Help needed on song mastery!

Introduce Yourself
#1

Hi all, greetings from the UK!

By way of introduction, I thought I’d pose you all a problem I’ve been having.

I’m trying to master this song in time for Christmas:

I do apologise for the very out of season song!

At minutes 2:05 and 6:01 (for those that can’t listen to the whole song!) it features some fast picking passages.

I’m having a little difficulty trying to apply DWPS and ‘only change strings on upstrokes’ to these particular passages. The notes appear to be organised in a way that doesn’t lend itself very well to these principles. Is it pull-offs? Sounds like its all picked on the recording to me… I’m not totally sure what’s going on here…

Guitar is tuned down a half step. I also believe the tab on the video attached to be wrong for the first passage (at minute 2:05). I make it out to be more like this:

eb- 20-19-17-------------19-17-15------------17-15-14------------15-14-12-------------|
Bb--------------20-19-17-------------19-17-15------------17-15-13------------15-13-12-|

eb-17-15-14------------19-17-15-----------20-19-17------------20b(22)—|
Bb-------------17-15-13------------19-17-15-----------20-19-17-------------|

I would really appreciate any expertise/advice/opinions you guys are able to offer with regards to the mechanics of playing these passages! Thank you so much. Hopefully I’ve just missed something obvious!

Thanks for your time all!

Kind Regards

Tom

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#2

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Regarding the passages at 2:05 – I think Troy addresses picking of such patterns (descending sixes) in video about Vinnie Moore’s “Pepsi lick”:

It is either two-way pickslanting or swiping I guess. Same about 6:01 (descending fourths here).

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#3

Impossible with only DWPS. This requires TWPS as long as you don’t rearrange it.
But: It’s not a big deal in my opinion to do it. As these lines are descending do it like this:

eb- 20-19-17-15----------19-17-15-14-----------17-15-14-12---------15-14-12-10----------|
Bb------------------19-17---------------------17-15--------------------15-13------------------13-12-|

Just saw the second half is ascending :frowning: Makes it a little harder, but it works the same way.

Thomas

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#4

Thanks so much for the feedback guys. I definitely did not consider TWPS, so that’s been a revelation!

I have tried the different structure of more notes on one string approach to fit DWPS, but I think having committed so much already to memory of the other way, it proved too much of a mind-mess-around!

TWPS seems to be working well for that first passage just now. Those descending fourths at the end are still proving to be a bit “ninja” however…!

Thanks again - I appreciate the help

Kind Regards

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