It seems that Batio is playing a bunch of blazing pentatonic 3s in tribute to Randy, starting at 4:59:
How do you guys think he’s picking that? Perhaps outside picking + swiping?
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It’s his finger technique again, and it’s great. We talked about this in the interview this year:
https://troygrady.com/interviews/michael-angelo-batio-2017/clips/call-to-arms-tk1/
If you fire up the old Star Licks video you’ll realize he uses this technique all the time, like the example we used at 6:45 here:
https://troygrady.com/channels/code-series/episode-12-conquering-the-scale/
It’s very capable and not a thing he is completely aware of, even though it’s so visible when he clicks into it.
Cool video man, I just seen this
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Totally agree on the mechanics used and on the greatness of the results 
But I was wondering if what he is achiving here is full-on crosspicking (at frankly amazing speeds), or if he is perhaps still using something like swiping to make the 1nps passages a bit easier at this tempo. Obviously this is not easy to see from the video, but what would be your best guess @troy?
Can’t comment on the 1nps stuff because I haven’t actually seen him do that before. Could even be legato or a mix thereof, can’t really tell from the video. Would have asked him about this when we met had I known.
Actually that’s not entirely true. I haven’t seen him do major arps this way but he diminished lines this way on Star Licks which we did discuss in our first interview. It’s uwps swiped and a little noisey for my taste, and his actually which he commented on. This sounds cleaner but again could be anything including legato.
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I agree, I could not imagine the frustration trying to engineer a technique that most people who use it cannot even recognise they are doing so!
Like you said, if it happens at highspeed and is generally unheard, then fine.
Yeah I guess it’s more about being careful with left hand muting and not worrying too much about it, rather than about practicing the swipe too explicitly.
But for every player there are probably some passages where the swipe will happen without fail, unless one puts a lot of conscious effort into avoiding it.
Is a swipe just economy picking through to the next string?
It’s pretty much the same effect, but I don’t think about it that way. Economy picking still requires you to keep a rhythm, while this is just a longer pickstroke that plays one string and goes through the next string, which should be properly muted.
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Nice that Mr Van Halen knows his Duke Ellington quotes… 
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