What's The Least Amount Of Time Needed To Develop Yngwie Like Technique?

Playing Technique
#21

Yeah, probably not willing to do even do 2 hours per day at this point in my life. Actually, now that I think about it, I made the most progress when I only played 45 min per day. And even that was a chore, LOL. I just don’t like drilling stuff over and over, but that’s the price you have to pay for greatness.

I would like to be able to play a few Zakk Wylde solos, but writing or improvising is no longer something I want to do.

I still love watching people play and listening to guitar which is why I"m here. I found Troy’s stuff back in 2014, but it has taken me until now to finally overcome the chronic pain from my RSI which I’ve had since 2005. And now that I’m finally over it the motivation just isn’t there anymore.

But who knows, maybe one day the desire will come back. In which case I have the knowledge on how and what to practice.

#22

I feel that, I had/have issues with sciatica from a lifting injury that happened when I was super into lifting/bodybuilding a couple years ago and it hasn’t been the same since then, and with guitar like I said above, I dropped off the map for over a decade. The motivation will come back at some point.

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#23

which zakk wylde solos?

just curious so i can see how complex this task is going to become. :smiley:

here is something to think about utilize youtube to its fullest, find players like us that have done the solos. see if you can find one with a clear shot of the fingerboard and picking. use youtube to your advantage if you are having trouble transcribing it slowed up. i would suggest though only using this tactic when you are feeling anxious, and impatient. if you are ok with proceeding slowly then do it by ear a phrase/arpeggio/sequenced fragment at a time.

#24

Oh man, all of the No More Tears album, LOL. I’ve listened through that album probably 50 times. AVH, Party with The Animals, Time After Time, No More Tears…all of his playing sounds amazing on that album.

Crazy Babies, Miracle Man, and Devil’s Daughter for the first album.

And yeah, I’ve actually watched a lot of Zakk’s videos of those solos, so I can clearly see the fingerings. That, combined with some AI audio separation, should make the task easier.

#25

man you can learn it from the man himself thats a no brainer get that course off riff hard.

this guy seems to outline it with the right stuff.

however taking a peak into zakk’s form it definitely has that gypsy wrist slant vibe big time. looks really similar to marty friedman, and the only difference between doing that on an electric and an acoustic is with gypsy jazz they don’t really palm mute so its more in the air and not so close to the strings.

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#26

Zakk’s motion is a bit of a mystery since on paper it shouldn’t ‘work’ (i.e. visually obvious elbow motion BUT it’s USX)

Troy actually says, after demonstrating the motion that he (Troy) doesn’t quite know exactly how he’s making it work. Possibly rotator cuff or something.

Any USX mechanic will get you similar results though and allow you play Zakk’s licks. Great player! I love his early Ozzy stuff.

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#27

It sounds great but FYI this doesn’t look to me like Yngwie-style technique.

And by Yngwie technique I mean USX-economy = every string change is either after an upstroke, a downstroke sweep or a hammer on / pulloff.

Your technique looks to me more like primary DSX with little bits of mixed escape. And I think you alternate pick everything in your scalar runs.

Nothing wrong with that of course, sounds great!

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#28

I think the important thing is also momentum and keeping it up - if you can commit to 1 hour a day you will keep making forward progress.

There is also a such thing as over practicing which I have a problem with.

Back when I was 15 and got into Van Halen and Vai and Malmsteen I did the whole practice like it’s a full time job thing for about a year and a half and it payed off - I can’t find much material from around then, mostly it was on myspace music lol so that’s gone, but I was able to play the Serrana sweeps in highschool, some portions of Mediterranean sundance on acoustic, and got to the point I was working on some jazz standards, chord substitutions, modal improvising etc. preparing for music school - which did not materialize for better or worse.

On the flip side, now I don’t have teenager recovery and joints, if I play for hours a day, it’s much more obvious I needed to give my hands a break after I go on vacation or have a busy work week.

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#29

6 months. Average 9 hours a day. Then it kinda clicked one day, kinda.

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#30

Bloody hell 😵‍💫, I think that would drive me insane!

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#31

It took a while longer to figure out a more efficient way to practice. But I don’t think there is any substitute for the initial rigour needed. I went through some crazy pains in my picking hand. I cat remember if the started at the fore arm and move up gradually to my neck, tor the other way around, but the just vanished at some point close to the end of six seven months.

The odd thing was the pains would go away the minute I started playing, and start right up after putting the guitars down. I had to get a track ball mouse as it would kill me to use a regular mouse.

That clip if just at the end of six months. I could start to string things together in the fly.

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#32

It’s something that (I think) Malcom Gladwell conjectured in his book about outliers. I’ve read several articles that refute this and all point to the quality of time spent, as well as content.

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#33

Some relevant words from Rick Graham

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#34

i was on the jazz guitar forum today, searching for anything italian solfeggio related, and i saw this post from another guy, and it really hits home with me. it just makes sense to really work on songs, and try to break them apart into as many pieces as you can handle. try to understand why this note, why this soundscape, look for key changes, break apart the solos into phrase groups, eventually your ear will get better at this stuff, but you got to work on it. use slow down tools they are widely available now with very good slow down functionality that retains clarity in the sound. if you want yngwie like technique you got to start learning his songs, i would suggest the concerto album.

the forum post title was

daily exercise… tell the truth

but this was the post that made me realize some people may not know how to go about progressing with music so figure i would post it here.

Screenshot 2022-11-17 at 19-55-36 Daily exercise...tell the truth -)
Screenshot 2022-11-17 at 19-55-36 Daily exercise...tell the truth -)951×398 37.9 KB

i seem to always do my best when i just stop, and learn a new song. sure i can spin my wheels on a new fragment, phrase, sequence, scale run, arpeggio run, but you got to learn repertoire eventually. let the song guide your technique practice, whether it be someone elses or something you are trying to compose. now i do feel there are times when you first wake up that are perfect for exploring ideas when your brain is fresh, but after that start working on learning a song. we waste far to much time trying to chase the 12 notes per second and higher players.

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#35

Good points. The only alternate perspective I’ll add, is what happens if the songs we want to learn contain 12+nps and we don’t yet understand the correct technique? Just playing those pieces of music won’t really help us :slight_smile: At least, not in my experience lol! I’m unintuitive though.

I’d suspect most of the awesome players we admire spent most of their time learning pieces of music that contain really fast playing in them. Since these are highly intuitive people, they gravitate towards the ‘right’ way to play and that’s where their amazing technique comes from (whether or not they understand how they are making it all work). For the rest of us…thank god for Troy :slight_smile:

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#36

what happens when the correct technique is different then your genetic technique?

yes it will help you as it still requires learning the phrasing, fingerings, the rhythmical flow, the musical aspect will help you carry through as you learn the new technique even if that means fingerings change ok well now you know 2 different pathways into that sound.

you just practice is all i can offer, you have to swallow your pride and accept your current speed. learn the song slower, and on the side work on the correct technique alongside using your own genetic techniques. eventually the new technique will develop, and you can either switch, or incorporate both into your playing. we are all unique some faster some slower, that is just the name of the game. sure speed can be developed easier for some harder for others. but at the end of the day you got to just enjoy the music, and i can 100% without a doubt tell you that you will find happiness and enjoyment playing your favorite songs even if its at 70% of the original tempo. if not then maybe you don’t like guitar. :smiley:

#37

i know i am posting a second time but i experienced this exact thing trying to learn stochelo rosenberg’s bossa dorado song and solo using the transcription off of the rosenberg academy. i knew of the proper techniques, but to be honest i just had no way of even playing it fast whatsoever i mean not even 40% speed of original tempo. so i started with the typical upstroke sweeping approach that all heavy metal players can do. so sure enough i was able to make it through learning the whole song still not even at his speed with the tricks i knew only around 70% speed. so a few weeks go by i learn a second song and solo by him, and a third song and solo by him. Then somewhere along that line I was just like hold on a minute I am going to try to use the same techniques let me just go back rework it, and let me see if i can learn these techniques to get them faster. Eventually i was able to, now can use the exact same technique as stochelo on bossa dorado, and make it to around 82-85 % of his speed. and that dude is like speedy gonzalez. i sometimes try to do 100% but i just start laughing cause he is in a realm that only a handful could probably touch. so you can learn proper technique, but speed that is something i struggle with but i mean listen and watch stochelo that guy is a monster player. i also think the gypsy jazz players some are true sinti and that wrist speed can be passed down in blood line so there is a genetic element to it. i think that is why i struggle with fluency in my pure wrist tremolo, and getting faster at some of the techniques with the rest stroke. but the more solos i learn by stochelo the better i get at technique. now musicality that is something i still dont quite understand, but it probably requires going to some conservatory music school to learn deep theory.

now to explain why using another technique helped me, it helped by allowing me to play something that i might have given up on. i played it with improper technique, so at least the fingerings, the rhythmical flow, sure the dynamics were off, but just getting through it helps to develop soloing flow and learning phrasing fingerings as well as phrase combination improvisation tactics.

#38

As someone who figured out some stuff naturally and some stuff by really pushing through on some of Troy’s material, what happened is learning a new piece or cleaning up a piece i intuitively had more or less good form with is wayyyy easier than going back and cleaning up a piece I practiced with bad form because if I slip into “autopilot” and stop consciously thinking about it, my bad habits will creep in. Which I guess is the predictable outcome - bad practice makes bad habits.

This is why I’ve kinda rethought learning songs I actually want to perform when my technique is lacking. Devising some etudes to practice is probably the right move.

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