Guthrie Govan on Economy Picking

[Prlgmnr]

Came across this in my Youtube recommendations as one does:

Guthrie Govan on Picking Techniques in Context

I’m sure that in the playing from 2:28 to 2:58ish there will be a few usable/movable units or cells that would be useful to learn but I’m struggling to pick it all out by ear, not that it’s anything complicated harmonically, it just whips by pretty fast even when slowed down and I’m unable to work out where the string changes are.

Obviously the starting point of, perhaps counter-intuitively, playing 2nps pentatonic ideas with economy picking rather than alternate is clear enough but I feel like there’s a missing step to work out between that and “blaze up and down the fretboard with abandon”, as in what groupings of what number of notes per string can be made to work.

Anyone with a better ear and a better grasp of economy picking mechanics than me able to help me out here?

[ASTN]

@Prlgmnr

playing 2nps pentatonic ideas with economy picking

Do you mean playing back and forth using two strings only ? Because it would work only in that case. Long descending or ascending 2nps runs with sweeping are impossible.

[Prlgmnr]

Yeah that was the starting point like I said.

[JB_Winnipeg]

If you can and have the technical chops/willingness, it might be worth grabbing that vid and saving it to your PC for slowing it down via a dedicated video editor, you may get a better view of what’s going on. Just idle thoughts.

[ASTN]

From 2:25 he plays somthing like that:

rhythm is jsut for reference. He plays it in a free manner. There are also some sneaky legato, which I didn’t mark.

@Prlgmnr

what groupings of what number of notes per string can be made to work.

As it can be seen from the video Guthrie uses all techniques: economy, alternating and legato, so the answer is - any combination of note will work for him.
If you want pure sweeping (without alternate/legato) then rules are as follows:
1 - change strings after odd number of notes per string if you moving in one and the same direction (all ascending or all descending)
2 - change strings after even number of strings if you changing direction (ascending after descending, or descending after ascending)

[bob]

There are a couple of nice examples of this type of two-string sweeping in the Frank Gamble interview. Frank is super smooth at it and with the CTC Magnet close-up camera angles you can really see what’s up!

[Prlgmnr]

@ASTN

As it can be seen from the video Guthrie uses all techniques: economy, alternating and legato, so the answer is - any combination of note will work for him.
If you want pure sweeping (without alternate/legato) then rules are as follows:
1 - change strings after odd number of notes per string if you moving in one and the same direction (all ascending or all descending)
2 - change strings after even number of strings if you changing direction (ascending after descending, or descending after ascending)

Yeah I think I was getting myself in trouble because I was trying to make every string change be an economy change, and that’s not what’s going on.

Cheers for tabbing that out, and for articulating those rules which I think I’d almost worked out but was thinking of it in a more complicated way.