Van Halen's Tremelo Picking

Playing Technique
#1

If I understand correctly, Eddie Van Halen’s tremolo picking technique relies solely on forearm rotation to generate pick motion. @Troy Have you measured how many notes per second Eddie Van Halen is playing on he fastest examples of his tremolo picking you have come across?

He uses an unusual arm and wrist position when he does his tremolo picking. Using terminology from the “4 Fundamental Movements Everybody Should Know” what is the reason that he needs to use such a strange position from which to maximize his rotational forearm motion?

Can you make an educated guess as to how much speed Eddie would lose from his tremolo picking if he were to tremolo pick with his arm on the guitar as most guitarists position it, but still using only forearm rotation to move the pick during tremolo picking? Thank you!! :smile:

#2

I don’t have any way of measuring this but if anything it might be the opposite. Eddies way is pure forearm and very fast, at least 220bpm sixteenths. Alex Vollmer here on the forum does a great rendition at that speed also and has posted a clip of it. Most people who do ‘forearm’ really don’t do pure forearm, they’re using combination of movements which for all we know might be slower than Eddies method, not faster. Or it could be the same. But I sort of doubt that Eddies method is somehow compromised since it’s just the forearm moving.

#3

Hey Troy, I think you may have misread my post. I asked “Can you make an educated guess as to how much speed Eddie would lose from his tremolo picking if he were to tremolo pick with his arm on the guitar as most guitarists position it, but still using only forearm rotation to move the pick during tremolo picking?”

From your reply it seems you have the idea I was asking you how much faster would Eddie’s tremolo picking be if he kept his arm on the guitar when he tremolo picks instead of having it in that unorthodox position he uses to tremolo pick. The reason I think he’d be slower if he didn’t use that strange position is because if that unorthodox position didn’t make his tremolo picking faster, then why would he go through the trouble of picking in that unusual way when he does tremolo picking?

#4

Yep I misread! Sorry!

Yes floating is the most common pure forearm approach, and most anchored players really aren’t pure forearm at all. Can it be done? Maybe but again not many people play that way. So if you want to look at it this way, Ed isn’t really going to any trouble he’s arguably saving himself some trouble because floating forearm allows the arm to rotate freely.

After lots of interviews the bigger question of why does player X use such and such technique is pretty clear - because that’s what they stumbled across. The naturals are better at stumbling than the rest of us but none of them do all the techniques or probably even tried. They found something that worked and kept at it.

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