Where in MIM do we have examples of these Pent sequences?

Masters in Mechanics
#14

This is awesome. It looks either pronated, like Molly, or it could be a flat orientation which only gives you downstroke escape and not upstroke escape. Di Meola appears to do this and this may be why you hear swiping in Al’s technique and potentially also why you experience it on the “outside” version of this.

Andy appears to be more supinated, just eyeballing:

But you can see that this doesn’t stop him from making occasional forearm adjustments. So it’s complicated.

Great works here - looks / sounds great.

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#15

No excuse - I’ve been playing longer than he was at the time!

That looks a lot like my mechanic playing this (aside from the fact your results are cleaner, lol), right down to that weird flick of the wrist. For me, I’m pretty sure that’s a two way slant thing, where I lean naturally towards a upwards slant with escaped downstrokes, and when I need to escape on an upstroke I get that rotational flick of the wrist thing going. I seem to be sort of splitting the difference between crosspicking and TWPS on patterns like this - call it crosspicking with the occasional assist, I guess.

Great playing!

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#16

haha. im such a dunsky sometimes. I went to play the “Pentatonic” sequence…you know the one where I mentioned throwing in an economy pick lol.

Then i realized I wasnt looking for a pent sequence after all lol. I realized it when i tried the Pent sequence and i was like “uhmm, I thought I was faster at this??”

I meant to reference this type of sequence…where id normally throw in an economy pick going to the G string

G-----------------------------------------------------2----2–4--2–4--5 etc
D-----------------------2----2–3--2–3--5–3--5----5------------------
A–3--2–3--5–3--5----5------------------------------------------------

#17

I had a few moments last night so I started blowing through that pattern against a C minor backing track, and then filmed a few quick video clips, one of which is here:

Tommo’s is definitely cleaner - not the least of which because he’s playing unplugged (!!!) and while I’m not using a ton of gain (Mark V, Mark IV mode, gain at noon) I’m still getting a little bit of an assist.

We do seem to be using a similar picking motion, though - I’m gonna go with crosspicking but with some two-way assist coming off upstrokes before string changes, but if someone else is seeing something different definitely weigh in!

It’s a heck of a lot easier diatonic, huh? :rofl: If I get a chance I’ll shoot some of this, but it’s the same mechanical approach just with fewer string changes. Ironically, the best way to practice this is probably to practice the pentatonic pattern, since the string changes come at you a lot faster!

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#18

omg another Paul Gilbert marfan pinky lol

yeah, maybe it was a Freudian slip that I accidentally posted the Pent pattern. In trying it I see how bad I suck at it. I dont feel bad though because probably 3-4 hrs practice would speed it up quite a bit. As it is, the right AND left hand would be a bit wonky on it since I generally only do it in bits or maybe with some hammer/pulls

The diatonic stuff though I have somewhat together since thats 99% of what I play lol

#19

I have NO idea what you’re talking about, but I’m intrigued, lol

And yeah - I first got started on lead guitar playing mostly blues and blues rock, so I still tend to do a lot of pentatonic runs. I like what Rusty Cooley does with them too in more of a shred environment, they can sound very “open” and weirdly fast due to the wide intervals, even though when you sequence them like this you lose a lot of that effect.

It’s worth spending some time drilling them even if it’s not a shape you’re going to find yourself playing much - if you can do this with a pentatonic, a diatonic feels easy!

#20

Marfan syndrome

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yeah im sort using some of Claus Levins practice ideas ATM where I am trying to really master single string playing and then expand out from there. Its actually working quite nicely!

So the hardcore Pent sequence might be a ways away since its about as hard as it gets. Of course I am also doing 3nps stuff so plenty of string crossing work too but part of his (my, common sense) philosophy is to focus on one or two main things at once as opposed to spreading too thin

#21

Oh, lol, I don’t think my fingers are THAT long, it’s probably just a weird angle, haha.

Honestly, that’s kind of what I’ve been doing - for stuff like the Gilbert 6s pattern, simply drilling things like 3-5-7-3-5-7 or 7-5-3-7-5-3 and then moving it up or down in scale along a single string really helped me wiith my coordination. And I’ve always been a believer in breaking a problem down to its component parts and finding a way to practice just what you’re getting hung up on - if a diatonic pattern is tough at the string changes, then doing it pentatonic certainly forces you to change more often.

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#22

It sounds very clean and badass to me bro! Also, contrary to popular belief I don’t think that the gain helps, if anything you got more muting to do to keep things under control!

I would love to see this filmed with a more CTC-angle if you get the chance.

As an aside I totally dig your tone. I wonder if I’ll be able to get something similar with my Overloud amp sim.

@Troy I think you are correct that my form is more Molly- or AL- esque (haha I wish!).

However, I don’t think that this is the reason for my frequent swiping in the outside changes, because my inside-picked clip shows that I (and others using the same posture) should be able to do upstroke escapes from that position. I know that is probably not what you were saying but just wanted to clarify!

Could it simply be that my hand got a bit “lazy” in navigating the outside changes at high speed - like it seems to happen to many players out there? (As shown in one of your Antigravity chapters, for example). Because it’s quite easy to swipe the outside changes without noticing, I think one may need to make a more conscious effort to memorise the proper excaped trajectories.

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#23

You’re too kind, man. But thanks! Gain can be a blessing and a curse - I wouldn’t be shocked to see in slo-mo I’m adding in the occasional legato note, which some compression and saturation definitely helps smooth out. At the same time, you’re right, muting becomes a much bigger issue. I guess at the end of the day one of the big messages of the CtC program for me is that it doesn’t make sense to get uber-dogmatic, and if there’s an occasional unpicked note in there, as long as the results SOUND good, then it’s fine.

As far as tone… this is an alder Strat with a fairly punchy “modern” sounding singlecoil set in them, Suhr ML Standards (I think Suhr’s singlecoils are amazing, and they’re not THAT much more expensive than Fender, $80 each or $240 for a set. I’ve also played the V60s, which I like, and thhe V60LPs, which I like even more). In Overloud… Looking at the amp lists I’d say your best bet are either the Caliper Studio Lead (Mesa Caliber 50), or the Markus II Lead (Mark IIC+). Gain to taste but try around noon, Presence VERY low (I’ve got mine under 9 o’clock), bass pretty low too (I forget, but try maybe 9-10 o’clock - keeping the low end clear in a Recto- or Mark-style preamp helps a lot with clarity, and even that low these things aren’t lacking in low end). I had the Bright engaged and the treble maybe at 1:30 or so and the mids probably around the same, but a fairly neutral 11-1 spot is probably a good starting point. Idunno - lots of people say Marks or Rectos are tough to dial in, but I’ve been playing various Mesas for so long now that it’s pretty second nature to me, and settings like these (maybe a little more gain, I usually start around 1-1:30) are a pretty standard starting point for me for lead sounds when I plug into one.

I’ll see if I can shoot some better CtC approved footage over the weekend so we can really see what exactly my pick is doing!

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#24

Jut to be clear, I assume you know this, but for the less initiated who may be reading, the “weird flick of the wrist” is not only common but also the subject of the Antigravity seminar and the “2wps” section of the Pickslanting Primer. What you’re doing in your clip not only looks and sounds awesome - it’s also the textbook approach for doing this.

Nice work here!

#25

First, thank you - you’re ALSO too kind, Troy. There’s some monster players around here, you and Tommo amongst them, and I’m just trying to narrow that gap a little bit. :rofl:

The only reason I know that is because when several months ago I posted a video of, actually, I think it was probably this exact pentatonic pattern, and I honed in on “…and there’s this weird winding up motion I’m doing…” you pointed out it was textbook TWPS, which considering at the time I’d just been looking at the DWPS stuff not to confuse myself until I felt comfortable there, was 100% news to me, lol. Now I’m at least aware of what’s going on, and while I don’t know if this is something I even want conscious control over, I’m at least focusing on tryng to keep my wrist loose and not fighting this motion, and it seems to be helping a lot.

Question, though - I’ll shoot some slow-mo close up footage over the weekend but in the past I’ve looked at this motion and this sort of run and there was definitely an arc’d/crosspicking thing going on in the pickstroke. Does it make any sense to be doing this rotational thing on top of that too? It seems potentially like it’s duplicating efforts, but at the same time if I’m mostly picking with wrist deviation from a fairly flat wrist position then adding in a bit of rotation on certain pickstrokes seems like it’s at least working an unrelated muscle group so I suspect it probably isn’t hurting anything…

EDIT - actually, here’s a link to the post I was thinking of, complete with slow-mo footage, and it’s actually great to go back and revisit this because the video above is a LOT cleaner and maybe a hair faster than what I was doing three months ago. A heartfelt thank you to the whole site, really, for producing this awesome analysis and then all the really great analysis and feedback I’ve gotten on these boards, because you all really ARE making me a better guitarist. \m/

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#26

That’s a nice take… Fairly good speed and quite clean. You said it’s not as clean as Tommo’s take but it’s tough to tell since you’re plugged in and he’s not. I don’t think there’s a big difference in how clean the two of you play it and I’m not even sure that one is necessarily cleaner than the other.

Do you know what metronome setting that is? I ask because earlier in the thread we were discussing Vivian Campbell’s use of this lick in Don’t Talk To Strangers and I think you said you can match the speed but not the accuracy. What specifically happens if you try to play this lick at the tempo of Don’t Talk To Strangers? I’m guessing you’re probably going to say you swipe more, but swiping isn’t necessarily bad - many of the greats use swiping. What matters is how audible the swipes are.

Anyway, that’s just my guess as to what happens if you play that lick at that tempo. Am I right or does something else happen, or maybe both?

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#27

I actually don’t know - here’s the backing I was jamming along with, if someone wants to count it out:

Fun backing - very different than my usual stuff, and it forces you to stay really on the beat, which for a while there I tended to be very loose and behind the beat.

I don’t know for sure, but my suspicion is that my technique doesn’t change. At least, from a macro standpoint, I still find myself doing that winding up TWPS movement, which makes me suspect the answer is no.

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#28

I don’t question things that work, only things that don’t. Maybe you’re using a pickstroke that has some double-escape-style curvature, maybe you’re not. If you can’t tell then it’s not hurting anything. But if you get a chance to film this down the strings in 120fps with good light definitely do so I’m sure that would cool to look at.

The main thing is that becoming more aware of motions you already know how to do means you can control them better and apply them to stuff you maybe haven’t tried. More knowledge never hurts. You can always choose to not pay attention - but having the option to pay attention when necessary is a super power that lots of people would like to have.

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#29

Anecdotally, it seems that it’s helping me, being aware of what my picking hand is doing. And I’m definitely going to try to get some decent video over the weekend. :+1:

#30

So, near as I can tell, that backing is about 107bpm, and that Dio tune is around 135 or so in the solo section (doesn’t sound like it was tracked to a click).

And really at those speeds it’s mostly a coordination issue, I think.

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#31

Ok, the video quality and angle isn’t the greatest (I’m using one of those tripods with a phone mount with bendy legs and wrapping that around the top horn of my Strat to mount my phone to my guitar) but here goes nothing:

There’s a few legato notes at the top of the pattern to get up to speed and sync everything into motion, and a little bit of legato and bluesiness at the very end (once it returns to full speed) but the descending part and ascending part through the pattern is pretty straight. Some definite slop, this is about as fast as I can play this sort of pattern before things really start to fall apart, but for the most part at speed it sounds fine.

This is just the typical box position pentatonic shape at the 10th fret, in D minor, descending down the the b7 on the 8th fret with a position shift before ascending back up.

I’m no expert, but this looks way more like TWPS than cross-picking for me, and sort of surprisingly for a guy who was pretty sure he was mostly UWPS with the occasional rotation for an escaped upstroke, it looks like there are whole sections of this where I’m consistently burying downstrokes and escaping on the upstroke - it kind of looks like my pick is moving in two distinct planes here at various points.

#32

Thanks for taking a crack at this!

This is what the descending side of this looks like, and this approach of being what we call “primary up 2wps” is specifically the variety of “2wps” we explore in Antigravity with players like Batio, McLaughlin, etc. So you’re not wrong. If the ascending side appears slightly different to you, you simply may be changing your arm position slightly, but it’s possible you’re not really changing the motions you are making. The camera angle is a little too close to determine that.

I know we film a lot of our stuff with the magnet, but if you don’t have one, a regular old tripod shot is the best method for regular use. Something like this:

If you point the headstock a little toward the phone, you can find a sweet spot where the fretting fingers don’t block the view and you can still see a little bit “down the strings”. As far as distance, keep the phone close enough to you that you can still make out the pick / string interaction, but wide enough to capture a little of what the hand / arm are doing too.

If you get another crack at this using a tripod setup that would be great. If you’re uploading directly from the phone, I know that sometimes bakes in the slow motion automatically, and you have no control over where it puts that. If that’s the case, play the phrase a few times so you can see what the flow of the normal-speed motion looks like before the slow motion kicks in.

Thanks again here, this is always a learning opportunity. What a world we live in!

#33

Sure thing! That approach pretty much necessitates playing seated, which is a little unnatural for me, but at the same time it’s a heck of a lot less unnatrural than having a camera basically tied to my guitar body!

Missed a couple notes in there, but whatever - there’s enough “good” playing to see what I’m doing and maybe there’s something meaningful in the notes I missed, and really I just didn’t want to do a second take (I’m aboiut to hop on my bike). I didn’t think to check to see if my camera has higher framerate options than I was using until after I finished filming this but i’ll look into that for future videos.

If nothing else, since doing it this way lets me mic up my amp and then match the audio to the video in Final Cut, it’s certainly a much better SOUNDING recording!

Full speed, pattern and then some bluesy licks with a bit of that motif included in it, and then 35% of full speed.

On an iPhone, by the way, if after you film in slo-mo you then go in and edit the video, you can slide around the “start” and “stop” parts where the slow-mo kicks in.

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What to do with the fingers not holding the pick on a strat style configuration?