Hello from Ireland

Introduce Yourself
#1

Hello Everybody.

My name is Tom. I’m a mathematician and an amateur guitar player from Ireland.

I took lessons for many years from an excellent teacher who stressed the importance of alternate picking technique early. He introduced me to the music of Eric Johnson, Steve Morse, Al DiMeola, Paul Gilbert and other players with excellent picking technique. Under his direction, I learned to play pieces by these players cleanly and up to tempo (including Cliffs of Dover by Johnson, Tumeni Notes by Morse and Scarified by Gilbert). I played all of them with strict alternate picking.

I am very analytical by nature and I was able to derive two-way pick slanting and crosspicking movements as a teenager by thinking about picking as a geometric problem with certain constraints. I practiced incessantly.

When Eric Johnson’s Total Electric Guitar and The Fine Art of Guitar were reissued on DVD, I studied both videos very carefully. I was able to deconstruct Eric’s picking system and incorporate it into my own playing.

Later, I began trying to develop a more legato sound, primarily inspired by Allan Holdsworth and Brett Garsed, and I began to incorporate more hybrid picking into by lead playing.

After watching some of Troy’s video’s on YouTube and noticing that his terminology was frequently appearing in online discussions, I decided to try subscribing to Masters In Mechanics for a while.

Even with what I already understood about the mechanics of picking technique, I feel that I got a lot of value from my subscription. I never knew that Yngwie Malmsteen’s picking system was so similar to Eric Johnson’s. I also didn’t know that swiping existed.

I think the interview with Marshall Harrison has been most valuable to me. I’d never been very comfortable with sweep picking and the interview really gave me an insight into how to arrange sequences so they could be swept. Coupled with Harrison’s lessons on “swybrid” picking on YouTube, this was a revelation.

I had some reservations about joining this forum initially. Between work, time spent with my girlfriend and my own playing, I doubt I will have much time to contribute regularly to this forum. I’ve also found online discussions to be very hostile in the past, in particular when I had mentioned I had independently discovered and learned some of the concepts discussed in Masters In Mechanics.

However, I feel I could contribute something of value to this forum, even if I do so infrequently. I can be pretty long-winded when I write, so I think I’ll leave it here for now!

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#2

Welcome to the forum! So far it seems that we’re a pretty positive bunch here, and I’ve always found @Troy himself to be exceptionally gracious, even when I’ve perhaps stuck my foot in my mouth. :smiley:

I can see why some people might react with knee-jerk hostility to someone who asserts that they learned something independently, but it’s still unfortunate. I don’t think Troy has ever claimed that nobody else was aware of the same things he discovered for himself (and has now shone a light on), just that nobody in the public eye had been teaching those things before.

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#3

And I wouldn’t even say that, because the Gypsies have been teaching pickslanting for years. And Eric Johnson spelled it out on both instructional videos - just in a way that probably nobody was ready to hear yet. This type of thinking has been hiding in plain sight for a really long time.

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#4

Hi @Frylock and @Troy .

I don’t think there was anybody who had clearly explained the central concepts of picking mechanics before Troy began Cracking The Code.

I was able to deconstruct Eric Johnson’s picking system by carefully examining his movements and listening to his descriptions, but everything he says in Total Electric Guitar and The Fine Art Of Guitar has to be taken with a grain of salt (the “bounce” and “circle picking” are major red herrings, at least as far as Eric’s fast playing). I think that’s the closest anybody had come to a description of pickslanting before Troy in a major instructional resource.

Then, I already knew the core concept of pickslanting when watching the videos. It probably seemed like nonsense to those who didn’t already know what he was talking about.

I realise now that when I discussed picking with others (in person), I also failed to explain concepts clearly, not because of lack of detail, but for an over abundance of it. I also had some really obtuse terminology. I like Troy’s terminology much better, except for “leading” vs “trailing” edge, whatever edge makes contact is the leading edge! I like the term “cascade” to describe Eric’s pentatonic sequences. I called them “stacks.”

There are also a few minor points made Cascade seminar that I think Troy was wrong on, and that the answers are in Eric’s videos to be deciphered. If you’re happy to listen, I’m happy to discuss!

By the way, I wrote a (very) long post in the thread about Holdsworth’s legato technique. Should be a good demonstration of my reasoning and attention to detail…

#5

Good to see another Irishman on here - I’m in Northern Ireland myself. Welcome to the forum!

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#6

Always happy fix up our stuff but I’ll just warn you if it’s tablature issues, we’ve got a growing to-do list of those. Though we will indeed eventually get to them.

#7

Hi @Troy,

There are two particular points which bothered me about the Cascade seminar when I watched it.

Firstly, one chapter of Cascade concerns Eric’s discussion of the “bounce” technique from TEG. Eric mentions that he feels the bounce changes the tone. You assert that this is in reference to edge picking.

I completely agree that the bounce is a string hopping mechanic that Eric uses at lower speeds which in fact disappears from his playing when he plays faster lines. However, I think the change in tone that Eric is describing refers to more than edge picking.

When Eric is utilizes the bounce technique in slower melodic phrases, the string slides along the edge of pick on both upstrokes and downstrokes, until it is released at the tip, almost like a bowing effect. This gives a softer attack, a rounder tone and a slight blooming quality to the notes he picks this way.

When he locks into the pure DWPS wrist deviation based movement for faster passages, the degree of edge picking doesn’t change, but I do hear a distinct change in the attack characteristics of the notes.

I think the softer attack and the “bloom” are aspects of the bounce technique which are very important to Eric’s slower melodic lines.

The second issue I have relates to the chapter which discusses the lines where Eric plays fast descending pentatonic fives and sixes in open position. You rightly mention that when performing these lines, the open strings do not continue to ring out as might be typical in open position blues licks. You mention that you’re not sure how Eric is damping the open strings. You offer a suggestion, which involves damping the ringing open string by playing the lower string with a rest stroke type downstroke.

I am totally certain that this is not what’s happening, and I believe there is sufficient explanation in Eric’s instructional videos to explain what is happening.

Eric has a somewhat idiosyncratic way of fretting notes when playing pentatonic sequences. Eric frets with each finger in such a way that the next highest and next lowest string are simultaneously damped. The tips of his fingers damp the lower string, while the higher string is damped by the flesh of the finger pad. The string begin fretted contacts his finger in the position that ensures these damping points.

This method of fretting is what ensures that the open strings do no continue to ring out when Eric plays these patterns in open position, as would happen if he were fretting with the finger tip and the distal phalange more perpendicular to the fretboard, as in a classical approach.

This fretting approach is made possible by the orientation of his fretting hand. This orientation provides significant reach between the index and middle fingers of the fretting hand. Due to the relative differences in finger lengths, this orientation makes it difficult for the pinky to reach the fretted string, at least while the ring finger is fretting. This explains why Eric so rarely uses his pinky during pentatonic lead playing, and is a major aspect which informs his fingerings, for example on the “legato turnaround,” described in another chapter of cascade.

Eric often uses the more classical approach to fretting where the distal phalanges are more perpendicular to the fretboard (with the exception of the index finger), but this is usually for chordal playing or more diatonic melody playing where he needs to use his pinky more. Eric also usually plays these types of passages clean, so left hand damping is less important.

I believe that much of Eric’s technique, including his DWPS orientation, is based around his approach string dampening. I believe it to be at the very core to his approach to guitar technique in general.

#8

I’m not golden-eared enough to hear this, but sounds plausible! Either way, this is happening because of some a combination of edge picking and the extension movement both of which are simply called “bounce” in his explanation. Which is all I was really getting at.

In general I think those two chapters of Cascade are super overwrought, and could have been summarized in five minutes with a lot more clarity. There are lot of things being conflated together under the term “bounce” that are not the same, and the net effect was probably confusing for a lot of folks.

There’s more than a sufficient explanation - there’s an exact explanation! I only noticed it after we filmed these chapters. I think it’s in the first instructional, Total Electric Guitar. I forget what time marker, but he actually demonstrates the technique for muting the open strings. It’s the picking hand finger, the pinky I think - he reaches under and mutes the string.

It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about fretting hand muting, so I don’t doubt that these other things are also happening as well. But this is one instance where I could have watched the source material more thoroughly!