Sneak attack on the metal front!
Joe Stump is stopping by in an hour for an interview. He’s a super nice guy who met with us years ago when this was all just a hobby, and it will be great to catch up. We’d like to get a good look at his killer economy scale playing and pedal tone mastery with the new gear. This is an offline interview so we can set up for some backing track riffing. Any questions for the good Professor? Let us know here and we’ll ask them!
YEAH!!! !!! ! !!! !!! ! ! !!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
HELL YEAHHHH !!! ! !!! ! !!! ! ! ! !!! ! ! ! ! !!! ! ! ! ! !
Ask him where he gets his outfits… I’d genuinely quite like to know 
Haha!
But in all seriousness, I’d be interested to hear how he goes about transcribing some of the violin music and how he has to approach his technique to execute it!
Also how he goes about teaching some of this stuff would be great to hear about for all us teachers on here!
Yes, Mr. Stump. I am under the assumption that you are a primary dwps that makes use of economy picking for ascending lines.
How do you approach descending scale patterns?
Are the notes per string arranged to even numbers to avoid the need to change pick slants?
I am curious if, and how, he incorporates the Down-up-pulloff for descending stuff. I had his 90’s records and I think I’ve heard a bit of that in his playing.
Where is his pick pointing? neck pu, strait, or bridge? Is it a grip point, or is it 90 degree grip with lean?
Assuming you are a leading edge picker, how much of a angle do you generally use on the forward edge?
Do you anchor your right hand on the bridge? or more over the strings? What area of the right hand is anchored most of the time? The flat of the wrist, or side of hand?
Mr. Stump… Can I have one of your '98 to '06 era Yngwie Strats? Oh, and sign the back of the headstock for me. And can you throw a signed copy of “The Dark Lord Rises” in the tweed case before you package the guitar up for me? 
Do you still use a 8-46 hybrid set? What strings are you currently using?
Still using the 1.5mm Dunlop Delrin?
Pickups?
Are you still with ESP?
Being a vintage tremolo user, do you have any tricks to keep them in tune? Do you change the trem springs? Wilkinsons?
How are the old Marshall heads holding up?
Have you incorporated any of today’s newer equipment into your arsenal? [Axe FX, Kemper]
Brilliant! I’d like to know how he goes about keeping his technique in shape. Does he have a routine of technical etues, or does he just practice songs? Does he divide his technique practice in categories (alternate, sweep, legato, etc)?
Thank you \m/
What classical composers and pieces would he recommend for someone interested in neoclassical shred guitar? Any tips for transposing instrument parts that are outside of the guitar’s range?
This is exciting! Can’t wait for this!
Great news, I’ll be picking this one up for sure.
Personally, I think it would be cool to see it bundled with footage from the original Joe Stump interview.
when will you post the interview?
Is Joe gonna ship the Yngwie Strat or did he leave it there? I’ll cover shipping if you guys have to mail it out.
This was a super fun conversation. We only got to some of the gear questions off-camera, while we were setting up. Once we started rolling, things took a turn for the harmonic which was cool and unexpected. We did a good 40 minutes on exotic modes like double harmonic minor and super Turkish. Of course we talked about Joe’s super fluid economy picking as well. Here’s a little of that, through our '84 JCM800 and one of Joe’s dirt pedals (I forget which one), old-school Yngwie style:
Amazing clip! Really looking forward to this one.
I’m betting his pedal is a DOD 250 overdrive preamp or the DOD YJM signature overdrive preamp.
Hell yeah, I love you man. As far as where we got the economy. It’s a sound thing… I play exactly like this… why? I had all of Joe Stump’s CDs in the 90’s… and I listened to him and Yngwie Malmsteen all the time. I was doing everything I could to get that sound… And he talks about Chris Impellitteri… I was the guitarist for the singer of Impellitteri. At least somebody (Chris’ Singer) liked my playing once, lol. It looks like Joe’s mechanics are exactly the same as mine when I just pick naturally.
I need a badass player like Joe on my team, so I can stop worrying about what you and Teemu are doing.
Wait this double downstroke thing at lightspeed is very misterious! When’s the full thing coming out? I need to know what’s going on 
Personally I don’t think there’s anything wrong with economy and/or finger movement! To be honest I would probably do much more economy playing if I didn’t find it so hard to keep my timing.
So there is definitely nothing wrong with you playing that way 
I’ve rarely seen two successive down strokes on the same string buried in the same fast lick!
I was even thinking, this is a typical case of “he thinks he’s doing two down strokes but he’s actually alternate picking the thing”, until I saw the slow motion footage of the fast lick. 
Can we take something out from this to help us with fast down picking technique?
Can’t wait to watch the whole thing!
Thanks Tommo, 
lol, it’s just connecting chunks that start on a down. It looks like Joe is hitting the last down like a inside string change… That way the pick is ready for the next down on that same string.
Kinda like how you gotta do a inside string change to turn economy picking around up there… Looks like Joe is doing that movement to be able to do the second down right quick.
This is the crux of it right here. You have plenty of ability. From the cheap seats, it just seems like you have a hard time deciding what you want to work on. You really don’t need anyone on your team for this. I generally let the technique and riffs decide that for me. Meaning, I learn a technique, then I tool around and see if I can come up with cool riffs using that technique, and if I can, then I will tend to keep going with that. If I have a steady stream of ideas, I tend not to worry much about whatever other techniques are available.
Obviously, we’re in the business of learning and teaching techniques so I have to keep going through this process with different mechanical things, whether or not I want to. But if we weren’t, I would probably just be writing riffs using some mix of the first couple of techniques we looked at years ago.
TLDR choose something you’re already good at and write some stuff that fits it, and see where it takes you.
Thanks for the replies Troy! And once again, great job here on this interview. This rules.