How To Pick The 'I Am A Viking' Main Riff Lick

Playing Technique
#1

Hello,

I’ve been trying to work out how Yngwie picks the fast ascending riff lick in ‘I Am A Viking’. This is the best I could come up with, using sneaky hammer ons when I couldn’t otherwise get the Volcano Method to work.

What do you guys think, do you think this is probably the way he plays it? Do you think one hammer on gives you enough time to ‘cheat’ at fast speeds?

E|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
B|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
G|---------------------------------------------------4------4-5----4-0------------------
D|------------------4------4-5----4-5-7-4-5h7----5-7------7-------7-4h5----4-0–
A|-3-5-7-3-5h7----5-7------7-------------------------------------------------7--------
E|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----d-u-d-u-d-----u-d-u-d-u-d-d-u-d-u-d-----u-d-u-d-u-d-d-u-d-u----d–d-u—

Hope that explains the picking pattern I used okay. This kinda thing with the hammers ons is what I’ve been doing whenever I run into these sorts of issues, it just depends for me how much legato I’m willing to use.

Here is an example of me playing it slowly:

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#2

@Troy . what did you think of this technique? Based on the tab? Thx

#3

I you check out the book “Neoclassical Speedstrategies for guitar” by Chris Brooks that is exactly the way Yngwie would pick that run. Chris calls it "the lone note exception.

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#4

Chris Brooks breaks it down here:

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#5

Old thread, but I’m jumping in anyway. Maybe this can help someone.

I’ve been working on this song lately. Tried picking this lick every which way—a million different approaches. I even came up with an economy picking trick I use to handle the fours. But in the end, I just went back to good old alternate picking for this.

I’ve seen that Chris Brooks video where he talks about the “lone note exception,” and maybe I’m mixing up two different ideas from him here—but the claim that Yngwie uses a hammer-on to keep the picking in sync? I often thought maybe that is the case but I don’t know if I believe that anymore. And how would Chris even know? And what makes me doubt it most is that even I can play this now at tempo with strict alternate picking.

But the weird part is, I have to “think right” while playing it. I have to break it down into sections mentally and then stitch them together. No idea why this works, but it does.

Here’s what I mean:

First section: 8 notes

Strict alternate picking: Down-Up-Down-Up-Down-Up-Down-Up
No hammer-ons, ghost notes, or cheats. This part feels natural—I doubt anyone struggles with this section.

Second section: 8 more notes

Again: Down-Up-Down-Up-Down-Up-Down-Up

Now here’s the key: don’t try to think of it as one 16-note phrase. Instead, play the first 8, then the next 8—one after the other, in time—so it sounds like one continuous 16-note run.

But if I try to think of it as one big, continuous phrase while I’m playing, the picking feels off around the transition. I think it’s because the last two notes of the first section are inside-picked, and the first two of the second section are outside-picked–which is 3 string changes in the span of 4 notes!–and the pick has to travel farther on those outside strokes and it just feels uneven and throws me off. But if I treat them like two distinct chunks, that I just play one after another in time, that awkwardness disappears. No idea why it works, but for me, that mental framing makes the whole thing way smoother, and I bet this little “mental hack” will work for others too.

#6

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It’s not related to keeping the pick in sync so that must be a mix-up with something else. It’s that Yngwie either developed or happened on an approach that avoids downstrokes on higher strings moving to upstrokes on lower strings - which often come into play in ascending and descending fours with alternate picking.

In the case of Viking, the fours are preceded by three notes from an incomplete four. Then it becomes a cycle of execution that repeats every 12 notes. The strategic use of hammer-ons on the way up gives the pick a moment to prepare the pending (and system compliant) upstroke on the single notes coming back to lower strings on down. Pull-offs on the way down serve the same setup purpose in other runs, but here - it’s outside alternate picking.

The reason everyone asks about this run is that they can hear something is different and they know, with the basics of Yngwie’s system, that something still didn’t add up.

For me, I ask 3 things of myself (and Yngwie via the audio-visual realm)

  1. Can it be seen? Yes
  2. Can it be heard? Yes
  3. Can it be repeated? Yes

The bigger and more interesting part of question 3 is: Does it represent some larger mechanical or music trait that can be replicated. Big YES. It appears all over his playing.

Especially with his older tone that had more clarity, the sound of slightly palm muted slurs are more detectable. They’re not just there for sonic variation (which I happen to love anyway), but for strategic reasons.

As can many of us, but in the case of Yngwie, my explorations have had little to do with what can or should be done, but what was done. That’s what keeps the rabbit hole alive and well - and fun!

Alternate picking is cool, but if we just use it as the catch-all for anything that falls outside the boundaries of some other precepts for convenience, we don’t end up any more enlightened than we were from the Wolf Marshall transcription books. The details won’t matter much to some, but for me in teaching and in playing, that’s where the fun and eventual payoff is.

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#7

Excellent Chris! Thanks so much for taking the time to set me straight on this! It matters to me too.

By the way, packed away with my old collection of 80s era Guitar for the Practicing Musician mags, I am sure I still have that old Wolf Marshall Star Licks instructional on Yngwie’s style with booklet and cassette, lol. Those were the days.

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#8

My pleasure. I had Wolf’s Yngwie Star Licks video too. It was a good start for a kid like me trying to teach himself on the farm with hardly any interaction with any other guitarists until years later!

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#9

Wolf has transcribed several of Yngwie’s early albums, and they’re actually very accurate note-wise…

So I use those books along with Chris’s Viking Master Class Suite lessons… and i’m good to go!

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#10

The downstroke into an upstroke on the lower string in bar 2 doesn’t make sense to me within the overall system?

#11

For descending thirds in 3nps patterns, that’s his go-to because any small opportunities for economy picking back are immediately met with a forced inside pick stroke back up to the lower string which he chooses not to do. He’s opting the lesser of 2 evils by downstroke-escaping on the way up rather than the way down.

From his hand position, most of the notes are lined up in his chosen escape path, and it’s just a couple of pesky lower single notes than can luckily be cross picked and raked with little disruption.

The thing about the glossary version of his system is that it’s easy to over-streamline it into a description like always start on down and finish on up, but even his exceptions have a system and specific use to them. That’s where a lot of ideas become stuck because they don’t work like the readers’ digest version appears to promise.

It’s always fun explaining the “systemised system breakers”, oxymoron that it be.

Here’s another way of thinking about it - if something can only be pick alternately because of the way the notes are aligned, choose the outside version rather than the inside version. Yngwie’s pedal tone licks are a great example of this and a good primer for those string changes.

Some versions of this are less intuitive at first than others. For Example, the Vengeance interlude with a two-note pedal (like D, C#, D) on the B string, preceded each time by whole bunch of varying single notes on the E string (E, F, G, A etc)… While some people teach this as inside alternate picking dual escape, his Yngness plays the whole thing leading with upstrokes on the downbeats.

TL;DR: the system has system breakers but they’re systemised enough to be an extension of the system! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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