Volcano - Circular + Descending Fours - HELP

Playing Technique
#1

First timer here, and I think I am understanding this seminar quite well, however, there is something I would like to have clarified and will try to explain the best I can.

In the Volcano seminar, the Volcano - Circular + Descending Fours clip/section, there is a pickstroke choice that seems to go against “the rules” that were explained.

The second beat of the first full measure is tabbed as a downstroke followed by a pull off with a string change on the high e and is starts with an upstroke. This seems to go against the rules and if you end on a down stroke, you are are trapped between the B and E string. There is no sweeping to the next string, but an upstroke. I get that its alternate picked, but when DWPS that downstroke is trapped and makes the upstroke on the high E difficult without switching to an UWPS to have an DSX, which is not the point of this Volcano seminar…

Can someone explain to me why?

Thank you so much

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#2

Hi and welcome! Can you provide a direct link to the video you’re talking about? I’m having trouble finding it.

I might be understanding what you’re getting at though. The pulloff would buy you enough time to get to the next string. Yes, you’d have to hop over it, but it’s fine because you have the extra time. It’s like a little break for the picking hand to get back to where it needs to be to keep with the ‘system’

#3

Volcano Style – Circular + Descending Fours – Cracking the Code (troygrady.com)

#4

I think I found it. The second beat of the first full measure, here?

image

If so, yeah there’s no breaking of the rules there. That is actually one of the rules!

#5

oh my bad in describing it, i was recalling off memory!

Can you elaborate on the rule here? simply alternate picking?

#6

also, i edited my post, thanks for the catch

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#7

Wow that’s impressive you were going off memory and knew it was the third 16th note on any beat! Nice!

But yeah my understanding of the ‘rules’ is that a pulloff or hammer on or slide can be used to buy you time in the event that you need to actually lift the pick over top of a string occasionally. So there might be a time where you’re alternate picking DUDUDUD do a ‘slur’ and play another downstroke right after it. OR jump over a string and then do an upstroke or whatever is needed to keep all the other pickstrokes flowing and escaping on the upstrokes.

#8

Have you seen this chapter where Troy talks about mixing in legato?

#9

I watched it, but will obviously have to rewatch it. Is there a better explanation?

#10

He mentions using legato as like ‘bending’ the rules or an ‘escape hatch’.

#11

I recall that, but didn’t realize that you could use either pickstroke, i thought you were locked into one option to be playing by Yngwie’s rules. thanks!

#12

Yeah I agree it feels more awkward in the pattern you cited than what happens in the blackstar lick. It’s still enough to keep things blazing along though :slight_smile:

#13

There is a section in the usx section of the primer where it’s a Yngwie three string triad descending and ascending. There is talk of a forced upstroke when doing the pull off on the high e. So two upstrokes in a row, one on the high e, then pull off, and another upstroke on the b.
So yeah the hammer ons and pull offs give an opportunity to reposition the pick.

#14

Agreed! I think you can see these cases as “the pulloff gives me enough time to get there even with inefficient motions”

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#15

Chris Brooks talks about this in some detail as the ‘Lone note exception’. Basically anytime there is a single note on a higher string, Yngwie uses an upstroke to catch it and then returns to the lower string with a downstroke. This creates outside alternate picking, which requires a downstroke escape motion to get over the high string.

It’s obviously atypical from Yngwie’s approach of using DWPS for almost everything, but it’s definitely something that is in his bag of tricks, especially for pedal point licks and this type of descending fours sequence.

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#16

Great video! He’s an awesome player/teacher and gets bonus points for using a Swiss Pick :slight_smile:

#17

The idea of the lone note exception is that since it occurs after presumably some sort of unpicked note, this doesn’t break the “Yngwie” rules if you can even call it that, because there is time allotted by doing this to clear the string to use an up stroke to begin the descending part of the lick using outside picking.

#18

This is exactly how I’ve been playing USX fours for a couple of weeks now, after realising I need that pulloff on the B string, or the equivalent if you move it down, to make the single string an upstroke escape. I found that my pulloffs there aren’t very good though, requires me to do a sort of additonal left hand ‘pluck’ to make it sound good.

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#19

I’ve posted about this before. My background is classical guitar and they always do their pulloffs this way. It requires the note to which we’re pulling off to be fretted before hand, and the finger pulling ‘off’ actually goes straight down. Sort of like a rest stroke. On the nylon string guitars with no amp, we are much more responsible for our tone and the volume/timbre of these types of slurs is really the only way to get it sounding consistent in the context of the whole run.

Not many rock guitarists do their pulloffs this way. In fact, there are times where the classical way just won’t work on an electric guitar. I was an absolutist until I had a good discussion on this thread.

Now I see it how I should have always seen it, there’s a time and place for everything. It could probably work at Yngwie speeds. Plus if our goal is to only have an occasional slur so we can re-orient our picking and we’d like the tone/volume to match the picking (creating the illusion we’re picking everything) it’s an option worth exploring.

#20

I don’t think you are very unique in that. It tends to be pretty hard to get note articulation and separation with pull off’s only with out a little bit of grab from the fretting hand. I give the strings just a little bit of downward tug with the flesh of my fingertips for pull off’s but the trick is not so much that you 1) increase the tension in you fretting hand by a lot, and 2) it doesn’t cause you to knock into other strings and make noise you don’t want. Lots of distortion can help too, because it will tend to even out dynamics through amplification and hard limiting so you don’t have to use a ton of tension in your fretting hand to make the notes punch, but I find it’s a pretty subtle balance.

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