Tornado has been on my wishlist of “able to play” for around 20 years and although I can finally play most parts at tempo (only after discovering sweep picking), and I can “fake” some others, there are a few parts that give me problems. One of the parts is this one; it is the run before the famous sweep arpeggios, triplets at tempo 180-195.
The tabs are often inaccurate and Marty plays it differently himself when playing live (his live version of this lick is much easier to play for me, and him apparently).
I was wondering how you would approach the picking and also the fingering at these speeds. Note that the fingering (and also some notes) in the tab are not necessarily 100% correct, the only way to hear it is to slow the lick down. But, changing one or two notes is ok, as long as the arpeggio effect remains. Any suggestions on how you would approach this lick are welcome. NOTE: the first triplet in the first bar starts with the 9th fret on the A string, also the ascending arpeggio in the second bar probably involves a string skip, so instead of the 14th fret on the G string, this becomes the 10th fret on the B string. The part that gives me the most trouble is the 1st descending part
As I started playing around with it again, I noticed that one possible solution of making the descending run easier is to play it in the position where the 1st finger is on the 8th fret, so the last three notes of the run are 9th-G string, 11th-D string and 9th-D string.
However, this makes the start of the second bar trickier, involving a position shift, slant change and string skip
Marty is a pretty consistent downward pickslanter as you can see in our talk with him, so his ‘rules’ if you will are pretty straightforward. There’s a bunch of live video online of him playing this tune from recent shows. I haven’t checked those versus the album but if he’s playing the same lines it should be pretty clear what the fretting and picking choices are. Of all the ‘wish list’ type things you could have, Marty’s stuff is a great choice because the system is so consistent.
TLDR check out some live stuff, hit the 25% speed button on YouTube and you should get pretty close.
Hey Nitro 1976, your question is from quite a while ago so I’ll make this short in case you’ve already mastered this lick. As for my suggestions, I need to know one thing: What happens when you attempt the part that gives you the most trouble - the 1st descending part? I’m assuming you make a mistake, but could you describe what type of mistake it is that you make on what is the toughest part of that lick for you? Or is it not necessarily that you make a mistake, but just can’t play it fast enough?
If you’re just not able to play this lick fast enough the main thing that occurs to me at first glance is the beginning of the last bar. I think it might be easier for you if you play the second note of the last bar as the 16th fret of the A string instead of the 11th fret of the D string. Start that bar with an upstroke. That way the next 4 notes in a row can all be played with one sweeping downstroke! That’s the most obvious way I see of making the lick easier to play. If you don’t mind eliminating the slide from the 14th to 19th fret and back to the 14th fret all on the B string, you could play that F# that’s on the 19th fret of the B string at the 14th fret of the high E string instead. That would give you the ability to pick 5 notes in a row with one sweeping downstroke, and then with an upstroke, sweep the 14th fret of the B string followed by the 14th fret of the G string (instead of playing that more at the 10th fret of the B string).
Let me know if that helped you. BTW, did you ever see Nitro live? I wasn’t a huge an of their music but at the time Michael Angelo’s technique (he didn’t use the name Batio then) really impressed me so I went to see them at The Rock-It Club in Tampa on their tour for their second album. It was either late 1991 or early 1992. Angelo’s playing was worth seeing, and I was especially impressed at his economy of motion. His picking hand didn’t seem to be moving enough or even moving fast enough to be picking so many notes so quickly. It was a good lesson on the value of economy of motion. As for the show itself, I’ll say this: They played Cat Scratch Fever early in their set - probably the second song they played. Then guess what they played for their encore? You got it, the same Ted Nugent song! I like Ted Nugent, and Cat Scratch Fever is a cool song but playing it twice in less than 2 hours??? Saying it showed “questionable judgement” is the most polite way I can put it!
I figured this out for a student not too long ago, and using my knowledge of Marty’s playing style and the Amazing Slow Downer app on my iPhone, I came up with this and was able to play it at tempo with strict DWPS fairly quickly after figuring it out. Tricky part is the pinky barre right after the slide on the high E, but it matches the sound on the record.
The only part I’m not 100% on is the scalar bit before the A major arpeggio. It could be just a simple position shift that sounded like individual notes at a slow speed.
I figure he would economy pick the string changes from the B to E string, which constrains the other pickstrokes, but I can’t seem to finish the rest of the puzzle without resorting to TWPS.
edit: I’ve been turning it into DWPS only by picking the second and fourth pull-off. I’m not sure that’s what I’m hearing on the record, though.
In general the circular patterns with a one note per string sandwiched with two notes per string on either side is really great for practicing. I know it’s used a lot for 7th patterns including the diminished.
I used to do the economy approach with hammer-ons/pull-offs (I think Yngvie uses that), which will give you great speed… really you can push it passed 200 bpms.
However… for me, it just doesn’t sound clean at those speeds… not to mention you really don’t have a lot of flexibility to change things around.
So now I alt-pick this pattern using X-picking and it sounds much better. I still can’t go quite as fast, but I am getting there. I definitely think 200 bpm is feasable here.
In the Kiko clip it looks like he’s playing it down-down on the B to E string change, up for the 1st pulloff, down for the 2nd. With the pulloffs there’s enough time to allow the E to B string change without have to change pick slant.
I consider this the easiest 16th note pattern of the whole solo (apart from the stretches). The trick is to start with an upstroke then two downstrokes (sweeped). So the note before the pull-off is ALWAYS an upstroke. You can do this easily with DWPS. If you have difficulties understanding this, I can upload a video for you.
Thanks for the tip! This is how I initially tried to play it, but since I’m inclined to UWPS my DWPS was minimal. Adding some more made this quite a bit easier!
The ideal thing to do to play this and other technical guitar solos is to master TWPS. Once you’ve mastered TWPS, you can play almost any solo simply by using straight alternate picking. Whether it’s better to start on a downstroke or an upstroke becomes a moot point - licks become equally easily playable whether you start it with a downstroke or an upstroke. If you’ve mastered TWPS you can play everything starting with a downstroke and don’t need to spend time trying to reconfigure a solo to fit a DWPS or an UWPS method! Proficiency in TWPS gives you tremendous freedom and for that reason I advise everybody to learn TWPS. Why only learn UWPS or DWPS when you can have both in your arsenal?
High 90s, he’s playing 32nd notes so around 196 in 16th notes. Reb Beach on “Seventeen” and Vivian Campbell on “Holy Diver” play that lick at about the same tempo.
I think it’s safe to say that everyone here is working on their technique in general and on their TWPS in particular. In the meanwhile, there’s a choice to be made: either your move stuff around to make it fit your technique, stick to easier pieces or exclusively do exercises.
Personally I find great enjoyment in playing music that I like in whatever way I can get it. I’d rather revisit this in a while and get a ‘better’ technical version, than not play it right when it tickled my fancy.
That’s not really what I do, and I’m just about 100% sure that is not what Marty does. To me, picking technique is like a language, and I improvise and compose directly in that language. That’s where the really cool ideas come from.
I didn’t move stuff around to create this pattern. I just came up with it while tooling around with dwps shapes:
Line up the best of the best pure alternate players in the history of guitar. Take your pick. None of them write or play the kind of lines that Marty, or EJ, or Yngwie plays. Maybe they could if we forced them to practice. But they haven’t. And music you don’t write is music you don’t play.
The combination of sweeps and alternate is very much a one-way pickslanter’s game. Learn that language, and exploit it for all its cool ideas.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying there are more advantages, creatively speaking, to stick with a one way pick slanting method that incorporates sweeps than there are to learning a two way pick slanting method. Is that correct or did I misunderstand your point?
