DWPS and 3 same notes on one string

Hey guys.

I was wondering if anyone could give me advice on how to solve this issue I have.
Let’s say that I play 4 notes on the A string (leaves me on an upstroke) and then 3 notes (but 3 same notes) on the D string (leaves me on a downstroke).

Now the problem becomes if I want to play the A string again, I can’t escape with a pull off as Yngwie usually does when he plays 3 different notes on one string (because I am playing the same note 3 times). Now I am stuck between two strings (the D and G string), what is the answer for a DWPS player to remedy this problem?

Cheers!

1 Like

I’m having a hard time understanding what you are trying to ask (apologies,I’m super tired). Could you write the lick example down?

Deep Purple means:

Let’s say you play a lick in the Em pentatonic scale at the 12th position.

You play 4 notes on the low E, starting with a downstroke, for example E-G-E-G.

Now you want to play the next three notes on the A string, and it’s the note B at the 14th fret repeated 3 times.

Normally if you would loop this lick: E-G-E-G-B-B-B you would want to end on an upstroke.

But in this case you end on a downstroke.

How do you start the lick over on the E-string?

You can’t do the Yngwie thing, since you can’t do a pull-off on the A-string, because the note B is repeated.

It’s a good question :grin:

1 Like

That’s exactly what I mean, thanks.

1 Like

Ah, I get ya now. For the example given, you could shift up to the B on E string, or you could play the first 2 Bs on the A string with your first finger and play the last B on the E string with the forth finger

Or you could play legato on the last E and G which would give you time to do an inefficient string hop to start the Bs on an upstroke…

Does any of what I said make any sense?

It makes sense, but it all falls flat if you are playing high on the neck. You won’t be able to play the same note on the string above it if there are no frets to be played. But yeah I get what you are saying, thanks for contributing with ideas.

It does seem that this is a huge flaw within strict DWPS.

I wouldn’t say huge. with my second post, its very similar to the the usual ‘escape hatch’ pull offs in Yngwie and EJ playing:

E string : E-G-E§-G(h) - hop
A string upstroke start : BBB

If played with enough authority, I’m sure it would be fine. How often are you likely to encounter the issue? If lots, then yes its more of a problem.

This is also true if you are playing only one note on the string below the one you want to get back to and that happens very, very, very often.

Just an example is the intro to Deep Purple’s Lazy, 2 notes on the D string then 1 note on the G string then back to the D. This occurs a lot in many songs. Seems that the only way to remedy this is to use two way pick slanting.

Depends on the speed of the piece I suppose. String hopping works up to tempos of up to 120bpm (16ths) quite easily.

Or swiping possibly???

Oh yeah, I forgot - you could do a sort of ‘hammer-on from nowhere’ gracenote slide from underneath the last B (with a different finger) which could give the effect of a re-picked note and your pick will be a fully escaped upstroke ready to go back to the e string

I know I’m stretching here but, it might sound cool!!!

the string below thing I do with TWPS indeed, I will have to experiment with the egegbbb sequence to see what I would do in practice.

just tried HO from nowhere approach. It works more or less.
There’s one problem though. I usually do hammer-ons from nowhere using left hand muting. In that case it’s not very loud, ehich is not problem when you playing all-legato. But with this HO-pick-pick there’s a dignificant difference in loudness wich masks the first note.
I can do more powerfull HO, but in that case my muting technique stops to work.

Awesome, thanks for trying it! Which note are you hammering? Thinking about it, the first note on the new string might be a good candidate,but strength of note may depend on which finger you hammer with. If you are playing with a cleaber tone then a compressor might help, but there are a lot of folks that do muted legato, so there is scope to improve I suppose…

I actually played some random stuff with 3 identical notes in the end… almost random since my 3rd finger is injured and I don’t want to use it for a while )
I tried 5-6-7 on A string then 5-5-5 on D string. First note on a D string - HO. But I must noice that DWPS is not actually my thing, and I’m far from many of this forum guys in terms of speed.
Anyway, for me this pattern is easier to play with alternate picking all the way

Haha! Thats why I was hoping you guys would try it - I’m terrible at pure DWPS mechanics - the pull offs etc. trip me up big time!

I’ve just noticed that I didn’t play 3rd note, doing hammer-on instead. Which is kind of logical: with pronounced DWPS after last downstroke you rest on a next string. So I was actually playing down-up-HO-HO- down-up.
Good news - in that case I don’t need hammer-on from nowhere anymore. Since I have time to move my pick and start last 3 notes with upstroke

I wish I could upload a video… though it might be not very helpful since, as I said earlier, I’m not a fast player and here are a lot of guys who could do it much better.

I played the pattern, for me (if all the notes have to be picked) the fastest and easiest way is to start with an upstroke on the low E and change pickslant whenever you cross the E and A strings. So you use UWPS for the E and DWPS/neutral slant for the notes on the A-string, and then just before you go back to the E-string you change to UWPS.

1 Like