Yngwie and Crosspicking, As Above So Below

Playing Technique
#1

Hi everybody.
I started practicing the arpeggio section right before the solo from Yngwie’s tune As Above So Below.
I noticed that the 16th note minor and diminished arpeggio’s cannot be played using DWPS only, some notes require rotation/cross picking. Here’s a small section. I found 2 ways to pick this arpeggios: one is starting on an upstroke, the other using the downstroke. The second note is always a pull-off. Either way, some rotation is needed to get from the G string back to the E string. I found more comfortable to start with the downstroke.
What do you think? How is Yngwie playing these arpeggios?

 U   U D  U   U D  U    U  D
 D   D U  D   D U  D    D  U

E----5-2------8-5------11-8-------------------------------------------
B--------4--------7---------10----------------------------------------
G----------5--------8----------11-------------------------------------
D---------------------------------------------------------------------
A---------------------------------------------------------------------
E---------------------------------------------------------------------

2 Likes
#2

@Rockdeveloper
how i play this is:
Down (with pull-off) Up Up, Down (with pull-off) Up Up, Down (with pull-off) Up Up
using only UWPS although I am a DWPS mainly :slight_smile:

#3

Hey! I’m practicing this part too. The way I do the last arpeggio is:

Down (dwps) pull-off, up and down, then sweeping on the two strings to get back to one repetition.

I know this is not what Yngwie does, but I Find sweeping this part far less (even not at all) tricky than crosspicking. I’ll work on it but for now I’m doing it this way.

#4

Nice! Being a DWPS, I didn’t considered UWPS yet:slight_smile:

#5

Yep, that’s how I started too, then I begin to experiment to see what are the other options I might found for playing this. Still not sure what fits best:slight_smile:

#6

This is totally doable with all DWPS.

Down-pull, up, down. The pulloff gives you an extra note’s worth of time to do an upstroke on the B string. (This is not my invention: Troy mentions this somewhere.)

#7

My doubt is not the upstroke on the B string but the jump from the G string back to the E string. String skipping is not something that is used regularly in DWPS as far as I am aware

#8

I have just noticed that I switch to DWPS when I play the g string to be able to move from g string to e string. So let me revise:

I start with a DWPS
Down-Rotate (with pull-off) Up Up-Rotate
Down-Rotate (with pull-off) Up Up-Rotate
Down-Rotate (with pull-off) Up Up-Rotate

rotate means changing pickslanting

1 Like
#9

I wonder what’s @Troy solution for this;)

#10

This is a pretty common Yngwie pattern, and it occurs in Now Your Ships are Burned for example. I’ve always assumed it was upstroke, pulloff, upstroke, downstroke. Yngwie is very particular when it comes to three-string arpeggios, and we can see on the REH tape how meticulous he is about starting these shapes the same way every time, on an upstroke, even for the initial repetition of a sequence. We can’t know for sure without video footage, but knowing what we know about him, this is how I’d guess he does it.

Yes, this means the final note of the sequence is a downstroke, and the first note is an upstroke on a higher string. This is consistent with the pedal tone lick, where the entire phrase is based on this string change. Whether you call this crosspicking, two-way pickslanting, or something else, the bottom line is that we know there are a variety of movements you can use to make this work.

As usual, what we’d need to know for sure is footage. Do we get any shots of this in the Alcatrazz live show, or anywhere else? Anyone find it, come back and here and post it so we can take a look!

5 Likes
#11

Thanx @Troy :+1:
Couldn’t find any hand footage yet

#12

End of the Live 85 solo. You don’t get to see the right hand, but you can hear and see from the left hand that he is not hitting the octave on the G-string, but instead hitting the first E string note again (muted) before position shifting and picking using standard 2-string mechanics.

E----u5p2–d5----u8p5–d8–u11p8----d11------------------------
B----------d4------------d7------------d10---------------------------
G----------------------------------------------------------------------
D---------------------------------------------------------------------
A---------------------------------------------------------------------
E---------------------------------------------------------------------

1 Like
#13

Also a very common Yngwie pattern, but not the one we’re talking about here. This pattern is done via sweeping between the B and E strings. The three-string pattern is the one where technically he’d need to do a little alternate picking across the string skip, and there doesn’t appear to be much video out of it there.

#14

Aware of that but was simply asserting that live, Yngwie didn’t play the 3str arp that OP tabbed.

As bad luck would have it, occurences of the actual descending 3str form is obscured in this video as every other I’ve seen.

https://youtu.be/tqmpiHZavIE?t=114

I think you (TG) are on the money with the U-po-U-D picking since Yngwie always seems very measured when playing it and it doesn’t lend itself to unabashed speed. It doesn’t have the reckless abandon that the up and down “demon drive” pattern does.

#15

https://troygrady.com/seminars/antigravity/clips/pg-arps/

#16

Indeed that appears to be the lick, though we can’t see the right hand.

What I also see in this clip, which I’ve never seen a good shot of before, is the intro lick to the “I Am A Viking” solo. It’s right there at 5:24:

3 Likes
#17

Yeah that was clip I was guided to when trying to confirm the picking of that song, then I remembered hearing the 4 note, 3str triads.

#19

After some practicing this one, here’s my take :slight_smile:

6 Likes