I broke my ankle six weeks ago and that required surgery, pretty much a big bummer. Coincidentally, my state is on lock down, so I didn’t miss much.
To keep myself sane, I allotted my 30 minutes or so a day of not elevating my foot to recording myself playing solos. Some of these I knew well, others I had to relearn and record in that 30 minute window, before the pain got to be too much.
This first one I knew well, Dream Theater’s Another Day. I’ve loved this solo since I first heard it in 92.
I apologize for the camera angle, my music stand only can do so much, and you probably can’t tell, but I’m also trying to elevate my right foot to avoid the pain of my cast.
Very nice! Any comments on the mechanics you used in that fast run? Swiping, rotation etc? I am working on this on and off and I use swiping…my speed is not quite there yet but getting close. If felt as 16th note triplets the recording is 140 bpm I think. I can only get 130 bpm on good days you nailed it though.
Thank you, I appreciate it. I am an DSX, upward pick slant, elbow picker, though I’m trying to change to wrist two way. The fast part is economy picking. It’s repeated sixes, so sweeping the last downstroke, leaves me with the last note in each sextuplet being a downstroke escape, which lines up with my style.
When I was learning this style, I did two things. The first was from Vinnie Moore’s instructional, on YouTube, where he plays ascending two string sextuplets up the minor scale, repeating each sextuplet twice before moving up. That would apply very well to this, same principles. The second was playing three note per strings across three strings. Just a fast blast of nine notes, trying to push my hand down through each string change.
It’s not how John plays, but it was the only way I could play Yngwie and Paul Gilbert multiple string licks.
You’ve crushed it, but something about this explanation isn’t sinking in for me. Do you have some time to chat through it?
My understanding is that you’re playing it like this?
I feel like after the first 6 notes I see your picking hand sort of ‘jump’ back up to the D string, which is the only way this would make sense. Still…a repeated downstroke at this speed seems bonkers to me lol!
Is this what you’re saying you do? To me I could see, using DSX, playing the first 6 notes as strict alternate picking. Maybe when you need to get back to the D string to play the remaining 12 notes you get there via swipe or rotation…then from that point forward picking D U D D U D, D U D D U D. And maybe that’s how I should try it. I haven’t thought to bring economy picking into this and that just might get me over the top. If that case, I’ll probably try doing this:
But USX. That brings me to another question: using an upward pickslant and sweeping towards the floor is pretty difficult for me. In fact, most of my career (until I found CtC), I was an upwards pickslanter and wondered why I was good at descending sweeps, but horrible at ascending sweeps. It’s because I was maintaining that UWPS posture and hitting resistance, like in Troy’s animations where he shows a car in the garage going the wrong way over the spikes in the floor. How to you manage reconcile this in your playing? I found once I was aware of this and changed slant accordingly on sweep or economy picking, I was much more even in both directions.
Again, awesome job man! Please don’t mistake any of this as criticism. Not a thing wrong with what you played in my book and it sounds great, so nothing else matters.
That is a great write up and analysis. I will have to grab my guitar and look at my right hand to actually analyze it more closely. I know that in the past, if I really pay attention, I only hear two picked notes on the second string of a six note run. I’ve tried to determine if it’s the sweeper note being quiet or if I’m actually playing a hammer on without intending to.
I do know that I have played the run like the tab book for the last 26 years or so, but in loading the song into Reaper, I changed the last part to not have a slide on the last string.
Back to mechanics, I do know that I start the first sextuplet with a downstroke and the second longer part with a downstroke as well; whether I’m swiping, probably, I don’t know. Watching the Strunz video interview, I saw a lot of my playing in them, though I wish I was that clean. I will try to film a video with a better angle to see what I’m doing.
I quickly made these two videos, the first is what I’m trying to do now, the second is my economy picking. I did around 8 takes of the solo and narrowed those down to the best one. Muscle memory, I’m not sure if I did a hybrid of the two or what, but you get the idea. Rotating wrist
:17 is where the next one gets fluid Economy
No problem, I’m working through technique changes as well. Regarding the wrist rotation, the best example I can think of is that it’s the same motion as turning a key in a door. I start with upward pickslanting and as I’m crossing strings, I turn the key, to downward pick slanting. I’m not 100% there yet, but after 10 minutes of reps I can do it consistently.
you nailed it though.
