Julian Lage Picking Technique/Style

Playing Technique
#1

Julian Lage has (IMO) one of the most interesting right hands in the biz, capable of playing fast single note lines while somehow managing to stay in position for hybrid picking.

At first glance, for single lines, it does look like some sort of thumb-index dominated pick motion (ala circle/scalpel picking). The wrist stays mainly reserved for changing strings. I observed those from the following videos:

This is probably the clearest example of single-note lines on I Should Care:

Another one but a lot less clear on blues connotation:

Another example but this time appears to be relatively standard alternate picking, also on blues connotation.

However, I don’t think my theory is right, for a couple reasons:

  1. Depending on the video (and when it was taken), he sometimes switches to a wrist initiated pick movement with little to no finger involvement. It looks like he does this to achieve a more flatpicky attack.

  2. He use a Tortex 0.88. All the circle-picking guys I’ve seen usually use a Jazz III for the small nib. On a setup close to his (i.e. Telecaster w/ .11 chrome’s) I’ve found it almost impossible to replicate the same speed with that pick. On a smaller pick it comes naturally (Then again I am far from Julian Lage).

Another theory as for what he’s doing relates to the fact that visually, him and kenny smith pick really similarly. Therefore, the pick motion is initiated from the wrist and the finger motion is just a by-product of a relaxed grip and possibly used to create a cross pick effect.

However, I’m not inclined to go with this as it’s pretty clear with Julian’s hybrid picked lines that the motion is initiated from almost purely the fingers.

Which begs the question, what in the world do you guys think he is doing? Would love to hear y’all thoughts!

#2

Nice insights/observations on Julian’s playing! I don’t have much to add but I’ve always just assumed Julian was using mostly DBX motions - here is a clip of him alternating picking some angular lines - with a little legato and sweeping I think…

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#3

Finger motion as a motion lends itself very well to double escape motions - when I’m experimenting with it (and I’m no expert) the motion just naturally escapes in both directions unless I specifically want it to be trapped.

I do think that finger motion has a reasonably low speed cap, but in my experience it blends very well into reverse dart thrower motion, which can handle the higher speeds - for me, trying to speed up finger motion just immediately feathers into RDT movement that is to use the clock-face metaphor is probably 11-4.

#4

I think to better understand his core motion we’d have to force him to play Misirlou or similar :slight_smile:

Many of the examples above don’t really have a whole lot of continuous fast picking, it’s more of a blend of different techniques including a lot of legato, sweeping etc. and the picking bits I would describe as medium-speed, where we can basically get away with a lot. So I wouldn’t read too much into the finger motions and whatnot.

The more “picky” example from the last video is about 120bpm 16th notes which again doesn’t tell us a whole lot about what he would do when picking fast.

TLDR: check what a player does when picking really fast, and you can usually ignore everything they do at slow-medium tempos :slight_smile:

Of course, musically it’s all great!

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#5

There’s some good video here (and a lot of video that misses his hands entirely…someone needs to tell the cameraman).

I’m a beginner at this stuff, but it looks like he does some economy picking on fast stuff. Handshake motion with a ton of thumb movement.

And able to switch to hybrid picking effortlessly.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=1r6WSUlvQ20&si=vZXClfhsdC8SjO4K

Julian Lage is someone I sometimes have to ignore because it’s like fatiguing how good he is. Not sure if that makes sense. Sometimes it’s too much for me.

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#6

There’s some fast-ish bits in his solo in this YouTube video; but I’m not sure if actually breaks through the 120 bpm 16th notes barrier:

I tried to search for another bebop standard (Anthropology) earlier since most of the bebop tunes are normally played quite fast; but I didn’t find that one. Normal sixteenths are maybe not a usual subdivision in that style though - either swung eighths which may not end up fast enough for the present purposes or triplet sixteenths which turn up in short bursts in some jazz heads like the one for Anthropology. But I’ve seen some charts for bebop tunes with 250+ bpm; so maybe swung eights are fast enough for the present purposes in that context. (In a later edit I’ve removed a comment about whether jazz guitarists really “shred” outside of bebop, gypsy jazz and jazz rock fusion, since away from the computer I thought of too many contrary examples either not in those styles or in their playing outside of them e.g. Jimmy Bruno, Pat Martino, John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola, Pat Metheny, etc)

William

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#7

what is the “120 bpm 16th notes barrier”? I’m pretty sure gypsy guys and others are playing eighth notes at 300bpm? I’d have to look for an example. I’m confused as to what you’re talking about.

#8

I’m sure there are; but the thread started about Julian Lage specifically and Tommo and maybe others referred to the posted examples not being above the 120 bpm 16th note speed cap. I’m not sure if you have looked at the Cracking the Code primer based on your question. The significance of that speed cap is that it is virtually impossible to use a “string-hopping” type of picking technique above it. (I think you need to watch the videos rather than me explain further - or maybe one of the experts can add something).

Also, it doesn’t sound like you read my post either really. I did refer to shredding above those speeds in bebop, gypsy jazz and jazz rock fusion being fairly common or at least not unusual. (Then I said possibly not other styles of jazz; but then I contradicted myself since particular post-bop, hard bop, acoustic fusion, etc, etc players are fast as well),

William

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#9

You can definitely string hop at 120bpm 16ths, the cap for DBX is around 140bpm 16ths and your motion can be inefficient until around 170bpm 16ths for single escape though you might not be hopping :slight_smile:

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#10

Yeah my mistake on that one.