Malmsteen Cascades in 4s

Hi! I know that there are several different ways to approach that, but how do you guys deal with the descendent Scale pattern in groups of four notes when changing strings? (3 notes per string)

pull offs & partial swybid.

this is usx oriented. the last one i wouldn’t really do since it goes against the grain of my rest stroke technique. but it is a common way that players approach it, cesario filho does it this way.

this is a quick and dirty look into the mechanics of what is going on. so look past the starting with an upstroke, and try to see why i notated it that way. it is to show the pattern that is occurring. you can always swap out the first three notes for downstroke to rest, pull off, unrest to upstroke or downstroke, upstroke, pull off.

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Covered extensively here in not one, not two, but three exhaustive lessons!

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I personally like to pick all the notes - but using the pull off can get em sounding very smooth. I also like to play them descending on one string. I spent al lot of time on these as I really like the way Yngwie used them in the early stuff.

One thing I found that to get them to sound like Yngwie, it takes a lot of accuracy and making sure ALL the notes sound clearly as you are playing them. If you miss a note in the sequence it loses that nice Yngwie flow in my opinion.

Here is another way that I might play it, but this isn’t for the faint at heart as many here will see this as wasted movement. But it is just to keep the mechanics guidelines of the picking strict, and to always fall in the rules of the rest stroke system to maintain the wrist turning motion. This way also is something that would slow me down, obviously. If I was to play this often I might could stick with doing it this way. But if I don’t do this specific picking articulation pattern daily it would never get faster for me. With the rest stroke technique you always switch strings to a down stroke.

Here the amazing Dario Napoli is playing the phrase slightly differently than the notation I screenshot. But if you slow the video to 25% you will see the double down (half rest stroke) skip step when the 1 note on a string occurance happens.

I cant seem to play Yngwie licks at all, where is the best place to start? I can barely get the rythm of Ill see the light tonight up to speed :slight_smile:

How familiar are you with the main concepts like downstroke escape and upstroke escape? If you can’t play Yngwie I’d suspect the main culprit is that your picking motion escapes after downstrokes. If you film yourself playing a fast tremolo on one string and see which direction the pick escapes it will confirm that. Post it here and the forum members can take a look if you’d like some extra sets of eyes.

What if you just ride out the open palm muted string, can you at least hit his same speed of picking? If not, you probably just haven’t found the right joint/muscle combo to go fast. There are lots of options.

I have been getting better at ill sseethe light tonight , the pickslanting primer helped in deciding pisckslant upstroke vs downstroke etc. It fun trying to play Yngwie riffs, there was a time when I was younger i wouldnt even try to attempt it…