Van Halen's bag of tricks

General Music Discussion
#1

So I brought up Van Halen in another thread, and I went and looked at some live video and found something I hadn’t previously realized.

Even though Eddie famously does a very unmistakable “forearm rotation” mechanic in certain tremolo picked parts, he does a bunch of other fast picking stuff that has a strong wrist flexion/extension component, and sometimes a clearly visible elbow component. I hadn’t thought about this much before, partly because A) I don’t associate Eddie strongly with alternate picking, and B) I watched so much Van Halen in my “pre-code” days that it never really occurred to me to go back and look at his technique through CTC eyes.

I think it also plays into the point that CTC isn’t so much a prescription per se, but a set of tools for explaining and understanding what elite performers do, even in the case of someone like Eddie, who fluidly jumps between different picking techniques, surely driven almost entirely based on intuition developed over thousands and thousands of hours of playing. Even if Eddie didn’t think analytically about the various techniques he so seemlessly integrated, the rest of us can gain insight from understanding the building blocks that he was playing with.

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#2

I think I had already been playing for a few years before I finally saw Live Without a Net. When Ed breaks out the now-famous tremolo picking my jaw dropped to the floor. What the hell was that? I asked myself. It didn’t even occur to me that that was a thing you could do. It looked so weird, but sounded so great.

This, I think, is the core of Ed’s unschooled genius. The guy is, at heart, a tinkerer. In another life he’d probably be building and tuning hot-rods. This is just a guess, but I imagine this tremolo-picking technique was something he just worked out one day to solve a specific problem. It doesn’t work for everything, but is the perfect tool for certain kinds of jobs.

What’s interesting is how very few other players have adopted this technique. I’ve worked on it for years and will sometimes bust it out at a show and often somebody will come up and ask me about it afterwards. In the age of the internet it’s not some great secret, but maybe it’s just considered too far outside of guitar orthodoxy for many players to consider?

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#3

Ed’s tremolo is a thing of beauty. It comes from the same family tree as what the Gypsies do, so in that sense it’s very common. However you are correct that relatively few players do something that looks exactly like it in the sense of totally free floating, with his particular setup. If you’ve got video of you doing this, post it up, we’d love to see it!

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#4

@Troy you asked, and here it is. I thought I’d throw in some alternate-picking (my bias is towards UWPS) just to show the big change in my mechanics to accommodate these two techniques. Any and all critiques and feedback are welcome!

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#5

Awesome! This is a great VH tremolo replication. We did a Youtube giveaway a couple years back, and we were pretty liberal with the winners, so long as it was vaguely rotational, because we appreciated the effort. But this is a cut above.

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#6

Sick playing dude. Love the fluidity of the UWPS stuff, and of course you nailed the tremolo picking as well. One fun detail I noticed that I can relate to, is starting the tremolo action above the strings and then dipping it in just enough to bite. That’s one reason I like the non-Ed approach where there is a finger on the pickguard rather than the true floating hand you pull off so expertly here.

#7

Ha! I resemble that remark. :upside_down_face::upside_down_face::upside_down_face: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

#8

@Troy those are very kind words. Thank you. I remember when you announced that giveaway and I thought “gee, I should send a video in for that”. :slight_smile:

I have a theory about this technique and I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are on it. That rotational mechanic uses the fast-twitch muscles around the radial bone (some of the fastest ones I have). This strikes me as being very similar to drummers who play using traditional grip. I know historically the left stick was gripped differently to account for the slope of marching drum and that pedagogy has carried that forward. But I wonder if some kit drummers have kept that mechanic to take advantage of that fast-twitch motion in their non-dominant hand as a way of compensating.

#9

@Frylock thanks! I was wondering if anyone would notice that transition. I’ve always thought of it as akin to starting an outboard motor before putting it into the water. I’ve never been able to get rid of it, but over time it’s taken less and less time to switch modes.

What you say about anchoring a finger makes perfect sense. But after playing the way I do for so many years, that mechanic feels so absolutely alien to me that I just live with my own wacky pile of oddball techniques.

#10

@alexvollmer amazing technique, especially the Eddie style trem picking.

#11

No particular thoughts on fast vs slow twitch forearm muscles - it’s not something I’ve looked into. But in general, the functions of many of the forearm muscles overlap, and lots of them are active in multiple kinds of picking movements. In general I have no solid evidence that any of them are any faster or slower than any others. In my own attempts, I’m just as fast with deviation as I am at rotation. The only picking movement that seems to be anecdotally faster for lots of players than any of the others is elbow movement. In fact we’ve seen that again today on two different “Technique Critique” threads.

One thing I’d point out about your EVH tremolo technique is that Eddie’s version is a downward pickslanting technique. But your version looks neutral. If that’s actually the case, and your pick is clearing on both upstrokes and downstrokes, then this becomes a crosspicking technique, and you can use it for any kind of single-note playing you want. Have you filmed this up close and do you know if you’re clearing?

#12

Here’s some up close footage shot with the good ol’ magnet:

I haven’t tried using this as a general purpose mechanic since it’s pretty noisy with no ability to mute using the palm. I’m pretty my obsession with muting is how I came to an UWPS approach since I end up using the meaty part of my thumb muscle to help with muting.

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#13

Awesome! Thanks for the speedy turnaround on this. Looks like a dwps technique. But still, you could totally use this for general purpose picking. Chuck a hair scrunchy down by the nut and try some dwps patterns. Your fluency with this is so smooth / consistent that it would probably sound great.

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#14

And just an FYI, given that this is 240fps video, when sped back up to normal speed (800%), you’re doing about 14-15 notes per second here, which is 210-225bpm sixteenths. Worth exploring!

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#15

@alexvollmer what kind of pick are you using? I always image a thinner pick is easier to do the EVH trem picking stuff.

#16

I’m just using my go-to Fender heavy (1mm) picks. You’re right that a thinner pick works really well for this technique, but I can’t stand how “flappy” they feel trying to pick with them. Though I will say, IMHO a thin cellulose pick is part of Eddie’s magic sauce for those fantastic jet-fighter-in-the-face pick slides he does. You can’t get that sound with heavy Tortex pick. :slight_smile:

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#17

I can vouch that this can be done with pretty much any pick. Though Eddie in recent years (as well as in the past, to my knowledge) has been using thinnish picks, around .6mm or .7mm. They were I think flat acetal in the mid-2000s, not sure if it’s changed since then.

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#18

Very good point @Frylock. I should clarify a bit. I have found that a thinner pick means I don’t have to worry as much about the angle of attack against the strings (as viewed from the front). With a thinner pick it feels like the pick is able to flex to get it back and forth across the strings, even if thepick is parallel with the strings.

To me, this feels much harder with a stiffer pick, so I’ve found I have to rotate it about 45° (again, as viewed from the front), to let the curvature of the pick help it get back and forth across the strings. Note that this isn’t specific to this tremolo picking technique—this is true of any back-and-forth motion of the pick across the strings. It seems the stiffer the pick, the more some angle can help get it across the strings OR you have to reduce the amount of pick that comes in contact with the string (one reason why I think the Dunlop Jazz picks are often popular for speed).

Then we start getting into areas of tone as the angle and material of the pick will affect how the notes sound and feel. I recall Paul Gilbert talking about this specifically in some video somewhere about how he really liked the scratchy transient sound of the pick scraping across the strings, and I can see how it became a part of his really aggressive picking sound. Other players not so much. Season to taste.

Anyway, as always, lots of ways to skin that cat. As usual it comes down to compromises and everyone’s unique peculiarities.

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#19

I should have been clearer too. :smiley: What I was trying to say was that when this is executed smoothly with a good amount of edge picking, the motion is very forgiving even with picks that don’t have much give. But you’re right, a thinner pick does give more margin for error. Another interesting point is that Ed’s picks, like the Fender Heavy you’re using, have a very traditional shape (not particularly pointy) which I think further illustrates how forgiving this technique can be once you have the angles figured out. But that’s not to take anything away from what you’re doing here, especially making the smooth transition to the Ed-style floating tremolo from that slick UWPS picking. I definitely think the truly floating version you’re doing is more difficult than a finger-anchoring version, since you have to rely on just the angle of the forearm against the edge of the guitar to maintain the correct height. Not suggesting you change, just admiring the execution. :smiley:

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#20

Amazing stuff, Alex! Thanks for sharing this.

Has anyone heard this Eddie interview? He’s playing through a clean amp and you can hear how strong his hands are when he’s playing those fast legato lines.

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