Upward swiping in DSX?

Playing Technique
#21

Sincere apologies if anything I posted was taken as negative. That was not my intention at all. I have a huge amount of respect for both Paul and Al.

For Paul, I don’t know what I said about him that could have been taken as negative. I think he’s awesome and I didn’t make any meme’s about him lol!

I was trying to be humorous about the Al thing because as @Fossegrim pointed out, the dude is known for preaching absolutes. He flat out called sweep picking and legato “short cuts” and cautions us to avoid them if we’re going to be playing “more intricate styles of music”

I prefer the MAB approach where he says he’s not prejudice to picking/playing techniques, he likes 'em all!

Also as @Fossegrim pointed out, I thought the irony was funny because while Al doesn’t “sweep”, Troy’s got documentation of him “swiping”. I don’t know that he’d consider that cheating, I was just trying to follow his logic :slight_smile:

He’s a great player, and I really enjoy plenty of his compositions. Hearing him was definitely a turning point that made me want to get better at alternate picking.

I personally don’t think swiping is cheating at all. I’ve heard some on this forum imply it is, or at least they think of it as a crutch to eventually overcome or something. Even if it is, I don’t care because it’s a great way to change strings and still sound clean. In most cases, we can’t ‘hear’ swiping. Maybe if we solo’d the original track, but in the context of a whole mix, I doubt it. To me it’s every bit as revolutionary a concept as Troy’s work on escapes. I absolutely love it.

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#22

To my logic, the implication of cheating is the implication of some sort of lazy shortcut. Swiping is anything but, the opposite of this because it’s more physical work IMHO than a DBX or a secondary motion approach. With swiping, not only do you have to use force to move past the string to get to the other side of it, you have to then exert more force to stop that momentum at some point and switch directions to hit the down stroke (Newton’s first law of motion).

#23

Justice for swiping!!!

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#24

Your posts always really interest me :slight_smile: I think in a lot of ways you and I just come to things from a completely different perspective, which is great because that fosters learning. I actually have the exact opposite experience with swiping. I perceive no extra force when I swipe. I also don’t feel like I have to then ‘tame’ the motion the way you describe, by using more force and pulling back while I change directions so that I’m not fighting Newton :-). To me it almost feels like I’m playing a lick on one string when I swipe. So we must be doing something quite different, which is really interesting!

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#25

I’d linked a few ‘paid’ swiping videos, here’s a good free one that addresses many of the points made in this thread:

I’d forgotten all about this one. A few takeaways:

  • It seems to be ‘quieter’ when you do it with USX
  • He mentions being able to hear it in both Paul and Al’s playing (sort of piggy-backing on the previous point. They do it in a DSX context and Troy suggests it seems inherently noisier due to how the muting fingers lay)
  • He says he doesn’t ‘feel’ it when he’s playing
#26

@joebegly maybe. I’m more approaching this through pure scientific logic, and the laws of physics because guitar playing isn’t immune to those. anytime there is an obstruction, the string in this case, more force has to be used to push past it, than has to be used on a trajectory to avoid it completely. We aren’t talking about perception, just the pure physicality of it, you have to physically move and move past an object in this case (string) which takes more force than if that object wasn’t there. Also, Anytime you have to stop a motion, you have to exert more force to stop it, and swing it in the opposite direction, than to keep it going. Those are the physical laws we are all subject to whether we perceive it that way or not.

My personal thoughts on swiping are more based on the fact that I might have inadvertently trained my self to feel those slight extra pushes through the strings because I spent a lot of time working on the locking in the timing of sweep picking and economy picking and to feel those. It’s more a feel thing than an audible one. I perceive an extra something or stroke that constantly has me chasing the down beat because I hear six, but feel seven if that makes sense. I certainly hear it if I’m in the room playing with it, but oddly it’s not that apparent if I listen to myself during a playback.

#27

That’s starting this science experiment with a possibly false premise though. What if a pick stroke already has enough force to cut through more than one string? Just playing fast in general (tremolo on one string) has a decent amount of force in it. Why would we need to suddenly exert more force if we’re swiping? I don’t really know how we’d go about measuring stuff like that, so perception may be all that we’re left with. I know in another thread you mentioned avoiding rest strokes in certain scenarios. Troy doesn’t avoid them (I don’t either) and I can’t think of many examples of his playing where I don’t see a rest stroke happening. So in our cases we’re possibly using enough force that swiping just happens by us tracking onto a new string. If there is any extra force applied (which I doubt), I think it’s so small that it’s not perceptible. If we can’t perceive it, why would it matter?

I think that’s probably what’s going on. If someone as hyper-analytical as Troy says he can’t feel swiping, I think there’s more than likely a way to execute it that’s just a little different than what you’re doing.

But anyway, I’m not a physicist. Maybe @tommo knows some fun stuff about swiping from a physics perspective. It all falls into the category of “who cares”, but I think nerdy stuff like this is fun :slight_smile:

#28

Personally I never feel like I have to put any extra effort into swiping through a string, it feels more and more easy and effortless the higher the speed is.

#29

And that’s where my layman’s knowledge of physics ends. Does moving the pick faster create more force? I don’t know the relationships between speed and force. I’d think the 2 are tied but I’m not qualified to say :slight_smile: It makes sense to me and I’d agree in my own playing, the faster I go, the less I feel it. My opinion is regardless, these are teeny tiny differences we’re talking. So much that world class players like MAB, Gilbert and Di Meola seem unware of. I’d think their sensory perception is high, and they don’t knwo they’re doing it lol!

#30

More force is ALWAYS required to move a stationary object than if that object simply weren’t there. That’s why. Whether you perceive it or not or if it matters to you or at all isn’t the argument, that’s anecdotal, we’re not talking about perception. Furthermore it takes more force to stop an already moving object (your upstroke) than to just let it continue. Whether or not this matters in any measurable way when your playing guitar of all things, or is meaningful that’s up to you. I simply don’t think it’s worth the field work. It certainly doesn’t help with creativity in anyway which I would assume is more important than small increases in picking speed - that’s something an athlete is concerned with.

No, No, That wasn’t the premise of the argument if you remember. It was that you claimed a rest stroke HAD to occur in order for economy picking to work, and that economy picking by that logic cannot happen with a DSX player, that was your premise - in other words, in order for economy picking to be possible it was reliant on a rest stroke, and I simply don’t think that is true or agree at all. I’m a DSX’r, use economy picking all the time, and avoid rest strokes when I do economy picking, and somehow it still looks and sounds like economy picking - go figure.

If they did, I highly doubt they would care! There are more important things to worry about. Unless of course age related issues we will all succumb to have made them more aware and is one of the reasons they don’t favor the “against the grain” approaches so much these days. I would be willing to bet they are somewhat aware, just not in the context of CTC.

#31

Let’s talk about this, because it might be why we perceive it differently. I must be failing to articulate my point. I’m not saying that it doesn’t require more force to move a stationary object. I’m just saying, you can certainly use more force than you need in any situation.

I don’t even know how to measure force (though it could have something to do with Star Wars :slight_smile: ) but let’s just put numbers on it. Let’s say to pick through one string requires a force unit of “1” and to pick through two strings requires a force unit of “2”. What if people like Troy are already applying enough force (“2”) to get through two strings? The reason he doesn’t actually pick through the other string isn’t because he’s not applying enough force, but because at that point he changes directions. So in this situation, when a swipe occurs, there is not more force applied but just a larger movement (i.e. string tracking). Since the force applied remains constant, the swipe is imperceptible.

Another analogy could be breaking boards in a martial arts scenario. Sure you need more force to break 2 boards than you do to break one board. But, you can certainly break 1 board and use the same amount of force needed to break 2 boards.

Maybe you’re picking more lightly than some of us are and that’s why you perceive needing more force when you swipe? Because you actually need more force, and the others are already using enough force in each pick stroke to begin with? That’s all I’m trying to say. In our case, there wouldn’t need to be an increase of force, in your case there would.

Sorry, I wasn’t saying anything about the premise of that argument. I was thinking that you mentioned not using rest strokes in a particular context. So maybe in the context of swiping, you’re using a smaller motion and/or less force than what I’m doing when I swipe. It’s an assumption and I could be totally wrong. I only mentioned it because I thought it may apply here since you report a different feeling when you swipe than others are reporting.

Also, can we call it a ‘debate’ instead of an ‘argument’? Sounds less confrontational :slight_smile: I know context can easily get lost on a forum. Anything I discuss on here, if it were a face-to-face conversation, would be very light hearted an non-angry lol! I’m just trying to learn as much as I can and I like talking about stuff with people who have different opinions/experiences than I do.

#32

Tommo’s Physics is very out of shape :smiley:

But in general it’s pretty hard to apply Newton’s laws in detail to a complicated inelastic system with arms, hands, fingers holding picks, strings, muscles and tendons pulling this and that lever etc. :smiley:

Yeah I would say that’s the key when you do it right. The pick should glide effortlesslt past the muted string, it shouldn’t really grab it in a way that creates significant resistance.

If one feels too much resistance I would gues it’s a pick attack problem (e.g. wrong pickslant fro the motion)

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#33

Well the other side of that argument I suppose is that it’s a waste of energy to use more than you need.

Oh doubtful. I have a pretty hard attack. had to train myself to ease up, and “feel it” because certain techniques were hard for me to do, like economy picking because I would just overshoot on the string changing downstroke and cut through more than one set of the strings, and it was hard for me to lock in with sweep picking. Most of it for me was trying to get the sound and timing right. It was an interview with Kiko Loureiro in 2008 or sometime around then where his take was that regardless of technique employed, be it alternate picking or economy, or sweeping, it should sound the same. So I started approaching it from that angle.

It’s hard to explain, but for me swiping, has a sound, like a harmonic or whine that shouldn’t be there. I’m not sure if John Petrucci swipes, but I hear very similar whines in some of his examples in rock discipline. It may be worse with certain amps that don’t do a lot to roll off the harsh upper harmonic generation and IMD that just comes as a byproduct of distortion generation.

Oh, I never use them. I either naturally use some form of DBX, or I have an unconscious secondary motion that escapes in the opposite direction so I’m never buried enough to knock against them for alternate picking. I’m also adverse to generating any extra noise.

It’s more a sense of something that shouldn’t be there or a whine at times

But that unfortunately implies that even though there is an attempt to quantify empirically, this is still largely anecdotal.

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#34

I used to think that way, I don’t anymore. I now think of efficiency as a coordination of many different things. Consistency is one of the most important things, for me. If I can use slightly bigger and ‘harder’ pick strokes, but do it in a way that I can’t feel swiping (or even non swiping string changes), that’s a win for me. The picking hand just feels like this little motor that never stops.

We’re still talking about relatively small movements and these aren’t at all fatiguing to me. For me, it’s more difficult to suddenly change the size of the pick stroke in order to swipe or cross the strings. I can easily see how playing the way you do (which is fantastic, BTW) that occasional rest strokes or ‘extra force’ for a swipe would feel like…something extra happening, and more work than mixed escape. The motions I use now are ALWAYS rest strokes. I travel the exact same distance (or attempt to) in the other direction for the escaped stroke. That sounds like either just a bigger motion, or possibly more ‘direct’ than what you’re describing you do.

Anyway, thanks for talking it out. I think I see why we perceive swipes so differently :slight_smile:

#35

Also don’t underestimate the amp and guitar in the swiping or noise equation either.

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#36

Thank you very much! I though he swipe the opposite way, with USX before hitting the E string…now it’s clear, thanks again :slight_smile:

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#37

That’s the thing though. When we are talking about big vs small what do we really mean? I would be willing to bet we aren’t talking about big differences in either case, and that we are talking about more visual differences than anything which can kind of be deceiving. If someone were to look at the distances both of us clear the string, I would be willing to bet it’s not that different, my hand might just not look like it’s doing as much work moving as much as yours, just like Yngwie doesn’t even look like he’s playing half the time even when he is strictly alternate picking, yet he’s doing something to make those notes happen.

Also you’ll get a kick out of this, but I looked at it a little harder and I’m pretty sure I swipe at higher speeds.

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#38

Does this feel the same to you as when you reported feeling 7 strokes for 6 picked notes? I’m guessing no since you mentioned you only noticed it when looking at it more closely. Just curious!

#39

I feel it if I purposely try to do it after a downstroke which would make sense. I hear it when I do it naturally after an upstroke particularly near where a natural harmonic would be, or if I’m using a lot of distortion which can drum up some dissonance no matter how good muting is. I think Troy even mentioned something to the same degree about hearing it when people like paul or al do it.

This can be the case because there can be a lot of harmonic junk - the stuff you don’t want, along with what you do - present in distorted guitar, especially if there isn’t a lot to tame down higher order harmonics, which may not be very consonant with the fundamental pitch (considering what’s already present and thus why a guitar sounds like a guitar in the first place). Some of this is pretty gear specific though, which is why I mentioned it, and also why there should be a caveat when mentioning it. This really kind of goes beyond the scope of this forum though, however relevant or irrelevant it proves to be.