That would be a violation of symmetry which I’ve read somewhere is bad for string theory 
Paul Gilbert has stated elsewhere that beginners should start with the “Yngwie” 6-Note lick first. He has also stated that he used that particular lick very early in his development. I remember reading him stating, “I played that phrase over and over and could feel my hands getting faster and faster.”
I don’t think the “Paul Gilbert” lick is intended for “beginners.” Its purpose was to tackle a particular issue that most advancing guitarists of that time had and still have.
20 points for an incredibly nerdy reference.
Just as a side-note, getting this equally fluid on both outside & inside picking is a really nice skill-builder.
it still shocks me that people find outside changes so much easier than inside. Then again some people actually like mustard lol
either of these is like 50-75% easier for me than the stock Gilbert pattern:
starting on down
E—8–7--5-----5–7
B--------------8
or
E—5-------------------
B------8–6--5–6--8
those r pretty easy for me (inside stuff)
this sort of mirror image PG lick is another hard outside one
E------5–7--8–7--5
B—8------------------
Sad that I didnt at least work out the easier inside patterns back in like 1992ish when I had Intense Rock. I could have at least (unknowingly) built up some nice one way licks
But nope, Paul said start with that lick and he was a pro, so…cest la vie. Thats why Im sort of fiercely independent in my thought processes now. “So and so says” means very little to me these days lol
Mustard lover here.
I have really had to completely alter my mechanics in order to learn fluid outside moves… kinda like learning skateboard/snowboard moves using front-side vs back-side. It sorta feels like a completely different skill set.
I wish I had learned the outside moves early on… but I kinda kept putting it off, because all my mini-attempts at it seemed to go nowhere.
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yeah, descending aint so bad but ascending outside is rough.
Actually ascending outside aint terrible either but that PG lick is a bear…hitting that one note then reversing right away etc
I can do the 16th note lick pretty good TBH
D----------------5–9--5–7--9 etc
A-----5–7--8------------------
that ones not to bad especially with uwps of course but the PG lick is brutal
right now im sort of taking Claus Levins advice and really focusing on one string triplet stuff and taking my game up a notch there and maybe next month ill start focusing in on outside changes
In the meantime ill probably order a smartphone tomorrow and try to get a filming setup going so I can see whats REALLY happening lol
To summarize there’s two versions of the PG lick : the 3-1 and the 1-3.
Both version can be picked outside or inside, that makes 4 basic variations
Arguably the 2-2 variation can be added as well, but it’s a slightly different challenge, more geared towards 2nps stuffs.
Finally you can skip string, that would be 3s1 and 1s3.
If I had to score the 4 basic variations, giving a 100% to the one I do the best that would be something like:
3-1 outside = 100%
1-3 outside = 100%
3-1 inside = 75%
1-3 inside = 85%
… to give an idea.
Actually I find the inside version more fluid, and probably can be played faster. My grip with it is that it feels (to me) kind of “slippery”, and I have consistency issue (both tone and time-wise) on the 3 notes to played one single string. It has less ‘pulse’ to me so-to-speak.
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Same here, it feels completely different. I used to prefer inside string changes but I couldn’t get past 120-130 bpm. After finding CTC I rebuilt my picking mechanics and after a few months I found that outside string changes were much easier and it was inside string changes (specifically downstroke on a high string to an upstroke on a lower string) that was holding me back. For that stroke combination I have to change mechanics and it’s not as comfortable and I can’t pick as fast.
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im the opposite from you 2 guys. Downstroke on higher string to upstroke on lower is pretty easy for me. So stuff like this works well for me:
E—5–7--8–7--5-----------
B---------------------8–6--8
and this is one of my pet patterns from even before I heard of slanting:
B-----5–6--5------------
G----------------7–5--7
I can get that one rolling pretty fast since its inside changes. But switch it around and its not nearly as easy:
B---------------5–6--5
G----7–5--7------------ ugggh, outside changes
then again, so much could be remedied, or at least avoided, if one just starts licks with upstrokes sometimes…but thats weird as freak too lol
I’m basically flipped, (I’m reverse-blueberrypie)
As far as 2nps stuff… Im about like this:
2nps outside ascending 80%
2nps outside descending 90%
2nps inside ascending 100%
2nps inside descending 100%
As far as rotating 6’s, I’m about
110% inside (well, that’s how it feels)
90% outside
As far as rotating 4’s, I’m about the same on both inside & outside (around 90%)
As far as this pattern (not sure what you call it)
B-----5–7-----5–7------5–7-----5–7-----
G---------5–7-----5–7------5–7-----5–7-
I’m about 80% starting on both inside & outisde
3 note patterns
B----–7-5----7-5----7-5----7-5—
G----------5–-----5-------5–-----5-
I’m about 70% (big improvement)
And 5 note patters, I’m about 90% (also big improvement)
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note to self and others
a cool thing would be to find our top speed on tremolo picking 1 string…then plot out our top speeds on the various exercises. We’d probably find basic patterns emerging etc
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I love Claus and I have many of his trainings. He has siginificanty improved my picking. HIs videos are very connecting to all levels of players. From whether you are at a plateu and need some new inspiration to just wanting to get better at a new style.
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Bruce Bouilett told me that is the lick to practice to build up speed.
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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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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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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
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)?
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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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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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.