Greetings, everyone. I got both of Joe’s technique books after watching his interview with Troy, and I’m already hitting a wall trying to figure out how to play even the earliest passages in this book efficiently without using some version of two-way pickslanting.
The suggesting pick strokes are not annotated (essentially anywhere in the book, unlike his arpeggios book), and this seems pretty non-doable with DWPS, for example. Can anyone tell me how they would play this? Any help appreciated! Thanks!
haha i feel your pain bro, the only reasoning i could come up with was to why maybe he didn’t show proper motions was because he wanted to do it in his class at the college.
i have never fully analyzed his picking but here are some things i do know. he will sweep downs on ascended cross string phrasing, he utilizes double down technique (this is a rest stroke technique from gypsy jazz), and mainly just alternate picks during descending cross string phrasing. so i am not entirely sure how he handles outside and inside string changes during ascended passages that have the one note occurrence before heading back to the lower string since he double downs. if you are curious try to find video of him playing on his instrument phrasing that is pedal point oriented to see how he tackles it, it will either be outside string changes, inside string changes, or double down, or hell he could even swipe.
I can second this, definitely seen him use pure alternate picking when descending, this might be something to consider switching out for Yngwie’s two picked notes and one pull-off if you feel inclined as Joe tends to have way more fluency when ascending than descending. Ascending he uses Yngwie’s approach of USX-Economy with occasional use of outside picking
EDIT:
Because Joe uses inside picking more frequently than Yngwie I’m finding his approach harder to work out, but Yngwie would probably pick it like this:
Joe can and does alternate pick many things too with odd note per string groupings both decending and ascending, and will often mix it with economy, legato, ho-po as well. It’s all on the table for him. I have old lick sheets he used to hand out back when he was my PI at Berklee (what seems like an eternity ago) that will show stuff like this annotated with alternate picking. That said, he was also a person that was never trying to make things harder to do than they needed to be - so long as the execution was good, play it however you can play it.
No. At “Stump Enterprises” there wasn’t really a concern with these things. With the picking aspect, he always took a play it however you can play it approach. If you asked him, he would show you how he preferred to play it, but he would never stress a pure alternate pick, vs economy picked, vs hammer on pull off mixed approach, it was always up to the person to decide what the best execution for them was. He would however be more specific with the left hand aspects and fingering. I do remember that.
He definitely says in the heading that this is meant to he alternate picked, so I certainly believe that he does that, as advertised. My question was more centered around how is he able to do this passage using USX, which I always assumed he used fairly strictly. However, I don’t see how you can play that passage without a two-way escape. To do the outside picking of the single note on a higher string basically requires DSX or a swipe.
One way is with double down technique, it is a move of the more traditional Gypsy Jazz rest stroke. You would have to analyze his phrasing as I am not sure how he does it. Troy shows during some of his sweeping phrasing of him doing double downs, but I don’t know if that is how he tackles the one note occurrence which is why i was suggesting to you to see if you can find a pedal point phrase, the one note occurrence one in particular to see how he would approach it.
Well that’s the thing, I think this comes with the assumption (maybe perpetuated through the player interviews and old reasoning here, what he may look like he is doing in some cases, particular phrases, now vs then etc.) that he is a strictly USX player and doesn’t deviate from this ever and is only playing things that conform to this. The truth is maybe a bit more complicated than that, and it doesn’t necessarily implicate swipes and double escape - it can certainly, but he likely is utilizing his own mixed escape for these things that may be constituted of all of it. Disregard how he actually does it, I think the real question is how are YOU going to choose to play this example?
As an aside Joe is very capable of some very heavy rhythm playing that doesn’t necessarily comfortably conform to a static one way escape either.
This was sort of the way I figured he might approach it too in the class which is why he left out picking motions in the tablature. Because he knew the moment someone asked he would have to explain all the ways he knew of in terms of picking to get his students to realize it is up to them to find out their way.
My question was more centered around how is he able to do this passage using USX, which I always assumed he used fairly strictly
When I took lessons with him, he showed how he actually does full up and down sweep picking pretty regularly, so I wouldn’t say he’s a strict USX player by any means. But the thing he’s most well known for, the economy upwards scale, is all USX, but I think he alternate picks going back down. Don’t remember if any footage of that was in the interview he did with Troy.
Also, I’m pretty sure he’s going to be playing with Alcatrazz next year on tour with Girlschool in the US. Assuming he’s doing the tour and he’s at the merch booth, I know he would be happy to answer that question himself.
