Technical difficulties with Paul Gilbert licks

Playing Technique
#42

Cool stuff - I have seen Paul Gilbert do some yelping upstroke notes - but they don’t sound like P.H.'s more like a hybrid of P.H.s and scratchy scraping. Don’t know if you could easily do that upstroke P.H. after the super precise alternate muting - but anything is possible on the guitar!

But that riff def’ starts with a upstroke - he says that in the terrifying guitar trip vid :slight_smile:

Egg on face moment - I just checked on you tube - at 0.25 speed - yup he starts with a downstroke !!! - that’s this vid:

Also looks like he is full on economy picking the 6 note runs - shocking! lol

I will have to check the metal dog version now - oh dear :slight_smile:

yup - looks like metal dog is also starting with a downstroke :slight_smile:

#43

Uhm, to me it looks like alternate picking with very small pickstrokes :thinking:

#44

I played this tune a lot as a teenager. I used strict alternate picking, beginning on a downstroke.

I used the picking method I’ve referred to here as “Mode 1,” which is a double-escape motion with an approximately neutral pickslant and a lot of leading edge picking.

#45

super hard to tell on the vid - a few times it looks like he misses a pick motion. Think the vid is 30fps - gives us a nyquist of 15fps - the fast notes are 13fps - close to the temporal nyquist - could just be that is just misleading my vision :slight_smile:

#46

great info - that’s exactly what my current “economy hoping” thing does - flat perpendicular attack on the mutes and a hop to escape (I guess that’s the terminology).

Did you ever manage to replicate that tone - that’s my big issue - it’s not a thrash chug - more like a “Lead scuff” with a tiny hint of chug underneath. I think he was using the dimarzio super distortions or some such pickup that has the 640hz bump that gets that great scuff sound.

#47

I have a write up of the picking techniques I use and some video demonstrations in this thread:

Mode 1 is the method I used for Paul Gilbert tunes.

I felt I could get a decent imitation of the palm muted tone Gilbert gets, but he sometimes gets a “snarl” sound that I’ve never quite been able to replicate.

1 Like
#48

Not surprised - in other videos I’ve seen on picking technique, Gilbert says he likes to use a lot of edge picking when playing muted with gain to get a “cello-like” sound. I’m not sure I hear it, exactly, but it’s definitely a big part of his sound.

#49

umm the intro to fuzz universe - that whacka-whacka muting sound is the cello picking - I think with the injector pickups to bring out the High’s

#50

Thanks!! - will study it - I’m currently drilling “economy hop” for the next few days - so I’ll see if it fits into what I’m doing.

Part of the racer x TD sound is something like a vintage marshal cab - I’ve been scouring my impulses - and that is the closest match for it, I’ve found so far - no idea what the speakers are.

#51

You mean something like the waggon wheel effect?

Careful with the sampling theorem here, one full amplitude (2 * pi) produces two tones as we are talking alternate picking. Still this is a very low fps-number as it all depends on the phase and as it is shiftig (13/15) analyzing movements is unreliable.

13 nps -> 6.5 Hz gives us roughly 5 frames per up/down. In my opinion 10 times the highest frequency would be a sensible value, so 60 fps should be the minimum.

Tom

#52

Ok I think I finally cracked this tone!! yaay

(added guitar only as well - so you can hear the isolated track)

it was all down to my crappy guitar tone!!

This is not a perfect clone of gilbert tone at all - it just makes that “gunning engine continuity” sound, which is what I was after. I’m using my bridge pickup for this. I can’t play the high triplet pulloffs at the moment - because my top string is a 11 and the rest are 9’s lol

I think my problem was I was using far far too much bass on the cab output - and that totally kills the main riff continuity and robs it of the scuff sound that gives it that perfect timing feel.

The other thing I was doing - was picking waaay to hard with a old school trash tone. This caused me to double hit the accent note on the upstroke. I still do occasionally double hit that, but that tone along with the drums kind of hides it.

Here’s my FX pipeline:

My Gate Expander for noise and dynamics: (this is a free VST3 I’ve written - if you can’t fix it hardware fix it in software :slight_smile: GitHub - shabtronic/GateXpander: Audio compressor, expander with noise gate functionality)

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A 5150 clone (free btw)

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Impulse cab:

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Korn_twistedTransitor.wav - is the impulse name.

3 Likes
#53

Sounds cool, can we hear the track isolated?

#54

you want just the guitar on it’s own?

#55

Yeah, would be cool to hear what it sounds like on its own. I have had similar issues gettjng the lower notes to pop a little more and it would be good to hear the raw tone and compare it to mine (not that I can play it to tempo! :joy:

#56

No problem - it’s real nightmare trying to decode a tone - when you have bass/drums mixed it.

I have no problem showing how awful my picking is - it’s sounds disgusting on its own :slight_smile: - but this toon is all about the timing :slight_smile:

it’s the high end “crunch” on the notes that gives the timing and sound.

#57

Cheers dude.

Don’t be too harsh on yourself, its sounds great. It is a monster tune after all, by one of the legends of picking!

1 Like
#58

Hi all!

I have forgotten completely about this riff. These riffs are still way too difficult for me. Currently working on similar licks mechanically speaking from a band called Angra Help to improve TWPS

#59

Wow that’s a great riff!

What I’ve found is - it’s all in the tone - it’s that simple.

I’ve been able to play the TD riff at speed since 2004 (not joking) - and it’s always sounded like complete crap. The things that are making it work for me are as follows:

  1. Turn bass completely off on the amp

  2. Pick lightly - it’s like a scraping thing - very hard to explain this

  3. Some dynamics processing - a downward expander - that really cleans up the 2 string muting riffs

Once you have the right tone - it’s about 1000 times easier to play!

hope that helps

#60

You’d think that… but then go back and watch that video Tommo posted in Sept 2018 when Gilbert is playing this, at tempo, with a clean/edge of breakup tone, with (high output, to be fair) singlecoils. A lot of that “revving” sound is just totally in-the-pocket, precice picking. He’s just good.

#61

Fair point. He is that good.

That being said, sometimes tone can really mess with the perception of your technique. Recently I thought that I had totally lost all facilty to play cleanly on the lower 2 strings (in pitch) - no matter what I did it sounded cruddy. I had recently moved the living room around and realised that I was sitting at a different distance and angle from the cab than usual and that if I stood up or moved my head a few of inches eitherside, my technique returned. I discovered (after a google search) that I was experiencing the speaker ‘beam’. It sounded so harsh and messy that my ear couldn’t really hear what was going on. Blew my mind! I knew that pointing a mic on axis at the centre of the cone is harsh, but I never thought i would experience something so baffling to my ears.

Caveat: I do have a bit of hearing loss which probably didn’t help lol!