TWPS / Noisy Swiping

Technique Critique
#1

Hey guys,

Looking for a little feedback on an issue I’ve noticed, but first a little background / context:

Self-diagnosis of playing technique:
- TWPS, primary upward pickslant
- wrist deviation combined with occasional forearm rotation (noticed this happens when I start to fatigue)

The problem: At up to ~80% speed, my picking seems to be TWPS. Somewhere above that it becomes swiping on descending outside string changes. I’m not opposed to this in principle, but it comes out as a pretty aggressive, audible swipe that I’m not muting very well.

I re-watched the swiping sections in Antigravity and it sounds like MAB uses left hand muting to dampen the adjacent strings. I use an almost 90 degree approach to the fretboard with my fingertips on the left hand and I don’t see any easy way to accomplish this.

There’s a noticeable thunk around the 10 second mark in the video. Recorded with a dry signal / bridge pickup / high gain to get the most unforgiving tone possible. It’s less obvious if I use a more melodic tone, but then I’d just be covering up the problem.

Appreciate any comments or feedback!

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#2

I hear what you’re talking about. It’s probably more noticeable to you than it is to anybody listening. Had you not pointed it out I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

I’ve been trying to work on swiping a little bit lately and I’ve been struggling with getting a clean swipe. So maybe I’m not the best person to give advise here but maybe if you try to analyze exactly what motion is happening when the loud swipe occurs it could be the first step to possibly noticing a small “something” that you’re doing, or not doing that’s causing it.
The rest of what you played sounded pretty clean so it seems that there’s just that one spot that something is going on. Maybe make yourself stop when you get to that point and force yourself to fix it. Or record that same phrase in slo motion so you can get a really good look at what’s happening …maybe that’s the key.

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#3

I agree, it was only that one spot that stood out (but wouldn’ t be heard in a full band mix).

Well, I think that you are doing at least some left hand muting, otherwise it would have sounded a lot worse.

Swipes are definitely a part of many a great player’s technique. I’m pretty sure it happens in mine , but I am only expecting them to happen at the higher end of my picking range (and not necessarily by choice). I’m curious about the engineering of swipes - Do you intend to use swiping at slower speeds?

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#4

Nice playing :grinning:

I think too it’s not unmuted, the muting seems to work well at that one spot.
As far as I can tell it happens at the same time as a position shift, that can be pain in the ass cause muted strings still produce noise when you move your fingers, especially on the harmonic spots.
I’m not very experienced with that, but I’d try to use different fingers to mute in that case to avoid muting on ‘bad’ positions.
If that doesn’t work the only way might to think about refingering or find a workaround for that one pickstroke, in some situation noise crontrol for swiping has its limits.

Beside that I like your playing!

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#5

At this beginning stage I haven’t given a whole lot of thought on that. I’ve just been trying to get a clean swipe at this point.
If I had to guess, I would say that most likely I would tend to swipe at higher speeds rather than lower speeds. If I could get it to be clean I’d likely use it in a variety of places.

#6

Cool, thanks for the response!

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#7

A few weeks ago I watched the antigravity seminar and saw the chapter on swiping. But at that point I hadn’t really tried it. I rewatched it the other day and have been trying to play the MAB descending 4’s lick.
As Troy states in antigravity, there’s only 2 places where the swipe needs to happen, both on outside descending changes.
My plan is to spend 10 minutes/night after work for the next few weeks playing through this lick.
I’m not even going to worry about speed. I just need to get the mechanic under my fingers and be able to make the swipe cleanly.
I’ve been breaking my practice time into small chunks like this.
10 min on swiping
10 min on TWPS
10 minutes scale practice
10 min…blah, blah
At the end I just try to improvise freely or play to a jam track or a static chord to get the sounds of the modes in my head.

I also am taking private lessons from an instructor. The things we are working on are more theory related and not technique oriented. So basically I’m working on the CtC stuff on my own and using my lesson material to incorporate musical ideas into my vocabulary. Hopefully it works out like I’m planning!!! Lolzr

#8

Honestly I don’t think anyone should ‘work on’ swiping. What I mean is that players who do it well, generally got good at it by actually trying not to do it. This is the case for me. I see it in my playing here and there, but only when filming close up slow motion shots. Because when it happens, it’s inaudible and I don’t know I’m doing it. If I could hear it in those cases, I’d just fix it and not do it at all.

My best advice for something like descending fours is to actually try to play the pattern with no swiping - either the Yngwie way with sweeping and pulloffs, or with pure alternate. You might very well bang into the strings occasionally. But the better you get at the movements, the less audible that banging becomes - to the point where it will be entirely inaudible, and only someone with a camera would know it was happening.

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#9

Nice playing!

Just to provide context for other commenters, I hear it. And yes I would hear that without listening for it or slowing it down. If you can’t hear a problem, you can’t fix it, so it’s important that everyone learn to pay attention at some level to these sorts of things.

To be clear, this is solid playing and you’ve got most things working here, so nice work. We’d need a better shot of this to see what’s going on, preferably in slow motion so you can see also what kind of pick/string contact is actually happening and when. Low angles like this make it a little harder to see the movements. Try to get the camera level in a “down the strings” type of orientation as we typically use. Does’t have to be super up close, seeing what the arm and wrist are doing is also helpful.

If you can, just play a repeating phrase that includes the type of string change you think is problematic - something like this for example:

https://troygrady.com/seminars/volcano/clips/alternate-picking-ping-pong-sixes/

No need to move around, one position, two strings, few repetitions is fine. You can use your primary up approach if that’s what it is. You’ll be making (or not making) the necessary movements to get over the string and we’ll see what’s happening. Do you have a 120fps mode on your phone?

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#10

I probably should have been clearer when I typed that.
At this point I am just scratching the surface of how it works, so for me right now I’m being very mechanical about how it is done. On a technical level I’m not really necessarily “working” on swiping. Rather I’m focusing on what’s going on when it happens.
I can absolutely feel the hitting of the string and it completely hinders me. So really my focus is smoothing it out.
But I am pretty much doing what you’re suggesting by just playing the fours pattern and letting it happen. Every now and then I’m stopping and analyzing why something didn’t work or why it did.

As far as the Yngwie way…I am absolutely struggling with any type of dwps right now. So I’ve been focusing on what I can do reasonably well…uwps movements and trying to nail the twps at the string change.

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Solving 3nps Fours with One-Way Pickslanting
#11

4 posts were split to a new topic: Solving the Fours with One-Way Pickslanting

#13

But in some cases it will be inevitable, e.g. if I want to practice the Joscho ascending chromatic 6s with pure Dwps. We could call that situation swipe practice I guess, even if pne does not focus consciously on hitting the muted string? Eliminating the swipe in that lick would mean moving on to TWPS which is a different technique altogether. But I may have misunderstood your statement, in that case sorry!

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#14

For one way slanting that sounds valid to me, at least it’s a decision where to put the effort … Swiping or twps.
In this case, he already used twps (as far as I can see), so I’d say it’s optimizing the technique.
It’s probably not attainable for everybody to get rid of swiping at all speeds but the smaller the touch the smaller the noise so definitely worth working on it.

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#15

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I really appreciate the responses.

To expand on a couple points, the swipes are not really intentional. Even at moderately fast tempos I can see that I rotate into DWPS for descending outside string changes. At Di Meola speeds (this is the Race With Devil solo, if anyone is curious) I started hearing that thunk and realized something else was going on. The mechanics don’t bother me (it’s actually a reasonably comfortable string change) but it sounds a bit sloppy.

As for damping, I generally try to mute higher strings with the left hand and lower strings with the right. I’ve got a theory as to what is happening and will try to get a better video to confirm. Since this is a descending string change, my right hand tracks upwards (to lower strings) leaving the target string open. Then the swipe occurs with the upstroke on this uncovered string and it rings out the open note. The solution would seem to be catching this string with the left hand, but I haven’t worked that out yet.

@Troy

Thank you! I’ll try to get a better angle tonight when I get home. Trying to film while standing and getting my right hand was awkward. Google says my older phone has 120fps slow motion so that should be possible.

As a side note, one of the things I found really interesting in the Teemu interview was your conversation about tone while practicing. I’ve been trying to use a tone that actually amplifies mistakes to keep myself honest. I’ve found this has really helped in hearing these kind of issues that I may have ignored or not been aware of in the past.

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#16

You could, but I don’t do that - I just try and play the line without hitting anything. I’m probably going to hit the strings sometimes anyway, so I’m glad to know it can be done pretty stealthily if I need to. But in my experience, making an actual attempt to use the correct escape, even if it fails, leads to the most silent results - for me. This is probably in part because I’m not doing it systematically, as an actual technique, so it happens less often. Instead, it’s a saftey when I flub the technique.

To flip this around, almost everyone who uses programmatic swiping pays a price. I can hear it in Jorge’s playing and Mike’s playing and in Al’s playing, without listening too hard - and I’d prefer not to hear it if possible. Ironically the one or two Joscho clips where he does it are among the most silent of anyone. Even then, I’m pretty sure he got that way by thinking he was getting over the string, even though he’s not.

So it’s one part technical choice, one part mind game you play with yourself when practicing. For me, the mind game works best when I actually try to avoid it.

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#17

Here’s a different angle with slow motion on the circular 4s lick moved up to the G and B strings. I think the swipe comes through louder on the higher strings. I played the first rep or two a little slower and I don’t hear the swipe in those. It shows up when the tempo increases.

https://troygrady.com/seminars/antigravity/clips/the-first-scale-fours/

#18

Thanks for taking another shot at this!

This is too dark to see what’s going on. 120fps requires four times the amount of light for (roughly) the same video quality as normal filming mode. If what you’ve got it as overhead light then I’d recommend turning around when you film so the light hits you directly. Then do a test shot and double check that what the camera sees is fully illuminated with no hard shadows concealing the pick/string contact.

If you’re not seeing what you need to see in your test shot, then grab any lamp and place it so it illuminates the dark areas as a fill. The iPhone LED will work also if the phone is close enough, but it makes everything look like an episode of Cops. A simple table lamp will provide better overall illumination.

Also, I’d try getting the phone a little closer to the “down the strings” view. Yes, at some point your fretting fingers will block the camera’s view of the pick. It can help to play lower on the neck so you can get a flatter camera view. But no matter where you play, the flattest camera view you can get before the fingers block is the most useful view.

As far as the pattern you’re playing, this one in particular involves a variety of string changes only tangentially related to the swiping issue, and you can hear in the slow motion section that you’re leaving out a note. In other words there’s a lot going on here that might be better examined in a next step. For the purposes of this test, just try something simpler like a repeating six-note scale fragment. Any phrase with the minimum string changes necessary to hear the thing you want to fix.

#19

Hmm, my bad. I ended up capo-ing my phone to a music stand get that angle. I’ve hardly used the phone camera so I’ll experiment more with it tonight. Sorry!