I’m struggling to get this phrase up to speed (150 BPM). It’s strictly alternate picked, as shown by Guthrie Govan himself in this video.
I’m primarily an USX player, and can play one-way slanted phrases faster than 150 BPM. Specifically, I don’t understand how to find an efficient motion for the inside picking, shown in red. Everything I’ve tried feels too inefficient. I get a bouncy feeling similar to string hopping when I try to push the tempo.
before you try anything else, start on whatever stroke you aren’t currently starting on
Sure, I could rearrange the notes or cleverly use hammer-ons/pull-offs to make the string changes work.
But watch the video. Guthrie Govan strictly alternate picks this (starting on a downstroke) with the original fingering. I want to know how.
I’m not super familiar with the phrase or Govan’s technique… but simply looking at hte notes, a few things jump out:
*The opening notes, pretty munch to where you notate in red, lend themselves to a single escape picking movement, specifically escaped upstrokes.
*the four notes in red do NOT. Nor do they lend themselves to switching from escaped upstrokes to escaped downstrokes, since the first note would be a downstroke (which would be buried) you’d need to change strings after, and then for a couple notes it’s one note per string. You can’t really switch from escaped upstrokes to escaped downstrokes for a bit here since you’d need to switch pretty much every note. A “escape hatch” pulloff to the 15th doesn’t really work here, you could sweep the next two notes, but not the final 16th.
*This suggests two possibilities - the tab could be wrong (and again, I don’t know the original) and this could be different from the way Govan plays it… or he’s doing some sort of crosspicking/double escaped motion here.
I have no idea what his actual motion looks like and how exactly he’s doing that… but if you want repeated one note per string playing, it’s either slow enough that you can fudge it, or he’s using a double-escaped motion.
I just tried it, down an octave to get the Magnet on. I’m sure I could woodshed it so it’s perfect, but this is the basic idea, and more-or-less how Guthrie does it. I am normally DSX when playing fast, so here I am just aiming for less escape overall/playing “flatter”, and letting the hand and forearm handle the rest.
Excuse the biffs and slow tempo but here’s one option that keeps it all picked:
I don’t think he picks the C on the B string but slides into it and picks Db with a downstroke which leads to an upstroke for the F etc.
I think the tab is correct and he’s playing pretty flat; starting out with USX and switching to DSX during the inside picking of beat 4.
