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You may have already seen this - it’s our latest YouTube feature about young Joe Pass and his ridiculous USX technique. As great as older Joe was, young Joe was great in a different way with his furious yet tasty bebop shredding.
We did this lesson with the amazing Levi Clay, who transcribed the whole thing - bless his soul. He then recorded some expert historical and musicological commentary to go along with our mechanical teaching. Great stuff!
The whole thing is 40 minutes long, which was a workout to edit. But there’s a lot of good stuff in here. And it’s getting some good traction, and it’s always nice when that pays off.
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Saw this pop on on IG, i think, and Ive been meanign to come back and watch. Thanks in advance!
This video is great! I’ve started transcribing this solo a few times, to get inside his fingering patters. This makes me realize I need to get back to it. Great work on this one. There are a few strange things he does that I found when slowed down to 1/4 speed, like strange double upstroke string crossing, descending, if I remember correctly. It doesn’t seem to make sense until you do the lick at speed and then you feel the bounce of the rh rhythm and it works… Transcription only at Levi’s?
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Hi
Where is the transcription ?
Thanks
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Levi is so amazing…this is a wonderful collaboration and I hope it is the first of many! Great work all!
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Tab is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa-WLSbXOS8
Unfortunately, there are mistakes in the tablature. No wonder—Levi even writes in the comments that Joe Pass doesn’t play with system described by Troy😳
Sorry for the delay! Pedro posted the correct link to Levi’s transcription.
In general I didn’t notice anything that looks like two sequential upstrokes in the section I learned. But there is one moment where you have upstroke-pulloff on a higher string followed by a single upstroke on the next lower string, which only has one note on it.
If that’s what you are referring to, this is also how the Yngwie arpeggios work: upstroke-pulloff on the top string, then just upstroke on the middle string. It’s a common sequence in USX playing:
In the Joe solo, m. 117-118 has this. The G string goes down-up-pulloff. Then the D string is just an upstroke.
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OK - major question that I’ve struggled with since trying to get into Benson (and now Joe Pass) USX picking.
I have tried to transcribe these guys’ solos and keep running into some FAST examples of:
1/ descending arpeggios, I assume requiring upward sweeps, and
2/ downward intervalic leaps involving downward string skipping, following a down-picked high note (for example in executing a pivot arpeggio that moves down a 6th after a high note)
Do these guys just briefly but fully depart from their downward pick slant USX motion to execute these? If so, they must be doing it very fluidly as they seem to be able to do these in the middle of lines. Or is there something I might be missing that unlocks these kinds of lines within the USX technique?
Example here on an epic solo over Night and Day:
Joe is a Gypsy player, functionally speaking. He does all the tricks they do, including downstroke sweeping, strategic legato, and lots of downpicking. I don’t show every possible combination of these techniques in the lesson, but all the techniques are covered and none are left out, so it’s pretty solid overview of how to play lead lines like Joe.
If you want to know for sure what Joe is doing in any given scenario, the best way is to find video and look at it. This won’t be available in every case, but there’s a decent amount of Joe footage out there. But for examples where you don’t have video, we don’t need to imagine he is using techniques or tricks beyond the ones I outline in the lesson. Not for the majority of things Joe played. It’s a system and he sticks to it pretty well. George is pretty similar, with different lick vocabulary. If you haven’t watched the whole YouTube lesson yet, definitely give that a shot - it’s all in there.
As far as learning Joe’s technique, the best order of operations is the one in the lesson: smooth tremolo first, and verify that you still have real upstroke escape when fast. Don’t just go by feel or sound - film yourself and verify the escape is real. That’s the foundation.
If you run into any trouble, make a TC - we’re happy to take a look!
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Would this be possible with Jason Becker? I would really love an examination on Jason. He is not dead, but he is essentially dead in terms of guitar.
Jason was great, but he looked like a wrist player, in roughly the same technique ballpark as Jeff Loomis and Andy Wood. Our tutorials already cover this pretty well.
So for the short term, I would focus on getting a smooth/fast tremolo using our reverse dart tutorials. I would not try to overthink it beyond that, since most players with Jason’s form all end up in the same technique ballpark regardless.
With fast wrist motion plus good hand sync on simple single-string patterns, you can probably play most of Jason’s picked lines. If you want to do 3nps scales in a straight line, you can throw in some 2wps down the road. But I would not worry about this to get started since it amounts to a special case. The most common shreddy patterns are simple DSX or outside picking lines, and Jason’s vocabulary seems to fit this too.
Instead, get the core motion going on a single string with the fretting locked in, and you are probably 85% of the way there!
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