I was rewatching the FG interview and it inspired me to try some economy picking. I have no problems in ascending but my problem lies in descending.
How does Frank get almost no noise and such a smooth pick attack when doing descending sweeps? My attack is quite noisy and there is a lot of pick scraping noise, however there isn’t much on ascending sweeps.
When Frank plays those sweeping lines they sound almost synth like because of how smooth his attack is. How is he doing it?
If you want to do exactly what he does, I’d try to reproduce everything he’s doing, just to eliminate varaibles. This means arm setup, anchoring, grip style (trigger), exposure, edge picking, and pick choice. Frank has always played 346-design picks, which will have more sliding when played on edge. In our interview, he uses the Planet Waves 1mm heavy of that design.
No matter what pick or approach you choose, if the scratchyness is not the same when you playing downstrokes and upstrokes, then something your form is not symmetrical. Note that Frank uses grip pressing / wrapping with the thumb to make sure the pick attack is identical no matter which way he’s going. This is why he says his technique looks “round” when he looks at it. He points out specifically that he’s not talking about the picking motion, per se, just the thumb adjustments that he makes to equalize the attack.
Thanks, Troy. I will have a look at the video again over the weekend and try to copy some of his physical set up and see if it feels anyway natural or comfortable.
I had no idea about making things symmetrical, that’s very interesting that you point that out and certainly gives me something else to look at.
Kinda blurry and dark, but it’s worth watching… for the music of course! Really tasteful stuff to my ears at least.
S**t hot playing, especially in that second clip, which is one my favorite styles of “Frank”. The eighth-note time is super in the pocket, and whatever rushing you get from the sweeping, which I know sometimes people complain about, in this case just adds energy because you’re only using it for the higher subdivisions. That’s working with the tools rather than against them.
And of course, the harmonic knowledge. Tasty, tasty stuff.
Short of creating a whole new topic, just want to say that I’m enjoying Frank’s rhythm guitar course which was just released. Cheers, D
“And nobody likes to be in a cage. Not for too long, anyhow.”
…Frank Gambale in Spicing Up The Blues, demonstrating diagonal, two string pentatonic shapes from the outset.