"I am a Viking" Intro and DWPS

[Montreal543]

Hi Everyone:

Hopefully you all have seen the Volcano and Cascade seminars. I think there’s incredible stuff in both, particularly when Troy very clearly delineates the essential principles of the DWPS system. But after viewing them and subsequently listening to some classic downward pickslanters, like EJ and Yngwie, I have noticed that these musicians occasionally play fast passages that - as best as I can deduce - must break the DWPS rules, at least momentarily. I think 2WPS could be used in these cases, but I’ve wondered how died-in-the-wool downward pickslanters like Yngwie and EJ play these passages, and/or if it’s even possible to keep exactly to the DWPS system while performing these sorts of phrases.

A specific example that I’ve been confounded by comes from the intro to Yngwie’s tune, “I am a Viking.” It’s the fairly fast 32-note run before the verse that serves as a sort of turnaround for the intro (below in this post I’ve posted a video of Yngwie playing this song, along with some tablature of the phrase). Much of the passage lends itself nicely to straightforward DWPS picking, but there are a few times that it seems to “break” DWPS suitability by requiring a string change just for one note, only to return to the previous string.

I’d greatly appreciate any insight you all have about how to navigate moments when a passage breaks the DWPS system. Is there any way to faithfully keep to the DWPS system and play the passage? In this particular example, what do people think Yngwie does to play it?

Sorry for the long-winded post, and I hope I’ve been clear here! Thank you!

-Greg

I’ve seen some YouTube footage of Yngwie play this passage, but unfortunately the camera angles haven’t been close enough to see how he negotiates the string changes. Just so people can hear the passage in question, scroll to 2:01 to 2:04 in the following live clip:

Here are some photos of the tablature for the passage in question, and another photo of the same tablature with my pick direction choice annotations (I hope they’re legible).

[Frylock]

I haven’t gone into this one in-depth, but one possible solution is swiping, especially in a case like this where the single note is on an adjacent string. I think if the fingering matches the tab you posted, starting with an upstroke on that first C would make the rest of the run work with DWPS and swiping (i.e. on the first string change, downstroke on 7th fret A string, and without stopping, swipe across muted D string, then play 4th fret D string with an upstroke).

Could another possibility be “hammer-ons from nowhere”?

[Squeaks]

How sure are you of the fingerings? You can sweep the first two notes of the first set you’ve circled and play the third note as an upstroke on the open G, the rest of it could then be refigured to play entirely on the D string.

Although Frylock’s way makes the most sense.

[kounistou]

Hi Greg!

I think that by Yngwie’s standards, that is not very fast. Which in my opinion allows for “less efficient” mechanical solutions.

I watched the clip and I a bit sceptical about the tab. Because Yngwie’s hand looks a bit stretched and G string is not played that often in my opinion.

So here is my wild completely DWPS compliant proposal (use sweeping whenever needed)

What do you guys think?

[Frylock]

What do you guys think?

This version seems more Yngwie-ish to me. Maybe a few slides snuck in there as well.

Edit: Looking at 2:13 of the video, OPs fingering looks about right, at least for the first part.

And if there is any swiping, as I had spit-balled, I would only expect it to be present when there’s no way to work around with just, say, extra legato notes to create breathing room for a string hop.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if Yngwie occasionally sneaks in a downstroke that rotates to enable an upward-slanted upstroke on a string above, especially to end a phrase. I think I discovered after the fact that I had been doing this in some Troy Stetina exercises. It’s sort of a very limited application of two-way pickslanting.

I think the most problematic change is the OP’s first question mark, but if I were arranging that for myself, I’d probably make that a slide from D string 7th fret to D string 9th fret rather than jumping from the D string to the G string 4th fret for that one note (similar solution to those 9th fret notes suggested by @kounistou).

[Sorc]

I have been wondering about this for a while. I’m going to try the fingering suggested by @kounistou. But there are other examples of Yngwie doing things that shouldn’t be possible with only DWPS. For example, the intro to Arpeggios from hell. I know that there is a video where you can clearly see both of his hands, so it’s probably just a matter of going through it frame by frame and seeing what’s really going on. It really doesn’t look like he’s doing any inefficient movements or changing the pickslant though, so my hypothesis is that he’s doing some hammers from nowhere.

EDIT: When you watch the video in the original post, at 2:13 you can clearly see that his fretting hand isn’t changing positions, so I’m afraid that the original fingering is at least mostly correct.

[Troy]

The biggest "Breaking The Rules"™ lick in the Malmsteen world is the pedal tone lick. It’s done by crosspicking, and he does it pretty fast. It’s based on ascending downstroke (i.e. ascending ‘outside’) string changes. It’s what’s probably going on here, and in Arpeggios from Hell, and in a few other cases, notably in a few licks from the older live Alcatrazz show that he doesn’t seem to play much any more.

The ascending outside “crosspick” string change is the most common example of stepping outside of strict dwps in Yngwie’s playing, and really the only one that’s systematic enough to be worth noting. There does not seem to be much in the way of descending downstroke string changes in Yngwie’s playing, at least not beyond tempos where you would need a technique that’s not stringhopping or repeated pickstrokes to do it.

You can watch Teemu do it in his crosspicking examples. The pick traveling from the lower string to the higher one on a downstroke is done via a combination of forearm and wrist, thought it could also be done either one alone. Crosspicking is a complicated topic. My guess is that Yngwie’s approach probably looks similar to Teemu’s here - a blend of all of the above:

https://troygrady.com/interviews/teemu-mantysaari/teemu-mantysaari-clips/crosspick-4str-minor/

[tommo]

Thank you all, these are questions I always had about Yngwie’s technique. In the pedal tone lick however, I always had the impression he was swiping with the ascendind downstroke (the picking trajectory seemed very straight as far as I can remember).

[Troy]

‘Straight’ is a relative term. Look at Teemu’s lick and you’ll see the same ‘straight’ path that the ascending downstroke follows. But then look at his forearm, which is supinated. This is a dwps forearm position, and yet the pick is not traveling downward into the strings.

So really, the pick isn’t traveling ‘straight’ at all - at least not compared to its usual dwps path. Instead, it’s moving over the top of the next string, and a little toward the bridge at the same time. The introduction of wrist extension is what’s causing this. And a little forearm rotation as well in Teemu’s case.

[Montreal543]

Thank you all very much for all this great insight and analysis! The pedal tone inserted into an otherwise straightforward DWPS passage has dogged me for years. There seem to be so many examples of this - not just in shred stuff like this Yngwie song or his intro riff to “Deja Vu,” but I’m also thinking of the second phrase in Slash’s outro solo during “November Rain,” where a few pedal tones requiring string changes have aways made playing it awkward for me. Rearranging the passages so they avoid the precarious pedal tone string skip is definitely one solution, but so is altering the picking hand’s motion mechanics to enable the string change while also still keeping to DWPS. Definitely a lot of great food for thought here!

-Greg

[Jakku]

I emailed Chris Brooks about this after his Yngwie pack and he cited the same video footage, fingering and likely picking solution as @Montreal543, also noting that an outside upstroke when it involves a single note on a string higher than the one before it has plenty of precedence in Yngwie’s system (pedal point for instance). Multiple notes before that string end with a hammer on as OP tabbed out, and single note to single note on different strings go down-up because that is more in line with the system than inside picking ever would be.