Vinnie Vincent's Picking

I found this video while wandering around guitar youtube and realized that his picking hand is doing what looks to be a mix between hybrid and UWPS. I’ve never seen him actually play before so I thought it was interesting. Edit: I’ve never cared for anything he’s done but finding interesting hands has become a hobby of mine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEyYGNX_TP4

I studied with an incredible jazz/fusion guitarist who played in a band with VV way back in the day (they both grew up in Connecticut). According to him, VV is an excellent guitarist when he’s playing Jeff Beck style rock guitar stuff. This era was more about him trying to be relevant during the first wave of late 80’s/early 90’s shredders.

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Wash you guy’s mouth out with soap. Vinnie whips ***. lmao

I loved his album with Mark Slaughter also

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I have a soft spot for Vinnie. We actually put him in “Conquering the Scale”, Cracking the Code Episode 12, on the TV screen in the music store. His playing was horrendously sloppy, and on top of that, he is the only case I can think of off the top of my head where a player actually sped up their solos on the record. It’s a common accusation in the YouTube era that probably doesn’t happen as often as people think, but Vinnie actually did it. And he mimed to those sped up performances on his REH video. Later parts of the video, in the instructional section, also look sped up but I don’t know how they would have controlled the pitch of the guitar with the tech that was available at the time, unless maybe he was detuned to start with.

Anyway, the irony here is, when Vinnie slows down a little, his technique actually looks cool, with a crosspicky element to the alternate picking and an interesting hybrid approach on top of that. And his note choices are really interesting. He does all kinds of jazz-influenced things in major tonalities that metal players have tended to avoid. This is a guy who didn’t need to speed up anything - he was already too fast. He needed to slow down a tiny bit, and the lead playing would have benefited greatly.

His songwriting chops were of course great, and probably need no introduction.

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Here’s a representative example. This is a really cool e9b5 lick, and when he demonstrates the picking on it at moderate speeds it’s great:

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I think you just discovered a forum quirk: When the forum embeds a youtube clip, it strips off any “time seek” parameter from the link.

Edit: Summarizing all the edits below: Not a forum issue. Read on only if you want to be bored by browser/youtube quirk navel-gazing. Ok, not the forum’s fault. Playing the video within the page here, and it does seek. I was confused because the links to watch on youtube don’t include the seek, which I guess is just how youtube embedding works. Nevermind…

Edit 2: Source of my confusion is that I like to open youtube links in a new window, and that only goes to the beginning of the video, but a single click on either of the “link” targets in the embedded video opens a new window with the “continue” parameter and seeks to the right place. Yet hovering over those link targets, Firefox shows only the root youtube link with no parameters. My confusion was arising from how Youtube and/or Firefox want youtube embedding to work.

Edit 3: Still not the forum’s fault, but I realized that the “link target” behavior of the title of the embedded video changes depending whether you’ve clicked play or not. Clicking the title link without playing the embedded video opens to video on a new page (at youtube) from the beginning of the video. If you start playing the embedded video before you click the title link, that new page includes the “continue” parameter seeks as expected. Makes me long for simpler riddles, like Steve Morse’s crosspicking…

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Whoooooahh, haha you learn something new every day! Hadn’t seen this before; I often open everything in a new tab too so probably missed some time-specific embeds.

(And just realized this is further complicated by the fact that once you’ve clicked through to video with time/continue param, if logged in YT remembers your progress so subsequent click-throughs even w/ the raw link still take you to where you last were in the video.… Okay, YouTube UX analysis complete for the time being :laughing: )

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I had read about Vinnie Vincent speeding up his solos, but never considered the pitch changing if he did this. He was pretty crafty to detune his guitar so it would offset the change in pitch when the recording was sped up.

I was always under the impression that the entire recording was sped up (at least on the 1st record). The rhythm gtr on Boyz is a lot of AC/DC style open A, G, D chords, and B to B/A (ala For Those About to Rock) in the pre chorus. Problem is it all sounds a 1/2 step higher! Maybe the rhythm gtrs were capo’d, but that’s not very metal :slight_smile:

I also love the way the gtrs were swapped out at the end of the video when he smashes it! Even at 14, I could pick up on that! :smile:

Crazy! I never knew that.

Me either!!! Aaaaahahahahahahahahhahahahahaha!!!

Yeah man, That is awesome tonality. b5 is the blues note? 9 would be 9 or 2nd sound?

I always loved Vinnie’s self titled Invasion album because it sounded like a cranked amp that was about to explode. I liked that screaming amp sound even more than the playing. The songs kinda grew on me. I’m liking this video too. :heart_eyes: Solo at 2:09, freakin amp’s gonna blow up dude.

That’s the sped-up tone. Anyone with a Tascam Porta One will remember what that sounds like. Drop the speed, hit record, pump it back up. All the bends scream.

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I was a student at GIT at the time of the filming and there were NIGHTMARES producing this video. Don Mock usually was pretty ‘close to the vest’ with the private info about the shoots, but this one was one that stuck out in his head as a real »never again« moment.

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and Martin Mayo, the director of the video, was a dear friend of mine and one of the SWEETEST guys you’d ever meet. He also directed my main man Steve Trovato’s Country REH video. Steve is a very underrated master of all styles and should be mentioned in the same breath as ANY of the great masters.

Great story! I can only imagine how those conversations went.

So I guess after 25 years Vinnie Vincent finally makes a public appearance this past weekend. The original Invasion singer Robert Fleischman surprises him and helps him sing. No shredding, he just tries to play a few songs that the crowd calls out to him. He is a great songwriter man and really cool. And It makes me feel a little better that I’m not the only one getting woman hips. lmao. :bear:

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I always thought he wrote some good anthemic tunes and had some kickass melodic solos.

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