Increasing speed on single string pedal tone licks? any shortcuts?

Playing Technique
#1

this is one ive always wondered about. how to increase speed when string crossing mechanics are NOT involved…for instance the cool Yngwie style single string pedal tone licks.

a few examples: (im assuming they are single string, some might not be)

3:26 and also 3:36

I have always struggled with these types of licks and you know the story, if u suck at something then u hate to practice it lol. On occasion i can throw one in and maybe repeat it once but if I try to stay on it then it WILL breakdown lol

are these considered inherently hard or awkward or anything out of the ordinary?

So is it just a matter of forcing oneself to go thru the discipline and put in the time starting slowly…or are there any shortcuts

I suppose it would also apply to other single string things like the Yngwie 6 note lick but I find it way simpler than these pedal note licks

  1. better to practice on the somewhat thicker G string or does it matter?

  2. better to work on “no stretch” licks first just to get the motion down? (for example say the pedal note is the e on 12th fret and it alternates with the d and c# below) or should one start to practice the longer stretches right away since eventually one wants to do then anyway?

  3. any actual benefit to doing something like simply playing, say, 9 – 12 on high e string repeatedly as en exercise to get single string coordination going??

or am i WAY overthinking it and I should just start doing many variations of these licks and let nature take it course??

thanks, JJ

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#3

Not specifically that I’m aware of, but any time you have finger reuse it can be a little awkward. See also: the pentatonic scale the way most people tend to fret it, with constant index finger reuse, which becomes the speed/smoothness bottleneck.

In general, I like to try to do any unfamiliar motor activity fast at first if I can. Motions done quickly feel different than the same or similar motions done slowly. Sometimes doing it right once out of ten sloppy college tries gives you the a-ha feeling of what “correct” is like much more strongly than ten “correct” but slow attempts. Again, because when you play slowly, the notes may be right, but the motion may not even be the same as whatever you’re doing when you play quickily. And if even it is, or is close, it still won’t feel the same.

If I can slightly slow down the “a-ha” speed while maintaining what was correct about it, it then becomes easier to work on accuracy: get the notes right, start on different notes, and so forth. But trying to speed up accurate but slow things has a much lower hit rate. When it comes to picking technique I can say this with a high degree of certainty, but my guess is that practicing at realistic / natural speeds when first learning any new physical activity is still the most effective way to learn, and mirrors how we acquired most motor skills in life.

It’s also a lot more entertaining and game-like. If you dread “working” on things, making it a game where you try to nail the backflip or the moonwalk at normal speeds is a lot less drudgery.

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#4

yeah when u do these types of licks at a decent speed there is a certain rhythmic feel I guess…you deffo would NOT get that feel if u slowed it way down

I think u made the point on one of your vids how a guy like Vinnie Moore uses TOTALLY different form when demonstrating a lick slowly. I just happened to watch some of his 2nd instructional vid last night and I noticed he sometimes used different pickstrokes altogether on the slowed versions lol

I think a lot of this comes down to reality versus our sort of idealized notions of things. Most of our heroes learned this stuff in their early teens and probably just wailed out stuff until it sounded cool and they could repeat it.

The whole “textbook” thing of “start slowly and work it up gradually” might be more fantasy than reality. Of course im sure some people also have had success with that method

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#5

I’m pretty sure that’s the case. And I don’t even think that’s wrong - the more of these players we interview, the more I think that’s the way. Fake it until you make it - because faking it turns out to be, ironically, the best way to actually get a sense of what it is like to play realistically.

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#6

That reminds me of old school therapy misconceptions.

They wanted you to change your thinking and that would change your actions.

It really works the opposite.
Take the action until it rewires the brain.

Oversimplified but to me it makes sense here

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#7

haha, reminds me of the old story where George Lynch played a lick in a solo…it might have been in Mr Scary. He just wailed it out and got it but it wasnt a lick he knew. Then they mixed the album and some time passed and when they got ready to go out on tour he couldnt figure out the lick! hehe

he said he went and bought the tab book but it wasnt right lol. Then he said he went to a teacher but he couldnt figure it out.

I think he said he eventually figured it out near the end of the tour. (I may be telling it wrong since I read it over 20 years ago)

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#8

Regarding to the yngwie pedal tone lick,i think he hammers the pedal note with his pinky,at least in a single string,not sure when switching
It doesn’t sound all picked to my ears

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#9

I have heard people advocate each of those approaches. MAB says to practice slowly and accurately and gradually increase the speed doesn’t he? That’s what I seem to remember his advice was because he said if you start out practicing fast and sloppy, you’re actually teaching yourself to play sloppy and one day you;re going to have to get rid of that bad habit and basically “unlearn” that sloppy way you taught yourself to play.

Dallas Perkins (who was Paul Gilbert’s roommate at GIT and a great player in his own right) told me that he spends 90% of his practice time playing slowly and 10% of it playing fast.

That made sense to me… We had a discussion here recently about optimum practice time. There isn’t one guitar hero I’ve ever heard about who made it by practicing only a couple hours a day. Not one person in that thread could cite an example of a guy who became a guitar hero with just two hours of practice a day. They all played 6 to 10 hours a day. If you play fast that long, you’ll cripple yourself.

Shawn Lane did start out fast and sloppy and then spent time cleaning up his playing.

I think some people respond better to the classical style of practice (start slow and gradually build up) and others respond well to the “start as fast as you can and get clean later” approach.

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#10

One thing to check is can you play the licks legato? I.e can your left hand play it cleanly at speed? I have often found that it is a hand synchronization issue, especially with single sting licks that shift up and down the neck. After working on your tremolo at high speed (as per Troys advice) to get the motion going, make sure that the left hand is capable. Add sone legato in there as per other posts above, you might be able to get it to a point that sounds good and repeatable. After that, work on picking the rest of the notes if needed - you might find that the 50% picked version sounds great and more like the Yngwie vibe if that is what you are after.

Good luck!

#11

There definitely may be some personal factors here. For the most part though, Troy has made me a believer of the “fake it till you make it” start fast and wail approach for picking hand development - some of the things that you have to kinda figure out to get your picking technique going simply don’t materialize until you get up to a pretty good clip.

Fretting hand… I think there’s a lot more basis here for starting slow and building up, since you don’t really have any change in mechanics at high speeds than at low, like you do with picking. What you’re looking at here is building strength, evenness, accuracy, and stamina, and starting slow and burning in the movements then gradually speeding them up seems like it would make more sense.

Corollary - it’s possible that if you could get the motions 100% right at slow speed, and be sure you were consistently doing them right, then maybe starting slow would work for picking. Certainly, now that I know what my picking had is doing at fast speeds, I can recreate it at slow speeds. I just don’t know how helpful that would be, or if the reverse would be true, starting slowly with a movement that will be efficient at fast speeds, gradually speeding it up, and hope that you continue to do it quickly as you get faster. I’m not sure, though, and at this point I don’t think (for me) it would be effort well spent, because pretty consistently these days when I run into a problem in picking technique it eventually turns out to be coordination and my fretting hand is the holdup.

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