrive pedal in front . I think it’s supposed to be modelled after a marshall jcm800.

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Very cool playing. Well done. I’ve been working on this one for awhile too. As I’ve worked through more and more of Troy’s seminars, this intro doesn’t sound as impossible as it once did. Of course, there’s still the mental hurdle of “It’s Eric Johnson, I’ll never get it to sound right” but you’ve done a great job here and it’s encouraging for us mere mortals to see that it can be done.

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It can definitely be done. Trust in Troy’s material :grin:

At this point the biggest challenge was the hybrid picked part and switching to a rapidly descending scale right afterwards. I fit a sneaky pull-off there to allow my hand time to readjust.

But these are the kinds of things that make playing the guitar fun for me now , every demanding piece of music is a problem that can be approached in multiple ways , all perfectly valid. Hopefully we can focus on playing the actual music now instead of fretboard gymnastics

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OMG that’s basically perfect!

I like the switch to DSX, which is basically how Bonamassa tackles very (pattern-wise) similar runs as EJ does. TNPS and odd groupings with sweep à la EJ are fully symmetrical under escape stroke changes.

Brilliant!
M

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Really outstanding, sounds like you have it about 98-99% perfect

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You could use the bounce technique here instead of hybrid picking right?

Sounds so good! Ive always cheated and used more pull offs than Eric does, making the effort to pick really does give it a special sound

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Where exactly? I don’t think it’s possible for the pedal note section, bounce is equivalent to string hopping. Maybe you could in the slower ascending arpeggio section that comes before, but I wouldn’t use it for anything really. I avoid it even at low-medium speeds. I hope I understand you correctly.

I can’t work out how Eric plays the last lick of this intro. You switch to dsx, which makes sense, I’ve tried to find a USX way to pick and I can’t :sweat_smile:

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Troy covers this in Cascade. I can never remember if he came to a conclusion or if it remained a mystery.

I recall him floating ideas like hammer from nowhere and also a springy type motion (Troy demos on a snare) that drummers do.

I know in my own playing, USX + hammer from nowhere on that final note is really easy and it sounds convincing. Pretty sure that was NOT what EJ did but it works.

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Ah thanks for that! I was driving myself mad trying to figure it out! :sweat_smile:

The deju vu hit me hard…I knew we’ve discussed this on here in more details lol

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Why not swipe it?

Still needs some work. Possibly metronome practice to control the swipe. And I need to learn how to extend the fingers better, all that classical training makes them always automatically curl. Not so good for muting :stuck_out_tongue:

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That’s how I do it, it’s like a swipe/sweep haha

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I’ve seen EJ do the hammer out of nowhere a few times, I don’t know if he does it every time though. The only example I can think of is at the 1990 Bottom Line NYC live show, during the song “Mountain Medely”. He plays a line in the 3rd position where he plays 2 notes on the B and G strings and then hammers on from nowhere for the 5th note in the sequence on the D string.
It is something he does a fair amount more with his “fuzzy” rhythm tone more than lead because it’s harder to head the difference between a picked and unpicked note.

The conclusion Troy came to was that he tried to use stringhopping to return to the start of the pattern but at faster speeds he would find himself making use of a “rest stroke”.
He would downpick the 5th note of the pattern and it would burry his pick in-between the strings but the advantage of this is that the higher string brought his pick to a stop. This means he didn’t need to use the energy stopping his pick and it allowed him to play faster.
He would just bury the pick and then try to hit the first note of the pattern and would (not consciously) slide his pick across the string in the middle to hit the first string of the pattern.

The episode of Cascade where he talks about this is free on YouTube if you want to google: The Skip Fives Lick (Cascade, Chapter 22)

This way of doing it is actually pretty intuitive to learn and only took me about 10 mins after I watched the cascade episode. It’s usually the way I do it simply because then I find I can synchronise my hands better and don’t lose timing at higher speeds.

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Thanks for clarifying, really interesting what he shows here, instead of swiping, stop the pick on the middle string and ‘bounce’ over it so to speak. Haven’ t thought of trying that, will give it a shot. Swiping that middle string while muting it seems to have potential as well however.