Known unknowns - Bass player-turned-guitar player?

[DrLunchbox]

A bit of context - I’m mainly a fingerstyle bass player, but love playing guitar. I struggle with my right hand picking. There are two different (?) issues at play here. (Well, there are more, but for brevity two is a good starting point.)

One, is boom-chuck accuracy.

Root/strum - Magnet

That’s just messing around with E, A, and B7. But it sounds much sloppier actually played than in my mind’s ear. Any ideas?

I also have no real idea what my single line picking style is (or what I’m doing wrong) so any feedback here would be great too. Here I’m just running through the opening lick to Ramblin’ Man a few times.

Ramblin' Man riff - Magnet

If anyone is willing to take a gander and provide some feedback, I’d really appreciate it. Having the magnet makes it much easier to capture these things!

[cmcgee11235]

For the second one it looks like maybe 902 like Andy Wood, or maybe some string hopping - I’d post a video tremolo picking one string as fast as you can and maybe some alternate picked 3NPS run to see what happens when you cross strings in that context.

[tommo]

@cmcgee11235

I’d post a video tremolo picking one string as fast as you can

Ha you got there before me!

Yes please, show us a tremolo and we take it from there!

[DrLunchbox]

Ah! Fair play. I guess I was getting ahead of myself.

Tremolo attempt

Tremolo - Magnet

3NPS attempt

3NPS - Magnet

Seriously loving the ease of the magnet for capturing these, as pathetic as they may be!

[tommo]

Cool thanks for posting these! Can you also upload the normal-speed version of this? The slow motion is great for looking at individual details, but gives little clue as to what the playing actually looks/sounds like

One observation: in the tremolo clip it looks like you are staying very close to the string at all times. Is this intentional, i.e. are you trying to make the “smallest possible motions”, or is it just the way it comes out naturally?

This is not necessarily an issue, but let’s see/hear the normal speed versions first

[DrLunchbox]

Yeesh, clearly I haven’t been around much to follow protocols on this process. Mea culpa.

tremolo regular speed magnet

@tommo

s this intentional, i.e. are you trying to make the “smallest possible motions”, or is it just the way it comes out naturally?

Honestly, I didn’t really think about it. That’s what came naturally, but like I mentioned at the top I’m a fingerstyle bass player first, so that’s just what I did naturally to try to make smaller motions. I’m definitely open to changing any/all mechanics.

3NPS regular speed magnet

Thanks again for any feedback.

[cmcgee11235]

That 3NPS looks like USX to me, the pick goes into the strings on a downstroke and rises out of them on the upstroke. The tremolo seems similar.

Out of curiosity, because I think it goes hand in hand with USX sometimes - How natural does it feel to do economy picking when you’re ascending a scale, like if you do the 3NPS run but instead of strict alternate picked, when you end the string on a downstroke, keep pushing through to the next string on the same downstroke.

[DrLunchbox]

@cmcgee11235

How natural does it feel to do economy picking when you’re ascending a scale, like if you do the 3NPS run but instead of strict alternate picked, when you end the string on a downstroke, keep pushing through to the next string on the same downstroke.

Great question. I tried this and it feels really weird, almost like a stutter. Definitely not natural for me.

[cmcgee11235]

Gotcha - well my theory might also be totally wrong on that.

Still, I’m gonna say based on the 3NPS video you seem like a USX player - so you escape the strings on upstrokes only. If you watch through that slo mo clip, you can catch a couple spots where your pick is hitting because you finish the string on a down stroke. I think the most obvious one is when you’re descending and go from the G to the D strings you really whack the G on the upstroke and it’s visible in the video.

If that’s the case, there’s plenty you can do with it - Yngwie has a lot of approaches. One of them is adding a 4th note on the string with a small slide to it end on an upstroke, or to use economy picking for those outside ascending string changes. Which I think gets a bit of a bad rap sometimes, but if you really kill it on economy you sound like Rick Graham or Malmsteen or Brandon Ellis.

A different approach is to try and drill in an escape movement like for example, I rotate my forearm a bit to get around the string when I know it’s going to hit on the string change (this changes the pick slant) and practice six note groups like that. That’s covered in detail in the antigravity seminar if you feel like buying/watching that, or if you search the forum for 2WPS or two way pickslanting.