Has Swiping Gotten A Bad Name?

Playing Technique
#1

It seems to me that it has. That doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense because there’s a wrong way to swipe and a right way to swipe. Paul Gilbert swipes, yet many consider him the most technically proficient shred guitarist in the world… Michael Angelo Batio swipes at times and he has been described as “inhumanly accurate.” Who in that style of playing sounds cleaner than Batio? Then there’s the guy in Strunz and Farah who swipes often.

Before the term swiping was even coined, how often dd you hear players disparage Batio or Gilbert for sounding sloppy? Since the 80s they have both been always right at or near the top of "best shred guitarist’ lists. Those two were also arguably the two most sought after guitarists for guitar teachers and/or instructional video there were. That’s because so many people wanted to sound just like them! Yet they swipe some of their licks. They were so good at it that nobody even knew they swiped until CTC began.

#2

There’s something I’m confused about. You began your text with

This seems like the answer to the question of this thread “Has Swiping Gotten A Bad Name?” but then you go on listing the swiping examples of people who are awesome players and describe their playing abilities only in positive words. I don’t see anything bad about swiping in your comment :roll_eyes:

#3

Just another valid and highly successful technique with some musical implications that may or may not matter in a particular musical context. Not unlike most of the techniques cataloged here. And perhaps most folks likely don’t know they’re doing it anyway? Whatever works.

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#4

Thanks for letting me know that my post didn’t turn out as clear as I had thought. Let me try to explain the part you’re wondering about.

It seems to me swiping has gotten a bad name. In this forum I often see people use the term swiping as if it’s undesirable and something they want to avoid ever doing. Not everyone puts that message across regarding swiping, but I’ve seen it enough times that swiping certainly has developed a bad name among some people and white it may still be the minority of people, I’d be willing to bet that it’s quite a sizable minority, somewhere between 30 and 50 percent if I were to make a rough estimate.

The thing is, there is a good way to swipe and a bad way to swipe and I’m not sure if some people are aware of the distinction. They may be or may not be. I don’t know for sure.

I went on to list players who do swipe and put them in glowing terms because TO ME, there is nothing bad about swiping if it’s executed well. Does that clear up any confusion as to the intent of my post? let me know if you have any further questions or comments and thanks for your interest in my thread :slight_smile:

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#5

Yup :+1: And I’m happy to see what you wrote in your first paragraph:

Awesome attitude that I always try to implement myself :+1:

There’s a simple way to test it - just make a poll in this thread :wink:

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#6

Would be colored by the thread, and hopefully, folks have gotten the picture that it’s dumb to discount the technique. But whatever. :slight_smile:

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#7

I alternate (ha!) between periods in which I try not to swipe, and periods in which I don’t care. Looking back critically I think I am happier on average when I don’t care :smiley:

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#8

I swipe when accending scales and licks. I twps when Descending. I always felt there was a difference in My technique depending on the lick I was playing. When I saw ctc I realised what it was, swiping, and figured I would stick with it. It works for Vinnie Moore so it can’t be all bad.:slight_smile:

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#10

I strongly believe Eddie van halen swiped the assending sixtuplet run in spanish fly.
Reason enough for me to use it. The sound we get is most important right?

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#11

It’s an important observation, and knowing it occurs can be a relief if you felt like you were doing something wrong, but it does seem weird to learn and practice it if it was never there to begin with.

None of the greats said “I think I’ll work on hitting the strings I’m trying to move over”. It just occurred, and probably a lot less overtly that it would be if you deliberately tried it. Making it part of a practice regimen seems akin to practising walking with a limp.

I don’t think it deserves a bad rap - perhaps just a relegation to observed phenomenon rather that essential technique.

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#12

No, but they may have said, “This lick sounds or feels a bit clunky. I think I’ll try to clean it up.” And then worked on it by feel to minimize the clunkiness without knowing exactly what was causing it (aka ‘practicing swiping’).

To me, it seems more like someone with a limp practicing walking without one.

In other words, ‘practicing swiping’ is probably expandable into ‘practicing swiping so that it becomes inaudible’. If you swipe (full disclosure: I don’t), it may not be such a bad idea to learn to do it well. If we could all do it well without practicing it, CtC probably wouldn’t exist.

Edit: I agree with this, though:

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#13

To get the right sound and speed (outside picking), you have you swipe the sixtuplets in spanish fly. Hopping over the string puts to much inertia into your hand and slows it down. Going through a string gives a certain feel and sound. I have practiced this swiping sixtuplets 1000s of times, it really is a legit technique to get a certain sound.

Listen to spanish fly, and watch

Here’s the evh swiping.

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#14

But it is not just observed - we know exactly when it occurs and why (outside changes with the “wrong” pickslant). One could make an informed choice like “I don’t want to change the pickslant so often in this fast lick - so I better have super-tight left-hand muting”.

In this sense I think swiping does qualify as a technique that can be practiced. But of course I wouldn’t practice “hitting wrong strings”, I would just focus on the muting and on the choice of pickslant.

Actually I always had the impression that this was done with a combination of hammer-ons (on the lower string) and picking (on the higher string) - something like D - H - H - U - D - U
but I may have to listen to it again more carefully

#15

@WhammyStarScream @tommo Troy dealt with the Spanish Fly lick here:

Slowed down audio in link…

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#16

It’s a pick on B followed by two hammer ons, three picks on E, the rest is all picked.

If you know the lick well, you’ll see that in the video.
I don’t wana get into any detail really as people have their opinions, but I’ve seen him play it loads on the phone videos people take. The version on the record is not a great way to see what he’s doing, as you can see him play it live. Many times over decades.

#17

There’s another technique seldom named at all, splicing. Classical guitarist/professor Brian Johns once slowed down a solo on tape during a lesson, might have been “Jump,” and I think humor aside, there was a lesson there there about smoke and mirrors, and reality. :wink:

#18

Jumps solo is played as is on screen I think…?
The keyboard is out a little is that what you mean?

#19

Was it Panama? Bear in mind I’m referring to hearing the tape, probably slowed down from a record, around the time the album came out. There’s a distinct splice point in the middle of one of the guitar solos.

#20

Panama is damn amazing slowed down. All of Ed’s stuff does, really. Nobody plays pentatonics like Eddie, so smooth and interesting. We did a whole scene on it:

The “Jump” guitar solo was built in the studio. They gave interviews in guitar mags about it at the time. Ed was tooling around and came up with some cool ideas, and either Ted Templeman the producer or Don Landee the engineer – I forget who – really liked some of Ed’s ideas and they were like, that’s awesome, let’s keep adding to that. Something to that effect.

Anyone playing slowed-down Eddie and suggesting it’s trickery is really missing the point. Sometimes the studio is your canvas, and you Bob Ross that shit, adding and blending, reacting to what you’ve put up there and blending again, until you get something awesome. It’s just a different process. You’d have to throw out the entire Beatles catalog.

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#21

Brian Johns wasn’t. He was just illustrating the same point you’ve just made.

“Even Eddie.” :slight_smile: