Simple Repeater Lick

Playing Technique
#7

To be honest I shouldn’t be playing at all at the moment as I’ve got some bad joint pain in my fingers and I’m trying to lay off guitar to give them a break… but it’s hard ! The pain is bad in the morning when I wake up and not so bad when I’m playing so there’s no immediate pain to stop me from playing for hours if I’m stupid enough to.

By the way, if you play that lick picking all the notes, it’s a typical ‘two way pick slanting’ lick, if that’s even what we call it anymore.
The downstroke on the B string has to escape above the E string then come down and hit the E string and the final upstroke on the E string has to escape above the B string to come down and hit the B string again.

If you play it with the pulloff like you have it tabbed it’s a DSX lick, where all the string changes are preceded by a downstroke so is a good lick for DSX players, which I guess you are.

Could be played with USX too though if you start on an upstroke.

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#8

So as much as I hate putting myself on front street, here’s a quick clip I made of the lick you posted using the motions I mentioned, I tried to close in as best I could to the picking hand, but I admit I’m not well set up for this at the moment, using a condenser cradle to hold the phone. I’m switching between a slow speed and kind of a medium speed. It’s a little sloppy, but you get the idea and you can see the motions I talked about earlier.
https://youtube.com/shorts/RhQgyFtxzOc?feature=share

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#9

Nice picking looks so easy !
I can do it and its effective, but I’ll put the guitar down and when I pick it up again I’ll automatically do it with outside picking.

It’s like I need to write myself a message on my pick guard to remind me or something.

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#10

Trust me when I say, that it wasn’t easy for me either trying to incorporate that type of motion after playing for years and years as a strict alternate picker, it was like fighting every instinct I ever had when it came to the instrument, and I’m still not that great at it, but what I came to realize eventually is that the usefulness of it outweighed the utter frustration of trying to retrain my brain and my hands to do it.

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#11

So just out of curiosity @Fossegrim, how would you play the Mr Crowley lick ?

I know I discussed this on another thread but we didn’t cover the ‘sweep’ method of 2 downstrokes to restart the lick.

This is how I play it and how RR seemed to play it.

    n  v  n  v  n  v   n  v  n  v  n  v
e:--13-10----10--------13-10----10-------
B:--------13----13-10--------13----13-10-

I have tried the following but it doesn’t flow as well:

    n  v  n  v  v  n   n  v  n  v  v  n
e:--13-10----10--------13-10----10-------
B:--------13----13-10--------13----13-10-
#12

@SlyVai,

When I get home tonight I’ll for sure take a closer look, and try it out, paying attention to my hand as I do it, but just looking at the lick, I would likely play it with all alternate picking - the way you have it in the first example, except I might just try to brute force it, and plow through the strings and use some pretty good muting in order to catch any up strokes when crossing from the B to E string.

#13

@SlyVai

So I checked out the Crowley lick, and honestly for me personally Its problematic any which of the two ways you posted IF

1: you keep it every note picked
2: you keep it strict alternate picking trying to play it cleanly at faster tempos.

So what I mean by that, is that naturally I wouldn’t try to play it while picking every note IF I’m trying to play it at faster tempos. I am assuming by looking at the repeating pattern of the lick, it is supposed to have a 16th note triplet feel. So for faster tempos, I naturally would likely start on an upstroke and incorporate pull off’s so each 6 note grouping would look like this: Up, pull off, Down, Up, Down, Pull off. Repeat etc… I would probably always start the phrase on an upstroke though and keep an outside picking pattern.

For moderate tempos, it doesn’t really matter for me and would just alternate pick the whole thing like in your first example, or do what I stated above. For faster tempos, strict alternate picking on that lick becomes problematic for me and the way I play, because I tend to pick up too much of an audible flam that kind of detracts from it imho.

I would refrain from any economy picking though. For me, it’s too problematic to play it like your second example because it honestly requires too much thought for me on where the consecutive downs and ups fall, that it hinders my ability to even play it if I constantly have to think about those. I’m sure with any kind of practice it can be done anyway you want, but for my first instincts on playing it fast, I would play it how I outlined above adding pull offs and using outside picking

#14

Ok cool thanks @Fossegrim.

I tabbed 2 repeats of the lick there but it’s actually repeated 8 times in the original sequence. 4 repeats per bar with a tempo of 90 bpm.

I do struggle to play this at the right tempo picking all the notes. It’s hard work and requires some concentration so if I was playing it live I would probably play it with pull offs as well.
RR seemed to do this too, or he played an easier variation (F, D, D, D, C, A instead of F, D, C, D, C, A) or just played it 4 times thru instead of 8 times so its nice to know that even the amazing Mr Rhoads couldnt do it live every time.

I don’t blame him but on the record it’s all picked you can hear it even though a lot of tabs have it played with pulloffs.

I learned all this RR stuff when I was young and he does a lot of those down up down or vice versa string changes in his phrases and runs, which are all outside picked.

However I did develop a sweeping technique on upstrokes when doing some of his descending runs and I still do that sometimes if I’m being lazy :slight_smile: .

I also can’t help putting those string changes in when I’m improvising because I played so much RR stuff when I was learning it’s just second nature to me, which can be really annoying if I’m trying to do really fast picked runs. Strange how things like that stick even 30 years later.

#15

Okay I jumped on YouTube to listen to it after you mentioned everything above and honestly it might be the recording, but I can’t tell for certain if he is actually picking each note or if he’s sneaking in a pull off here and there, particularly in at the last two notes of the phrase, maybe I’ll have to listen in slow motion. Since each 6 note chunk is going by relatively quickly it’s a little hard to discern at regular speed, and if it’s only on two notes that go by quickly, the lick would largely still sound alternate picked.

Playing that lick at 90bpm, while not the easiest with strict alternate picking due to where the string changes fall, it’s is still in the tempo range where it’s doable, but part of where I have some doubt I guess is how pentatonic rock licks like that are usually and traditionally played, and Randy typically adhered to that for the most part as well, so there’s always that lingering feeling of getting shivved by Ockham’s razor.

#16

Hey @Fossegrim, yeh I’ve been here before with the all picked or not thing it’s hard to tell but I think it is all picked.

Anyway it’s certainly hard to play it all picked live, I can do it sitting quietly at home though.

It’s one of those licks I would be thinking of in the back of mind all the way thru the song getting anxious because there’s a good chance I would mess it up live.

The tricky bit for me is the repeating nature of it because of that up string change at the end to restart it it’s 4 string changes in 6 notes so pretty intense.

The classic pentatonic run down that this lick is based on, used by Randy in bar 3 of the solo (first done by Jimmy Page but he probably ‘borrowed’ it from someone else) is easier to play for me being a USX player because the string changes are 2 out of 3 down string changes. Another good lick to practice the 2WPS method to and is where I easily identified that I was doing escape motions.

The run up in bar 4 has always seemed harder I guess because it’s 2 out 3 up string changes which are harder for a USX player but maybe you would sweep at least one of those changes to make it easier. I’ve tried it and like I said I do sweep the changes on upstrokes sometimes going on down runs but for up runs I just can’t make it stick. Strange it should be the other way round for a USX player.

By the way @motochick sorry to of hijacked your thread I took it on a bit of a tangent.

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#17

Not a problem, interesting discussion.
Analyzing (and trying to improve) my technique is the reason I joined CtC.
At the moment it’s a “fine line” for me to pick up my guitar and have fun jamming or doing “the work” of making small improvements in my playing and then trying to retrain my brain :thinking:

#18

I know what you mean. I try to discipline myself to play exercises and concentrate on my picking technique but in a second my fingers are off playing other stuff and then I might get out a tab book to check a lick and go down the rabbit hole of learning a whole song or two and it’s 2 hours later.

#19

Hi @Fossegrim,

FYI I took the original album track earlier and put that solo section into my studio software and slowed it down. He is NOT picking every note but it’s not consistent. It looks like he’s trying to pick every note but just can’t quite do it every time.

From what I can see and hear in the waveform: of the 48 notes in that sequence there’s 6 not picked and they are mostly the last note in the sequence. If you play with pulloffs it would be 16 notes not picked so it’s sort of in between but more picked than not picked.

Same for the descending lick in bar 3, he doesn’t pick the first 13-10 but does for the 2nd on the B string. He’s probably just winging it trying to pick them all or get close.

If you’ve ever tried to record yourself of been in a studio you know you’ve got limited time and theres always some pressure. He probably would of only had 2 or 3 takes to get the best solo and what I always find hardest is getting the timing right as well as playing well. So given the quality of the solo as a whole he pretty much nailed it.

#20

You know I’m not sure it’s really a cut and dry hijacking since it’s still very relevant to the original lick and these are problematic motions @motochick is going to face sooner or later.

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#21

@SlyVai,

You know, that’s what I thought. There’s a lot in that solo that sounds spontaneously on the spot and or grafted in, or spliced from multiple takes, and it sounds like he’s just kind of going for it trying to line it up the best he can. You know one thing to keep in mind is that they also used to time correct things even back then too, except of making precise cut and time stretch correction edits digitally they were cutting tape, so it was harder then in your typical daw, but it was still practiced even back then. so it’s kind of like, “well, no shit, a difficult transition seems smooth from phrase to phrase, and he’s playing something that’s mechanically difficult multiple times in a row with out loosing steam and dropping tempo, if all your hearing is all the best parts of it”.

So I think a lot of people could be easier on themselves if they can’t quite nail their favorite solo exactly like the original, or find the transitions from phrase to phrase difficult, because you often see the original performers live not quite do it exactly like they recorded it more often than not, they have the same hurdles as all of us, especially if the player is more on the organic idiosyncratic side, instead of always calculating.

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#22

This is a really good point.

This reminds me about I thread I started on here about Eric Johnson’s Trademark solo that I’ve been working on for WAY too long. I ended up coming to a similar conclusion. Sometimes if something is just so awkward, and the studio recording is the only evidence we have of that player doing it like that…why do we (cough cough myself) beat ourselves up so badly to reproduce the recording?

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#23

I find that playing RR solos is challenging, but manageable and enjoyable, because there are gaps between the fast phrases and runs to let my hands and fingers recover :slight_smile:

A lot of his solos are like showcases of lots of different techiques and phrases they’re very good to study if you are learning how to shred.

#24

I came to the same conclusion with a lot of Vai stuff that I’ve tried for years to replicate. I just cant do it how it’s played on the record, for example those fast multi string tapping sequences he does seem to have some spontaneous phrasing that is hard to replicate at that speed.

Instead I try to do it the best I can trying to hit most of the right notes to get the “feel” but note for note it’s impossible sometimes to do it.

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#25

Hey all, Possible to get a new link to this video?

#26

If it didn’t disappear into the ether, though not sure how useful it was. Honestly these types of fragments lend themselves well to sweep picking, which how many would play them.