Roy said there was no tuitional material to speak of when he was younger so the picking techniques and right hand muting he developed were unconventional. He was trying to emulate pizzicato violin. he gets that sound by opening and closing his thumb and forefinger on the pick as he’s playing a series of notes so he can control a muted or open sound in a split second. When hes playing a lot of notes very quietly you see the right hand almost hovering like a humming bird and when he wants to generate more volume he strikes the string harder and you see marginally more movement in the hand.The result is a choppy sound I have never seen anyone be able to achieve before. I can only compare it to gypsy style players adding rh muting after a downstroke except he manages to do it very fast in both directions. Its like machine gun fire. He does the same for the acoustic but the sound is recorded differently. For the acoustic he adds post production compression and hard gating on top.Theyre very different muting technique Ive not seen before. We didn’t talk much abotu the Phat Bhoy pick as we ran out of time but I asked him why so thick (I use Jazz 3s but I am curious as I have got arthritis and they are an ergonomic design). Yes you are right about the tone. Hes using the thicker pick as he likes to play back at the saddle. Also that the thicker pick means theres less distance to travel between the strings on an up or down stroke. I watched really close up and his string clearance is like fraction of mm and every note pops. On the Shawn Lane videos he uses other picks too and this was to get Shawns snappier tone. Thats all I got, talking fast to get the most out the time. He answered everything I asked really clear and demonstrated each technique, nothing seemed to phase him. It sounds practically unreal when you see him which is what I thought about Shawn when I first set ears on him! Don’t take my word for it though, I probably havent asked him everything you want to know so you can ask him yourself or hes bringing out ebooks on Hybrid Sarod and other techniques but I don’t know when. Hope that all makes sense, its just how I scribbled it down! Cheers
Awesome, many thanks!
Hey, youre welcome, nice you got something from it. It was the fastest 25 minutes I ever spent online with what must be the fastest player around today but I got so much information it was unreal. LIke 25 lessons rolled into one and I didn’t even pick up my own guitar. I didn’t get to ask him about the Vigier Excalibur, Shawn’s guitar but hell, its a beaut. The actions so low you can barely put a hair between the string and the fretboard but theres no buzz.I wouldn’t mind an hour to poke around his studio. I spotted a mandolin and I think an Oud! Let me know if you speak to him direct, you can share what he told you too, ask him about the guitar mods! Good to meet ya
@Pepepicks66 great playing in that clip.
Technically, in the original Shawn example, not all these notes are picked — you can see the way the picking hand stops and starts, particularly if you watch at 25% speed.
Most of his fast scale playing was two-string 3nps partial picking patterns. One is the most common is the ascending sixes pattern, which he demonstrates on the instructional portion of the tape, and plays in this sequence. It’s downstroke + hammer hammer on the low string, and UDU on the upper string, just done super fast.
The pattern on the upper two strings toward the end, where you hear the occasional trill, and the occasional repeated note, that’s a partial picking pattern as well. Not really sure what it is though. This is a good example of a situation where finding some other sources with less backing would help. Like maybe he does this elsewhere on the tape in the instructional segment, minus the band.
Also, note that Shawn’s picking motion was pretty much exclusively USX, wrist motion most likely. So his fast picking was very often even numbers of picked notes per string, plus legato. Or fast UDU on a top string, like in the sixes pattern, to make use of the upstroke string change. So that’s a transcription hint, especially if you have video to reference and can see the picking motions.
Finally, I think at these super fast speeds, some of the notes get eaten, especially if they’re legato. There is a base pattern there, and the picking hand is probably still picking its evens or UDU patterns. But the legato notes may not always all sound. So I wouldn’t take every note you hear as literally the pattern that was played, before it got speed-ified.
If you can figure out what the base patterns were, you can then mix and match them in your own playing to cop some of the vibe. I think that’s the best way to understand his style, more so than writing down all the [audible] notes verbatim.
I think you keyed on most of the reasons Shawn Lane is so hard to decipher… Not picking all the notes (“ghost” legato), upward pick slant IMO further evens out the attack between picked / legato notes, and on top of that, the delay / reverb washes out the notes even more.
I wish REH would’ve convinced him to record the instructional videos with a drier tone.
I don’t think there is an upward pickslant, I don’t see how you could play USX pentatonic lines that way, but maybe if you use enough edge picking.
Yeah the illegal amounts of delay make things tricky. That was his thing though, it’s what he liked.
Pepe I agree instructional videos with a super dry clean tone is the most useful. Its not what I would want to sound like playing music but it works for instruction. Did you get a copy of the GPF transcription yet? That ghost legato is interesting and the hammer ons from nowhere.
I didn’t want to contradict you, but I want to say he has an upward pick slant and looks like DSX. I’ll find a clip in a few minutes.
Also lmao “illegal amounts of delay”.
@Wilkies_Beretta I didn’t get the PDF, I ended up just pausing the video to see the tablature (totally took too long by the way, so I appreciate you offering regardless).
13:50 in this video is a good pick shot, shows how he’s holding it and maybe escape motion. I want to say that’s DSX?
Some screenshots:
Personally I wouldn’t mind hearing someone play his solo here, IMO his greatest.
13:50 is the fours and fives lick which is a DWPS economy phrase. All upstroke string changes and downstroke sweeps. It’s similar to Eric Johnson’s pentatonic fives pattern, just applied to a 3nps fingering instead of 2nps.
All of Shawn’s fast picking was USX motion with occasional downstroke sweeping as you’re seeing here. If there’s a way to do that with an upward pickslant, I’m not sure how that would be. This looks like a supinated arm position, and deviation wrist motion, i.e. Mike Stern style USX wrist motion just with a trailing edge pick grip.
So I might have the terminology wrong I think… This is the way I was told (actually taught by a teacher like 17 years ago) that Shawn held the pick:
I always called that upward pick slanting. Is this actually “trailing edge pick grip”?
If so, what’s upward pick slanting? Sorry for the confusion.
Aha, yes, we call that “trailing edge” grip. Pickslanting is which way the pick tilts with respect to the string plane:
Or, to put it more succinctly:
Man thanks for correcting me, I hope I haven’t confused anyone here as I’m sure I’ve replied in topics confusing the two terms! Oof.
Not a problem, your responses are always pretty insightful so I suspect the message got across regardless.
I’ll give this version a shot!
Second request: someone play @JBakerman 's tab, even if it’s super slow! I’m pretty bad at figuring out the quintuplet feel, and the random ghost notes (?) are a curveball. I’d appreciate hearing / seeing someone do it up!
Well shit. I was about to go play a perfect rendition of this, but after hearing about what happened to you, I’m not even gonna try! 
Ahem. But I could. If I wanted to.