Yep sorry, I guess I should clarify also for forummers not familiar with FG. I meant the “Gambale Picking” rules that ensure all string switches are swept: pick an odd number of notes per string to maintaing the direction, or an even number to reverse the direction.
I remember those rules but that’s just regarding direction change while sweeping - he’s really never had any ‘rules’ for alternate. It’s the elephant in the room.
There’s only so far you can go in an interview setting to getting someone to be aware of what they’re doing. Sometimes they’re curious and want to know, which is fun. But when they’ve built a worldview around something, I need to be careful about being the pushy outsider guy who rolls in and “tells it like it is”.
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Is that the same as two way pick slanting?
No specific requests here–I consider both players relevant to my interests and I’m looking forward to the material!
Yes of course, Frank is a two-way pickslanter. He knows he does this as well, but to him it’s to facilitate the sweep. I don’t know if he has discussed this in this courses, I haven’t watched the one Tommo bought. The key is that it is critical to his alternate picking ability on lines like what Tommo has posted. The last time I met him he wasn’t really aware of this, but who knows maybe he has done some more experimentation. We’ll find out.
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I got the pleasure of being at a clinic Frank Gambale had in Paris last year for his Cort signature acoustic guitar. To the point, he said at one point that people didn’t think sweep/economy picking was possible because of “time”. No, he didn’t say timing or tempo, he said “time”. And obviously I completely forgot to ask him what he meant about it. 
He probably doesn’t remember much about it, but if you stumble upon this topic about the difficulties of sweep/economy picking, it would be much appreciated if you guys could ask him about it.
EDIT:
Frank said that it makes the pick glide on the strings a bit more compared to the sharper teardrop/small teardrop shapes commonly used. Also, since all three sides are the same, you get thrice the mileage too as a bonus. 
Except I only remembered that after I got myself some Small Tri Primetone picks so I’ll pretend it’s not linked at all. 
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@Troy Could you ask him perhaps if he does play any string skipping lines if he “skip sweeps” them or if he switches to outside string changes and alternate picks them?
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I’m interested in the Sweeping Turnaround mechanics.
So far what I’ve been doing is just using the 2WPS Rotation to flip direction after an odd number of notes on a string (1 or 3) if I need to change direction. If I don’t need to change direction then I alternate pick and then sweep the string Change (continue Ascending/Descending; The DDU Pattern). If it’s an even number of strings then I just alternate pick it using Pickslanting and then the string change is easy and I can either ascend or descend.
I’d like to hear Frank’s thoughts/ideas on the turnaround/direction change of sweeping and see if he also does the 2WPS Rotation to change direction after an Odd Number of notes or if he only changes direction after an even number of notes.
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Exactly what kind of pick does he use?
No particular questions I’d want to ask, but while I’ll be excited to see both of these, I always thought if Metalocalypse would have been a damned good metal band if they weren’t actually tongue in cheek, so I’ll be curious to see what Brandon has to say about the ‘bad’ and his playing!
That Swisgaar lesson was how I first learned to sweep.
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I love it when Troy asks players to play certain “standard” licks that are often played with a different technique than the player being interviewed uses, and see how the player solves this.
This happened in the Carl Miner 2007 interview, where you could clearly see that Carl prefered some patterns and others were completely foreign to him, although he rearranged them on the spot to make the patterns playable for his own style.
For example, a descending scale in fours (16ths) is always interesting to see, how a player approaches this:
Starting on the high E, continuing at Hi B:
15-13-12
15
13-12
15-13
12
15-13-12etc
This pattern cannot be played with rigid dwps or sweep picking, so I’m always curious how players like Friedman or Gambale approach these licks.
Cheers
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I haven’t looked at the sweeping course videos in a while (and there’s a lot of them!) but I don’t recall Frank mentioning the two-way pickslanting at any point (I’m sure that he did not use CTC terminology at that stage, but I don’t think the concept itself was discussed under any name). I think in the context of sweeping the use of directional pickslanting (to facilitate flopping over strings) is a sort of unwritten law for many players - as you also mentioned in several CTC lessons.
However, I remember him mentioning edge picking at some point, either in the course or somewhere else. He indicated (using other words) that he aims for about 45 degrees of edge picking.
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@AGTG Frank uses triangular picks like these (at least, he used to).
https://www.jimdunlop.com/images/jimdunlop/products/en_us/detail/23431100033.MAIN.jpg
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One other thing I remember him saying is something that was echoed on the forum, the videos even for different techniques: sweep/economy picking requires a reasonable amount of speed to work. Too slow and the movement isn’t realistic. Frank did say he would play more traditional/gimmicky guitar lines at lower speeds. He then demonstrated such lines like double-stops, chicken/hybrid picking, pentatonic lines, so on. I think a lot of people have noticed the difference in style when he plays slow vs. fast.
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My favorite part was when he tries to muster some phony enthusiasm. 
So much yes.
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So, so good! His picking is so relaxed. Looking forward to this one (well, both of the Frank ones actually!)
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The Thunderhorse cometh! This was a super fun conversation.
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I love that Thunderhorse riff, it’s majestic!
Do you know gauge of strings is Brendon using? They look pretty damn thick.