Who wrote the Pop Tarts lick?

Masters in Mechanics
#1

Did Troy write the Pop Tarts lick as an exercise or is it a transcription from another guitarist?

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#2

I forgot, was it this one?

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#3

I think it was someone from Kellogg’s.

Tony the Tiger is my guess

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#4

Also: why is it called pop tarts? Did @Troy write it while snacking?

#5

I believe it was just a lick that Troy improvised while heating some pop tarts, also think that was the first time he could play a fast lick across strings smoothly with pure alternate picking.
I guess if it already existed it was probably played by Yngwie , Al Di Meola or Vinnie Moore. It’s all on episodes 8-9!

#6

No. The Pop Tarts lick is played by Troy in episode 8 of Cracking The Code: The Series and in the introduction to The Volcano seminar. I guess it’s an Yngwie lick or Yngwie inspired lick but he doesn’t seem to say - unless I dozed off.

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#7

It was just something I came up with while improvising in college. The trick was that it’s based on chunks of even-numbered pickstrokes — four and six — so if you start on a downstroke, each grouping ends on an upstroke for easy string changes. It wasn’t planned. It was just the result of trying to play Yngwie’s descending single-string fours pattern (the “1431” fingering version), but then trying take that pattern across the strings. If you do this with a USX picking motion, the string changes will all escape and it will feel smooth.

The scene in the old episode of accidentally discovering the lick is dramatized, obviously, but more or less what happened. The Pop Tarts however are not. We added that as a Pulp Fiction reference — when the toaster goes off and Bruce Willis shoots John Travolta.

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#8

I really like pop tarts…