Haha. Paul Gilbert admits that the "Paul Gilbert lick" is too hard for beginners

Playing Technique
#34

I saw Bruce in the band “The Scream” open up for the Bulletboys back in the early 90s. I remember in an interview he said something like “the speed I am playing at right now is ideal for me…when i was in RacerX I had to practice 8hrs a day” lol

yeah, its all quite fascinating. Paul said he had been playing for 8 years when he came across that lick. I had been playing for maybe 2?

That “outside to a higher string” was so freaking foreign for me that it was just a bridge too far at that point. I didnt have anything resembling the discipline to work thru it. Guys in their early 20s often have other things on their minds

But then the “inside” version above presented another type of obstacle to me. It felt SO easy by comparison that it was probably TOO easy. In other words it was like running downhill or doing “overspeed” training.

At that point I hadnt even worked on any sort of method at all even for single string speed. So, for whatever reason, the string change part of that “inside” lick fell naturally to me so basically I could pick it as fast as I could pick on a single string. WELL THAT WAS A PROBLEM because I wasnt even at the point to do stuff like coordinated sextuplets on a single string.

So I did what any typical semi beginner would do. try it once, try it again, maybe a third time and if it doesnt work by then move on to something else lol

its funny that in this vid Paul describes hearing Yngwie and what pattern did Paul start on??? SINGLE STRING!!!

I wish Paul would have put single string first in his instructional vid lol…some of us may have developed quite differently if he had. I do believe with all my heart that single string speed is the best logical step to other things

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#35

That comment, along with others of yours I recall lead me to think that maybe the technique which would have come to you the most naturally would be to use economy picking when presented with what would otherwise be an outside string change, and use alternate picking for everything else. What do you think? Does that makes sense? Is it something you’d consider trying?

I read (probably in GFTPM), that the reason Paul gave Bruce the spot of 2nd guitarist in Racer X is that while teaching at GIT, no matter what exercise, lick, or solo Paul would give the students in the class he taught, Bruce was the one student who would ALWAYS come to the next class having nailed whatever it was that he had been given to work on.

Then Paul started intentionally giving Bruce harder and harder things to learn, to see if he could find something Bruce couldn’t learn in time for the next lesson, but that never happened! So, Paul figured, if he’s going to be be able to play anything I give him, I’d rather he be in my band then someone else’s!

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#36

yeah and that makes sense but my personality wouldnt let me live with that as a solution lol. I gotta do stuff the hard (legit) way or not at all. Like when I used to powerlift id always squat WAY below parallel lol

of course in the meantime im getting much much better at outside changes

the key so far has been working hard on single string stuff to get the basic picking motion nice and tight and controlled

After I feel really strong on all the basic alt picking challenges, I can foresee spending some time working on combing inside with economy for some really fast sequences etc

#37

I understand that mindset from personal experience. I feel like I’m somehow cheating if I do things the easy way instead of the “standard way.” The best way I can describe it is I don’t like the feeling that I’m playing it the easy way because I can’t play it the standard way. It doesn’t make any sense does it? You only need one way that works! But I need two ways that work to be satisfied. It’s quite annoying!

That’s great that you’ve been having success by working on single string stuff! Does that mean that you’ve been doing a lot of tremolo picking where every downstroke escapes (formerly UWPS)?

#38

well not per se trying to be uwps…just working hard on Yngwie sextuplets etc. But it started to sort of morph into upward slanting being whats more comfortable

I didnt realize I was quite as uwps as I was getting to be until i did some vids.

wow, I had gotten quite upwards. So since then i have been working on being pretty neutral and only slanting when I need to escape a certain way etc.

sometimes I get a bit lazy on my string tracking so I need to work on that too. if I string track better it all works quite nicely. In those vids I was doing some 3 string stuff, falsely thinking I was pretty neutral on the middle string and then i was going to slant up or down to go to the other strings.

BUT i was unwittingly already uwps on the middle string so it got even more uwps as it went to the higher string and then what felt like dwps to me was only more or less neutral. This is why Troy says he doesnt see any dwps there. I disagree lol. It IS dwps RELATIVE to where my base slant was on that day lol.

So right now I am working hard to be pretty neutral and then work on string tracking better so that my slanting doesnt need to be that extreme anyway. Im thinking thats the basic approach of Claus Levin and maybe many top players who dont seem to be aggressive slanters.

yes, for the last question, actually since I saw my recent vids, ive almost felt like I have worked a bit on trying to be slightly DWps to compensate for how UWps I had become. ive been doing tons of 3nps stuff, really focusing on the outside changes. Been working on outside changes coming to lower strings since that is a clear case for DWPS. The UWps is working well right now as long as I string track decently. A crap ton of work pays off eventually lol

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#39

I feel the same, surely if most people felt comfortable with outside picking, a well executed Paul Gilbert lick should be more commonplace right?

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#40

It might be related to hand size. For someone with bigger hands, the whole mechanism is larger and if the travel of the pick is increased 50%, outside picking may feel relatively trivial.

Pauls hands are really long, so he may not be the best model for technique. (Like learning to dunk a basketball from someone who is 6’6" when you are 5’8") Thats fine because there are so many licks to be played. I don’t see any point in isolating and fetishizing odd string crossing mechanics that don’t feel natural.

#41

So everyone who finds outside picking easier has large hands? Lol I’m not sure about that!

And you have assumed that I have tiny hands???

#42

Geez. I said might. Would be worth looking at. And I don’t care about your hands.

I was just making a positive observation that there are tons of techniques to play that are musically equivalent and that dont require uncomfortable mechanics.

Yes, I’m aware I’m being mobbed. I suspect you want me to quit posting here.

#43

Sorry mate, I didn’t mean to offend (my post was meant in jest and I found your comment funny) and of course I don’t want you to stop posting here. You are entitled to post what you want and I thank your efforts to contribute. Sorry to hear you feel mobbed.

You are right that there are other techniques available, but I feel that being able to outside pick achieves the articulation that I’m after, seeing as my ability to use economy or hybrid picking to play the PG lick sounds like my guitar is projectile vomiting through the speaker!

#44

Here’s the most obvious example of Paul swiping the lick on the upstroke during string change, just to make everyone feel a little better about their inability to play it cleanly or fast enough.

Troy’s execution of the lick is by far the cleanest one I’ve heard so far.

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#45

In short words: what is ‘Paul Gilbert lick’? Tabs would be great ^_^’

#46

@ASTN
Here you go:

If we’re being pedantic, the lick was first taught by Michael Angelo Batio in his first instructional video a few years earlier.


I just noticed his swipe on the upstroke as well.
Also, it was used by Al Di Meola before MAB taught it in his video (although not the same intervals, but pretty much the same layout - 3 notes on the lower string and 1 on the higher string)

You can also hear the open B string being swiped with the upstroke on the E string, but it’s not muted like in Paul’s and MAB’s examples.

The problem with the lick is the single note on the higher string. Namely, you need two-way pickslanting in order to make the string change to the higher string (upward pickslanting) and back to the lower string (downward pickslanting) in the span of one note.

The lick is notoriously hard to execute cleanly at a fast tempo, which is why even all these virtuosos have difficulty nailing it cleanly. The only one (that I know of) who can pull it off without swiping is Troy:

He even wrote an article dedicated solely to that lick for Guitar World:

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#47

Thanks!
Difficult one! I don’t know about right hand but my left hand definitely can’t do it.

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#48

You’re welcome!
Neither of my hands can do it, not anywhere close to these speeds.

#49

Hi guys, I’m working on this lick at the moment. What is swiping that you refer to. Many thanks. Paul in the Uk. :grin::pray:t3:

#50

‘Swiping’ is when you slghtly touch and move through the string which isn’t supposed to be played at the moment. Usually it’s not very noticable.
For example, consecutive upstroke on 2nd string and downstroke on 1st string when played fast may actually be up(2nd)-swipe(2nd)-down(1st)

#51

Ace, thanks for that . I’ve seen it mentioned a few times. Could do with a glossary of names and abbreviations lol. I can guess most .

I thought I might be upward pickslanting on the Paul Gilbert lick but I may just be two way pickslanting slightly . In fact I’m finding a slightly neutral position of barely any slant on something like this is working for me at the moment

#52

I’m finding my left hand is a weak link so am thinking of adopting a thing I heard about from Tom Hess of practicing each hand independently . I am going to add the first part of intense rock to my schedule . Unfortunately or fortunately I have a wealth of material to choose from and it can get overwhelming which to choose , unless something speaks to you at a specific time. I have rock discipline , speed mechanics, intense rock, speed kills etc .

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#53

I’d say stick with one guitarist’s instructional video until you get bored of it or find that you’re not making progress, then you move on to the next one. You can go back to the instructional videos you’ve already watched later on.

I’ve started using this approach to practicing lately (not all of my practice time) and by the end of one practice session I managed to play the PG lick at 100 bpm in this fashion (two repetitions of 16th notes followed by one repetition of 16th-note triplets and then loop the entire lick), except I started the lick with the upstroke on the single note on the higher string. I’m practicing other things at the moment, but when I dedicate some time to that lick and check whether this approach to practicing it results in improvement, I’ll post a short video about it in this topic.