Joe Stump picking conundrum

Playing Technique
#1

I was browsing through some old files on my computer and I found a Joe Stump lesson from 2007 that I saved from Guitar Messenger..

In the text that accompanies the lesson Joe states:

This lick/passage is in B Harmonic Minor/F# Phrygian Dominant. I start out with a 5-note alternate picked grouping that’s fairly standard where I’m playing 6 tones in a circle (3 notes per string). Then I ascend through a 4-string 2-octave shape (3 notes per string). This is a cool scale shape I use all the time, instead of just moving straight up diatonically I ascend 4 strings and then that same shape an octave higher. That passage is economy picked, as are all of the ascending scalar passages I play. Using this kind of picking enables me to play across the strings at fairly terriflying speeds.
Then I snake through a cool mixed minor shape I use all the time. “Mixed minor” meaning I’ve got notes from both B Aeolian (Natural Minor) and B Harmonic minor. It’s a cool symmetrical shape and works great in a Phrygian Dominant or Natural Minor context depending on how you resolve it. The descending portions of the run are alternate picked, but all the ascending stuff’s economy picked (down, up, down). Then I economy pick through a hexatonic shape. I use those all the time as well, where you just take a 6-tone scale shape and play it in 3 octaves. The lick ends on an Uli Jon Roth type of melodic phrasing idea with some wide vibrato.

The lick in question lies here:

Pure economy picking presents some difficulties. Joe uses DWPS so, with this in mind, let’s take a look at how the lick would play with economy (my tabbing skills are poor):

At the E note on the second beat of bar 1, he would have to use a downstroke and then change strings, which isn’t helpful at high speeds in DWPS land.

Maybe he would do this:

I would appreciate any input on this. Hopefully my tabs are accurately notated.

I have a Joe Stump picking book and, ever since CTC has got me thinking about picking in deep, I have wondered how Joe plays some of the lines as there are no hammer ons or pull offs notated for a lot of the licks and there is nothing to say use economy picking, although we can probably assume that Joe uses economy picking when ascending as much as possible.

Maybe he uses swiping a lot?

#2

I’m going to guess your second suggestion without any video to know for sure. He did say he ascends with economy and probably considers the outside pick strokes back to lower strings as alternate picking even when set up by slurs.

Otherwise, in your first option he’d be starting sixes fingerings on different pickstrokes and that doesn’t seem very systematic, especially for someone that goes to yard sales looking for Yngwie’s old clothing haha. I think he’s probably staying with the Yngwie system because it would make the most sense for a single-orientation picker to do so.

#3

You are correct that Joe uses mostly dwps for everything, including pull offs where appropriate. There were. A few instances in our old interview where he was somewhere in between methods and technically an extra phantom pickstroke or lack of sync would take up the slack. These would technically be mistakes but so isolated in nature that I wouldn’t ding him for it.

On a related note, please understand that the players you comment on here are often people we’ve worked with and who may even one day read these posts. If you want us to continue to be able to get interviews with these great players, then making remarks about their wardrobe choices or whether they are a ‘douche’ in interviews is going to read pretty disrespectful, and only hurt what we’re trying to achieve here. If there’s a legit and useful critique to be made then it’s probably also possible to state it in a way that is not gratuitous or offensive. If there isn’t such a way, then maybe the comment isn’t adding anything. That’s one yardstick to use anyway.

Thanks

5 Likes
#4

Thanks again Troy. I’m looking forward to this interview as you can see. I find the bit about the phantom stroke very interesting- I’ve never heard of that before.

Joe makes me want to give DWPS a shot!

#5

Sorry, I’m probably not explaining this well. There’s no cool awesome technique called the “phantom pickstroke”. The original question is how can such and such a phrase be handled with a certain system, and the answer is, sometimes it can’t. Sometimes a player goes for a line, and it doesn’t work. You might see a certain number of notes being picked that just don’t line up with the number of fretted notes, or pickstrokes that grab a couple strings at once but don’t really sound any specific note. Or you might see no strings being picked at all, where the pick just picks air.

These aren’t techniques per se, they’re just errors. They don’t contribute to a phrase sounding better, usually only indistinct or mushy. Although I think back in the day, in the '80s, there was a lot of ‘fast but not clean’ playing that got a pass from listeners who didn’t know any better, particularly if they were kids at the time. There are certainly classic guitar solos that I like from that era which contain those moments. But again if the composition is great, so be it.

When it comes to errors, the difference between great players like Joe who really do have picking technique, and those that are still learning, is that learners are essentially random in the mistakes they make. Players with a system that is baked in and effective make errors which are really specific and consistent, limited to a single attempted note at a time, or a specific kind of string change, often while the rest of the phrase sounds ok.

In your case, ironically, your accuracy is high, because you have a baked in system which works - stringhopping. We’re trying to introduce a little more speed and even sloppyness if necessary to get your movements to go faster. It is then when the pickslanting techniques, chunking techniques, will start to make a real difference.

As usual keep up the good work!