Economy picking etude and mini lesson - 9th arpeggios

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#1

Part of my job is to teach a variety of guitar techniques, which means I have to learn them as well, at least a little bit… so I have a vague idea of what I am talking about! But I absolutely hate doing “exercises”, so what I usually do is create a mini piece of music that uses the technique and that sounds nice (to me).

(Well, at least I like to call it “piece of music”, not sure about my neighbours and loved ones… especially after recording attempt number 99).

As most of us probably know, “economy picking” or “Gambale sweeping” was made popular in a rock/fusion context by… the great Frank Gambale of course! He may not have been the first one to use (at least part of) this technique but he was certainly the first one to “codify it” and teach it systematically.

I think the technique lends itself very well to cool-sounding mixes of scales and arpeggios, like the 9th thingies I am using here. The main challenge for me has always been to mix alternate and sweeping in a smooth way, trying to minimize the (inevitable?) timing irregularities at the junctures. I find the 9th arps to be a lot easier, in this respect, compared to your standard 3nps scales. Therefore, I think they may be a better starting point to get into this kind of playing (easy wins, remember?).

Etude:

Micro-lesson:

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#2

Cracking playing, Tommo! How do you get the descending sweeps so even sounding? Is there something that makes this easier? I find ascending easier than descending. Are you thinking in chunks of 5 notes, focussing on the first note of each beat and letting the rest of the pattern sort itself out?

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#3

Great question! To be honest I have not fully analyzed my technique in this particular recording.

However I have a working theory that the most important thing is to have a fairly consistent pick attack on the strings you are sweeping. I.e., each string should feel like it opposes approximately the same resistance to the pick’s motion.

This can be achieved in a variety of ways depending on the technique, motion, etc. The other day I was playing around with shoulder (!) motion among other things, since I saw Batio using it during the sweeps.

It’s been a while since I watched Troy’s series on Gambale Sweeping, but I’m sure that will contain good info on this exact problem:

Yep I think so! In order to match the classical and electric performances I had to record to a click. I think my strongest reference point was the highest note of the pattern (every 10 notes). But I also feel the ascending and descending porstions as separate, so it’s likely I’m chunking as 5s.

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#4

Really great! The highest praise I can think to give you is that this does not sound like economy picking. I’m sure that statement will offend some but that’s not at all my intent. Awesome playing!

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#5

Fantastic stuff!

I do think economy picking (either one or two-way) is the way to go if you want to break out of sounding too “scalar” and add some of them hip intervals. It works in a very intuitive way imho.

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#6

This has been my experience too. Although purely directional economy picking is quite straightforward and intuitive, what Chris Brooks calls ‘broken’ economy picking - whose logic is dictated by a particular pick-slant or escape direction - is a bit less intuitive, it’s just one of those things that has to be learnt and practiced as a lick or pattern…

And thanks Tommo, for this etude, which I’ve started learning.

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#7

Side-note: layering that with the acoustic guitar is a pretty cool idea :open_mouth:

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#8

Awesome Tommo! I learned a while ago that I can’t seem to do ascending sweeps that well, so… I guess I will do something… else for that portion until I can get to the “upstroke” sweep portion of the lick. Sounds great, man, really well done!

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#9

Sure thing, what about a hybrid pluck for the middle string while ascending? that will set you up for a downstroke on the top string so that you can still descend with the sweep-economy thing - In fact I’ll try that too :slight_smile:

So the full pattern is:

DUD ( bottom str)
pluck (mid str)
DUDU (high string) → the last “U” continued into a 3-string sweep to get back to the starting point.

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#10

Hey Tommo - yeah, I am immediately able to make it work a lot better with hybrid picking, not sure why that would be more natural than economy picking the whole thing, but I’ll take it! (Still trying to learn other stuff too of course…) Hybrid certainly makes things that don’t normally workout generally playable, so I will take it! Thanks again for sharing the cool etude! @tommo - How much “edge” picking would you say you use in this?Just curious.

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#11

Ha good question, I don’t know… you’d probably expect better from an instructor :rofl:

Generally speaking I try to modulate things like edge picking / pick depth by feel and sound. I know that I can modulate edge picking by bending the thumb and/or changing the arm position wrt the guitar body (approach angle), but then the exact amount is regulated by trial and error, until I like the way the pick attack sounds and feels.

PS: I can grab a longer slomo section later so we can take a look.

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#12

That whole situation is so nuanced. I mean, with a leading edge grip, you could have your pick totally perpendicular to the strings but if your motion follows a diagonal path, how much edge is that? Also, does the trailing edge grip allow for different degrees of edge picking?

I’m loving this thread!

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#13

Good question and I think yes! It may help to try and visualize only pick, string and pick’s trajectory in empty space, without the distraction of your hands, what they look like etc. In the end the pick and strings only care about how they + their relative trajectory are oriented.

Some good graphics here: Pick Attack Reference – Cracking the Code

Edit - massive side-rant alert. This is why hate generic advice such as “your pick grip has to look like such and such / this is the best way to hold a pick,” etc. etc.

Edit 2: here’s the slomo excerpt @Scottulus. I see quite a bit of edge picking actually! Though it’s hard to tell for sure because we’re always trying to extrapolate 3D information from 2D videos!

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#14

Yeah! I thought so also! Thanks so much for sharing. You can really see the slant changes also; I have real troubles with that. Very cool, I’ve watched it a bunch of times, very awesome. Dumb question though; when you economy pick, do you find it works out best on the neck pickups as opposed to the bridge? Which pickup is this one played on? Thanks again.

** Edit** I took a run at this thing, just messing around and kept it pretty “neck pickup”. Very very rough, my apologies - hahaha I am really not good at this… You can really hear how midrangey the bridge pickup is - lots of noise, harmonics and scratching. I do have to wonder if the neck pickup is where economy/sweepers “live”? If so… I might be even denser than I thought… (I honestly just thought to myself - “Hey self, try the neck pickup…”) Anyways. Maybe an okay starting point you think?

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#15

Love it! I’m a big fan of economy picking. The seamless mix of arpeggios and scaler ideas sounds great

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#16

Hey Scott! To be honest this looks more like you haven’t yet fully memorized the sequence, rather than some more fundamental mechanical problem. For the memorization I think it’s OK to slow down a little, then when you feel like your hands “got” the sequence you can try some fast attempts.

Another thing you can do is set a fixed number of repetitions of the pattern, e.g. 4 reps + 1 final note. This way you are not just aimlessly repeating the pattern waiting to trip up, but you have clear start and end points.

minor comment: I think you swapped the order of some notes (on the top string) compared to what I do, but if the number of notes is the same, and the pickstrokes still work out for the economy thing, that should not be a problem.

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#17

Great little practice snippet. Feels super awkward to me, so I’m gonna work it up! Thanks Tommo!

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#18

@tommo Hey man, thanks for checking it out. Yep - very flawed and a real kind of “rattle that sucker off as fast as I can”. I thought someone might see something that I am missing. For sure, I played the wrong sequence of notes on the top end, heh got that fixed now, thanks for pointing that out. Great suggestions I will try that, thanks.

EDIT I wasn’t sure exactly WHICH part you meant in regards to the memorization(LH or RH) ; but my interpretation of the lick was shaky and my ability to do ascending sweeps (for some unknown reason) is equally shaky. So translation the whole thing is doomed! So I thought I’d study what you posted a bit more and emulate it as best I can with my grip/situation.

Trying to do my best to sort of roll with the curves a la Frank Gambale in terms of slanting and escaping whatever direction I happen to be in. It feels… um weird. I am not good at it, so I did have to bust out the metronome and kind of start slowly to teach my hand what to do. Not certain it’s correct, or will turn out good, or anything like that but what the heck, eh? I’m at about 16ths @132 which is heavily muted and successful err sometimes. haha Maybe I will circle back and share if there’s some sort of decent improvement. Thanks again, Tommo.

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