So I’ve heard Troy mention awhile ago that EVH is a downward pickslanter. I have also heard him say in a post once that he uses crosspicking too. How exactly are his licks structured? Does he play like EJ and Yngwie with sweeps and dwps or when @Troy said he crosspicked did he mean that when playing those legato type lines he outside picked a lot?
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I can’t speak to what Troy meant, but I can say that I was shown a few specific examples of Eddie using DWPS at certain points by my friend and Van Halen mentor Bill…the ascending sextuplets in “Spanish Fly” are all picked and DWPS occurs there as far as Bill and I have been able to reckon by studying live clips and albums and slowing down the tracks. This part has often been incorrectly transcribed as the first note on the B string being picked with the next two notes being hammered and the notes on the high E picked. There are other examples, but here is a handwritten TAB of how Bill showed me to correctly play the opening run (including these ascending sextuplets) and DWPS is KEY to making it sound the way it sounds…it is not just a technique to play the notes cleanly, but it also yields a very particular sound…the notes on the B string (D-U-D) are very lightly palm muted and played using DWPS and they are very soft (thus leading to the confusion that these notes were Hammered on) versus the staccato attack on the high E string which begins with a “popping” Upstroke (U-D-U).
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Does this mean he is swiping when he hits the high e? Because you’re right literally every time I see that lick tabbed out it is the way you described with the one note picked on b string and then up down up on the high e, which also works with dwps.
As near as Bill and I can tell, he is using Downward pickslanting for all six notes…D-U-D on the B string, then “swiping” or just hopping over the high E to then begin the Up-Down-Up pattern. The recording on ‘Van Halen II’ was obviously played on a late 70s Ovation nylon string and tuned around a full-step down. Combine this with the light palm muting on the B string, the Downward pickslanting which lends a generally softened attack on the downstrokes especially, and the contrast of lifting the palm muting completely as you begin the U-D-U picking directions on the high E, then…voila! You get the sound of the record! I have a late 70s Ovation classical and I’ve seen it work for myself!
Awesome man I’ll have to give it a try! So is it safe to say that all EVH’s fast shreddy licks are done using this style method with DWPS or are there times where he uses 2WPS or crosspicking for fast lines?
From learning what my friend Bill has taught me through study of some of the most important leads in Eddie’s catalog, I only see DWPS in these sextuplet passages which appear in “Eruption”, “I’m The One” and a few other songs (in addition to the live solo and “Spanish Fly” of course). The fast drum and guitar riff from “Girl Gone Bad” is another example that might contain some DWPS. I wouldn’t know for sure of instances of 2-way pickslanting or cross-picking, but that might be because I don’t fully understand those mechanics yet.
The tremolo picking mechanic that Troy and the team have posted about is another movement that is obviously in Eddie’s arsenal…Bill calls that the “so-so” movement-it is somewhat like the wrist movement most people make when you respond in hand movements to say something was only “so-so”…if you understand what I mean, that seems to be the best description I’ve ever heard.
Eddie also had a pretty damn good facility with straight alternate picking. I didn’t realize this until Bill transcribed a recording of Eddie playing a straight alternate picked major scale at the 6:23 mark in a late 70s interview with Steven Rosen. Here’s a clip of that interview and a link to a forum post that I made using Bill’s transcription:
http://www.vhlinks.com/vbforums/threads/62934-Ed-s-Major-Scale-Exercise-from-Steven-Rosen-interview
Almost the entirety of Eddie’s picking comes straight from Eric Clapton’s playing, especially in live Cream. Bill completely opened my eyes and rocked my world when he demonstrated this to me…it’s something I’d like to post about further on this site and I’m hopeful I can get Bill to join this forum and start posting about his observations. We’ve posted about Bill’s findings on other sites, but this is really the only place for people who seriously study guitar playing that we have found…other sites tend to fall into bizarre flame wars from insecure players who are intimidated by people who actually take playing seriously. But I disgress…
Much of Eddie’s playing comes from live Cream era Clapton, and he’s basically shouted his love of and note-for-note study of Clapton in every single interview he’s ever given…yet no one I’m aware of had ever actually pointed out specifically where Eddie copied Clapton until I met Bill online. He taught me that a specific lick from “Crossroads” and most often a specific lick from the live version of “Sitting On Top Of The World” from Cream’s ‘Goodbye’ album is present in Eddie’s fastest and most mis-transcribed passages in the majority of his greatest solos.
Here’s a clip I made of me trying to demonstrate Bill’s observations about the “Sitting On Top Of The World” (or “SOTOTW” for brevity’s sake) where I play the lick and several examples of it showing up in many of Eddie’s solos which Bill transcribed and taught me.
I was never able to execute any of these solos correctly until Bill taught me…and I’ve never seen anyone transcribe or play these solos correctly before or since-probably because I’ve never seen anyone make this Clapton connection that Bill has discovered.
(If you scroll through the “Description” section of my YouTube clip, you will see that I have posted links of TAB that I created for all of the examples that I play in the clip that I learned from Bill)
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I love the sound of his picking hitting the strings on that Steve Rosen clip!
Hey it’s that guy from that massive Van Halen thread on the Metropolous forum! Hello guy!
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Yep, that’s me! Hello all! And yes aliendough, that sound of Eddie’s pick hitting the strings is indeed wonderful, and rather easy to duplicate. It’s all about those popping Upstrokes, often in the course of DWPS…and a Fender Medium pick “flopping” against the .009 gauge strings on the electric and you can really hear that amazing attack on the ‘Van Halen II’ recording of “Spanish Fly” on the Ovation classical tuned down a whole step. When my friend Bill taught me all this you can believe me when I tell you that it was a string of light bulb moments!!
Awesome! So the fact that he runs through the scale sequence in that interview that was posted: does this mean he was a 2wps?
I wouldn’t begin to know…that would be for Troy and the team to say…I’m barely dipping my toes into pickslanting. I just know that he doesn’t ALWAYS use Downward pickslanting and he switches between all sorts of different picking methods for different passages. Though specific licks (like say the “Spanish Fly” sextuplets) seem as if they are always played using the exact same technique every time. As CTC has pointed out with other artists, it is unlikely that Eddie was or is aware that he even does any of these mechanics.
Here is a good rule for EVH tones and swing feel : Start every riff or rhythmic beat with a downstroke.
Mostly DWPS. If you play with middle/thumb grip use a .6 to.70 mm pick as there will be more force with supination/wrist flexion. Work on your swing, start with downstrokes, are circular riffs Ed uses downstrokes-hammer-on- upstroke-pull-offs type riff, in pentatonics minor in 2 second scale position nearly exclusively. The magic happens in the shuffle or swing, hangin of the end of the pulse. The Downstroke or upstrokes are the accents on the outside of the hammer-on/pull-off flurry of notes.
There are some examples of Ed Economy picking (each string starts with a downstroke more or less - more often than not - then alternate picking) like in: Ice Cream Man, near the end of Girl Gone Bad, but even then Ed usually keeps his riffs among 2 strings, sometimes 3. If more, then there is hammer-ons and mostly downstrokes. This approach lends facility of swing, since downstrokes hit the pulse and the hammer-on/pull-off fall outside the straight 16th note pattern, to swing.
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