Performance Notes: THE DWPS Pack I Can't Play Fast! It's an age-old lament. But what does it even mean? In the technique-obsessed '80s, where every empty garage housed a drum kit and every basement a Marshall stack, "You're fast!" was the ultimate compliment. And in its vagueness it perfectly embodied our unscientific thinking on the topic. It had nothing to do with picking technique, per se. Eddie's tremolo? Fast. Eddie's tapping? Fast. Billy Joel's double-fisted middle C hammering in "The Angry Young Man"? Fast. The source of the speed, and thus the impressiveness, was as irrelevant to us as the inside of an Atari cartridge. I remember one of my uncle's friends playing me a track of some kind of virtuosic bluegrass duo, and when the picking ratcheted up in the solo section, he excitedly proclaimed, "And that's acoustic -- so that's really fast!" It was as if picking technique on acoustic guitars was somehow measured in dog years. The funnier part was that I remember being in total agreement: of course acoustic guitar was hard. It was definitely harder than electric guitar. Everybody knew that. And that's why only hard-core music school purists like Al Di Meola, or mystical jazz savants like John McLaughlin, even attempted it. Of course this made no sense. What we were both confusing is the fact that legato techniques, and thus slippery fretting-hand lines in the Van Halen and Vai mold, are less likely without the insane compression of a tube amp cranked up to 11. But the connection to picking technique was completely illogical. The geometry of picks and strings was essentially identical between the two instruments. And so were the mechanics. But this kind of logical lapse was commonplace back in the day. Nobody thought about the why. And the background radiation of this
type of confused thinking still lingers, and informs much of our current attitudes toward technical development.
What is Fast? In order to solve the puzzle of picking technique, we need to define what it is in the first place. Ironically, it turns out that raw speed isn't the biggest obstacle. If the internet has accomplished nothing else for guitarists, it has outined more completely than ever before the contours of the global guitar community. There are tons of great players out there. Sure, a Van Halen-esque figure who simultaneously defines the musical, sonic, pedagogical, and fashion zeitgeists is still a generational occurrence. But in terms of simply executing the techniques, it's obvious to even casual observers that there are many players who can now do this. This was clear back in the day, when the sounds of Eruption tapping emerged from bedroom windows across the world seemingly overnight. But thirty years later, the vast and growing litany of viral video "Flight of the Bumblebee" attempts demonstrates that raw hand speed itself was probably never in short supply. Instead, the real problem is accuracy. To produce intelligible sound, the pick must strike the string at the instant the fretting finger locks the string to the fret. This synchronization must continue even as the melodic flow moves from one string to another. If this synchronization falls below a certain fairly high tolerance threshhold, notes cease to be musically recognizable. At that point, even virtuosic levels of hand speed simply devolve into two simultaneous but unrelated movements, and not really guitar playing at all.
The Six Components of Picking Technique
And when we look at what is required mechanically to maintain this tight synchronization, we quickly uncover an entire system of mechanical challenges, each of which solves a different facet of the problem. 1. The Motion Mechanic To play notes with a pick, we need a way of moving it back and forth in the classic alternating down-up sequence. Historically, this movement, or motion mechanic, has been the most visible and thus overtly discussed element of picking technique. Their sheer variety has been a source of fascination and bewilderment. While rotational forearm techniques are probably the most common, elbow and even finger-based motion mechanics are also possible. Yngwie Malmsteen, to take a highly relevant example for Cracking the Code, uses all three. In this lesson we'll examine Yngwie's rotational motion mechanic, as it is a highly capable all-rounder, and also a great introduction to rotational techniques used in other styles like gypsy jazz.
2. String Tracking If all you could do were move the pick back and forth, you'd never be able to play on more than one string. Moving from string to string is entirely separate mechanical problem, and this becomes increasingly clear as the distances get larger. For example, if you imagine a line that moves from the first string to the fourth string, skipping over the others, this is a distance that the picking motion mechanic is simply not big enough to traverse. Instead, string tracking typically requires relocating the motion itself from one string to another. Sometimes this involves tracking the entire forearm across the bridge like a phonograph arm. You can see this type of string tracking clearly in the sweeping technique of Michael Angelo Batio, where the upper arm and forearm work together in a
sawing motion to push the hand in a straight line across the strings. Alternatively, Paul Gilbert's string tracking technique relies more on a clock face-style sweeping of the wrist to refocus the picking action. In his case, the pick traces a curved path across the strings thanks to the relatively small radius of the wrist's sweep. Whichever system you use, the point here is that string tracking is always happening. I often refer to "string tracking" colloquially as the phonograph style movement of the upper arm and forearm, because it's the most visually distinct from the picking motion itself. In the phonograph solution, it's obvious that tracking and picking are two completely separate activities. However in the Gilbert scenario, this is no less true -- it's simply a different type of movement that's performing the tracking.
3. Anchoring Anchoring is the tendency to brace the picking arm or hand against the guitar as a point of tactile reference. The most common form of this, at least in electric guitar playing, is to rest the right hand palm on the bridge saddles. In addition to providing a reference point for focusing the motion mechanic on the correct string, it also allows for modulating the amount of hand-to-string contact via palm muting -- a nearly essential noise reduction and tonal control technique for highgain amplifiers. By contrast, many acoustic players use a forearm anchoring strategy, where the forearm contacts the body of the guitar closer to the elbow. This is frequently complemented by a finger brace on the pickguard to form a kind of bridge over the strings. This makes muting more difficult, but this is less of a concern for acoustic players, where unamplified string noise is less audible. The choice of anchoring strategy has important implications for string tracking. For example, a hard bridge anchor, that contacts firmly at
one point and never moves, will interfere with the phonograph arm style of string tracking. Instead, players that do this tend to rely more on clock face string tracking. By contrast, an anchor that moves will more effectively permit transporting the entire picking movement from one string to another unchanged, with the phonograph technique. In most cases, a blend of both tends to occur. Even players who anchor firmly to the bridge will tend to move this anchor somewhat, using the phonograph arm technique, as they play across the strings. If the phonograph movement is less than the actual distance from the top string to the bottom string, then clock face movement makes up the difference.
4. Edge Picking Edge picking is a technique that we discuss frequently in the show, and it's a critical component of both mechanics and tone. By striking the string with the edge of the pick, rather than the flat face, the pick's wedge shape allows it to slide more easily over the string. Secondarily, introducing more edge picking attack creates a softer tone, as some amount of scraping noise replaces the fundamental tone of the string. As such, edge picking is the principal tonal control method in picking technique. Although edge picking is often considered a speed technique used mainly in rock and metal, it's critical to understand that edge picking is almost always used, across all musical styles, even by players who don't realize they're doing it. It simply very difficult to pick a note on a string with zero degrees of edge picking. In fact, it is sometimes pretty difficult to determine by feel alone, without actually looking, how much edge picking you're really using. It's also important to understand the interplay between string tracking and edge picking. Clock face-style string tracking will alter the edge picking angle as the wrist sweeps its arc across the strings.
Experienced players modulate this effect, typically by using the fingers to compensate for the string tracking and maintain a constant edge picking angle. By contrast, in phononograph style tracking, the hand's relationship to the string is identical across all the strings, and thus no compensation needs to occur. Neither of these approaches is better or worse, and indeed, many great players use some form of relatively static anchoring which then requires (consciously or otherwise) edge picking compensation with the fingers. This system of relationships is complicated, and the fact that experienced players modulate it almost entirely by feel and sound is fascinating.
5. String Switching By far the most sophisticated and mysterious of all the components of picking technique is string switching mechanic. The challenge of transferring a moving pick from one string to another with perfect accuracy is so sophisticated, that this component alone has more influence than any of the others in determing the types of lines a player will and will not be able to play cleanly. In fact, the solutions for this are so idiosyncratic, that we can design an entire family tree of guitar players based on the string switching strategies they employ. Of course the first string-switching technique we've seen in Season 2 is downward pickslanting, which permits clean string switching using upstrokes and even numbers of notes per strings. It's fascinating that such a seemingly arbitrary and restrictive set of rules is as prevalent as it is. Downward pickslanting -- or dwps, to coin the acronym used in this pack's title -- is probably the most widespread and powerful of all the string-switching mechanics, having been used by players as diverse as Django Reinhardt and Tal Farlow, to rock gods like Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai, and of course shred pioneers like Yngwie. In fact, what's even more fascinating about dwps is that it exists at all. The guitar was almost certainly not designed with pickslanting in mind, and the fact that it works so well has to be one of the luckiest
coincidences in the history of musical instrument design. That we can go even further, as we've seen in the Antigravity seminar, and use both upward and downard pickslanting together in sophisticated rotational sequences, is even more remarkable. And the fact that elite players have been doing this for decades, or perhaps even centuries, with only varying degrees of conscious awareness of the sophistication of the movements they were using, is truly mind boggling.
6. Synchronization The sixth component of picking technique isn't even a physical technique at all, but a conceptual one: hand synchonization. Compared to percussion instruments like piano (yes, percussion!), stringed instruments are unique in that they require two hands to produce one note. As a result, it's the tight synchonization of the those two activities -- fretting and picking -- that produces the clear articulation of discrete, intelligible pitches. And as probably every new musician has experienced, understanding what those pitches are, even when they're played perfectly cleanly, can be a challenge. The 1.3 seconds of sampling available on the Casio SK-1 keyboard was almost a science fiction level of slow motion power for deciphering the impossibly space-age lines on Eddie's and Yngwie's recordings. And it really highlights just how much of guitar playing is impenetrable to outsiders without years of hands-on fretboard experience. So one of the first challenges we face as players is understanding how on earth the two hands are kept locked together at speeds when we as players almost can't even hear the individual notes any more. For a long time, I thought the solution was somehow learning to discern those notes. But how do you learn to hear at supersonic speed? The answer, as we now know from the show, was surprising: you don't.
By chopping phrases into smaller chunks that are easy to memorize, you can simply ignore most of the high-speed blur, and instead focus on the intial note of each chunk as a type of landmark. The key is identifying exactly which fretting finger and type of pickstroke are used for the landmark note, and making sure you hit them both at exactly the right time. If the chunk is small enough -- seven notes or less, typically -- the rest of the notes in it will tend to stay synchronized even without paying overt attention to them. And that's the key. Alternate picking may seem like an uniterrupted stream of upstrokes and downstrokes, and in absolute terms that's true. But in conceptual terms, the key to maintaining synchronization is providing structure to that stream, so that there are specific, repeating opportunities to maintain synchonization as the stream flies by. And the best way to do this, as we've outlined, is chunking.
The Yngwie Motion Mechanic So that's the theory. How do you get started? Well, to begin with, you're going to need a way of holding the pick and performing the back and forth motion of alternate picking. And if you haven't already settled on a motion mechanic for doing this, or you'd like to experiment with a new one, the method we discuss in the pack is Yngwie's legendary rotational forearm motion mechanic. Yngwie's rotational mechanic is natural, it's easy to do, and it's fast and effective. And most importantly, because it flows from the hand position required for downward pickslanting, it's an ideal companion to his entire system of one-way pickslanting, even numbered note groupings, and sweeping.
Getting Down With The Slant From its anchor position, resting on the bridge, simply rotate the hand
downward so that the pick assumes the classic downward slant. This hand position should feel completely natural, similar to what happens when you hook your thumb into your belt loop. There should be no tension anywhere in the hand or arm because no real effort is required to make this happen. You're simply resting the hand against the body of the guitar and allowing gravity to do its work. This is the classic downward pickslanting hand position that is key not just to Yngwie's style, but also the styles of Randy Rhoads, Eric Johnson, and so many other rock legends. It's also part of the same family tree of anchoring and motion mechanic strategies used in gypsy jazz, one of the few formally standardized and fascinating systems for motion mechanics and string switching mechanics that exist anywhere in guitar music. You'll know you're doing it correctly when pickstrokes are no longer parallel to the strings, but angled with respect to them. Downstrokes now bury themselves between the strings -- or hit the guitar's body. Upstrokes pull away from the guitar's body, and break free of the strings. This classic "escaped" upstroke is the key to switching strings in the downward pickslanting system, and the reason that nearly all of Yngwie's purely alternate picked phases are designed to switch strings exclusively after upstrokes.
Making it Rotate A powerful side effect of Yngwie's default hand position is what it does to the picking movement itself. Because of the way the hand rolls away from the body on upstrokes, the path it now traces in doing so is curved. This movement, known as forearm supination, is actually a type of rotation: the appropriately named radius is actually rotating around the other forearm bone, the ulna, which remains static. For the most part, the muscles involved in doing this are forearm muscles. They're small, they're fast, and they don't tire easily. This is
where the speed in this technique comes from. But you'll notice that you can still hit the strings pretty hard this way if you want to. And that's because part of the power in this technique comes from above: the biceps. Famously a component of Arnold Schwarzenegger's award-winning bat-winged profile, the larger and more powerful biceps are located in the upper arm, but actually attach directly to the radius. This means they can also function as forearm supinators when the elbow is bent. And if you happen to feel any tension on the back of your arm when you do this, you're not crazy. The triceps are also called into play, in a supporting role, to keep the biceps from flexing the elbow while they supinate. It's an incredible system, and the way it works in conjunction with the design of the guitar is, again, an amazing coincidence of instrument design, anatomy, and physics. When these supination movements are small, it may not be completely obvious to you that the system is rotational. And that's fine. In fact, the best way to execute the movement is not to think about rotation at all. The rotation is simply the natural consequence of the hand position needed for downward pickslanting. And once you assume that hand position, everything else should fall into place.
Establishing A Standard Now, if the motion mechanic you already have is working for you, I'm not suggesting you run out and change it. The real value in understanding Yngwie's system is that it's highly specific, and highly learnable if you want to try it. For too long, guitarists have been told they need to play the way "that's right for them". This seemingly innocuous piece of advice has sent generations of players on a needless quest for technical unicorns. I can tell you personally that as a beginning player, I never felt completely comfortable with any particular motion mechanic. And the
incessant and oversimplified "wrist versus elbow" wars of the '80s did little to clarify matters. There was no way to know which system was worth the practice time, especially since it would take months or maybe even years of effort to know if you made the right choice. And that's assuming you were even doing it right to begin with. As a result, I wavered semi-consciously between wrist (whatever that even meant to me) and elbow techniques from one practice session to another. And this went on for years, up until the Pop Tarts breakthrough, and probably even a bit beyond. It wasn't until many years into my playing career that I settled, through a protracted process of trial and error, on the rotational system I now use. Had I instead been presented early on with a simple and formulaic system for motion mechanics that was sure to work, I would have gladly have given it a shot. There is nothing about the Yngwie system that would prevent most people from learning it, regardless of their prior playing habits. More generally, it's staggering to think that we've come this far in guitar pedagogical history with no standardized system of motion mechanics. Or at least a standardized menu of choices, with explicit instructions for making each of them work. We only have to look at the gypsy jazz style and culture for an example of the benefits of establishing such a menu. The gypsy jazz motion mechanics are also based on supination, but with a bridged anchor typical of acoustic guitarists. This mechanical standard has resulted in generations of players with nearly identical, and almost uniformly impressive abilities. When you remove the uncertainty from the equation, and allow dedicated players to focus their energies on proven systems with expected results, amazing things can happen. This is entire point of Cracking the Code.
Single-String Chunking
Now that you've built your hot rod engine, it's time to get it running. And much like a dragstrip is the best place to test straight-line speed, the simplest way to iron out the interplay of motion mechanic and synchronization mechanics is on a single string. Yngwie's vocabulary of single-string creations is one of his most fascinating contributions to virtuoso guitar. It would have been one thing to hatch such a clever idea, and to implement it as a special effect once or twice. But the sheer multiplicity of his single string ideas, and the seamless way he integrated them into his greater vocabulary of multi-string and swept innovations is really pretty amazing. The most fundamental of all of Yngwie's single-string patterns, and the very atom, if you will, of many of the larger structures he then went on to create, is the venerable six-note pattern: six note pattern.mov We've already seen this pattern in Season 1, and also in Season 2 Episode 1, where its chunking suitability was the subject of the "brain machine" scene. This simple repeating chunk bears all the design attributes of masterful engineering: an even number of notes, starting on a downstroke, and ending on an upstroke. Even its six-note length seems optimized for efficient chunking. Any shorter and the chunking interval quickly becomes more challengingly rapid. Any longer and the pattern risks being too long to effectively chunk before the hands drift apart. In addition, the pattern's strong sixteenth-note triplet feel makes it even easier to anticipate when the chunking landmark note will arrive. Yngwie often plays free-time, but that's simply an example of how effectively the pattern can be reproduced once it's effectively chunked. But as a beginner, associating the pattern with a strong rhythmic pulse like a metronome, a drum beat, or simply a tapping foot, will provide a very visceral indication of when the next landmark note will arrive. By
simply focusing on the fretting finger that needs to hit that landmark, and the downstroke required to play it, you've provided a new opportunity every six notes to make sure the pattern is perfectly synchronized. Note that chunking landmarks are conceptual, not physical. While it may be helpful in the early stages to hit landmark notes with more force, this can quickly become a habit that's hard to break, and not always what you're looking for artistically. Ultimately, the goal is mechanical transparency. The choice to impart a particular dynamic sensibility to your lead lines should be determined by the musical context, and not the behind-the-scenes chunking system you're using. Yngwie plays a number of musically interesting variations on the sixstring pattern. By shifting one position to the left, we find a fretboard location that Yngwie often uses to begin phrygian phrases, as we'll soon see: six note pattern phrygian.mov And by extending the stock six-note pattern with longer fretboard stretches, Yngwie creates a classic arpeggiated figure which you can hear both on the REH instructional tape, and throughout his recorded repertoire: six note pattern variation.mov Because of the longer stretch, this pattern is athletically challenging to do, particularly if you're not used to using the fourth finger in highly structured phrases like this. Staying close to the fretboard will help that finger strike the high note of the arpeggio without missing, particularly at elevated tempos. We can also take this idea of a kind of moving melody note, and incorporate it with the phrygian position pattern. And because the stretch is smaller, it's a little easier to do, though no less flavorful:
six note pattern phrygian variation.mov This is a fantastic example of Yngwie's phrygian stylings, and you can hear a similar example around the 3:13 mark in the song Little Savage, a tour de force of said phrygian stylings. It's based on a melodic sequence of half step, whole step half step, that's distinctly phrygian in nature, and also one of the fundamental structures of the diminished scale. It's not common in mainstream rock soloing, and is a great way to add "outside" flavor that still fits over common dominant seventh chord progressions, especially in sparse arrangements with greater freedom for lead line excursions.
Multi-position Chunking Once you've developed a sense of synchronization in one position, you can begin to take the show on the road. Simply shifting positions on a single string is a fantastic way to develop a sense of flow to your lead lines without dramatically increasing their difficulty: six note pattern positions.mov This type of position-shifting creativity is so central to Yngwie's melodic sensibility, that what could have seemed like a gimmick becomes an indispensable part of his fretboard map. Moreover, these types of lines are integrated so seamlessly in to his multi-position playing that as a kid it wouldn't even be correct to say that I had absolutely no idea where the positional playing ended and the shifting began. Instead, I had no idea how any of it was being done in the first place. It was just a seamless flow of ideas with no perceptible sonic connections between them. We can very easily extend this concept to the phrygian flavor of the lick as well:
six note pattern phrygian positions.mov Although the picking challenges involved in playing these licks are technically no different than for their single-position counterparts, in practice, the fingering changes are new, and can temporarily disrupt the process of learning the entire lick. So don't be surprised if it takes a little extra time to "re-learn" picking hand synchronization for each of these very similar fretboard shapes. Contrary to popular belief, we don't memorize the hands separately. Instead, we learn by memorizing the feel of everything that's happening in a given instant. And since both hands contribute to that feel, any change in one of the hands can trigger a little extra learning in the overall process -- though of course not as much as was required when learning the picking structures in the first place.
The Power of the Pickslant: Switching Strings It's really amazing how much power, and by extension, how much music can be made on a single string of the guitar. And thanks to downward pickslanting, that same power can now be transported almost effortlessly across all the strings: six note pattern descending.mov If you've been practicing these shapes with the downward pickslant installed, and especially if you've been leveraging Yngwie's pickslanting-based rotational mechanic to do so, then you've already developed a superpower waiting to be unleashed: string switching. By engineering his patterns to terminate on upstrokes, Yngwie unleashes the full power of his pickslanting system as soon as he begins to move across the strings. The ease with which this pattern flows across the strings, in both directions, is really astonishing. If you've never felt the fluidity of perfectly clean string changes at a reasonable rate of speed, you're in a for a Pop Tarts moment. It's
crazy that the ability to do this on a guitar is considered some kind of superpower, when on other instruments it's the bare minimum you'd expect from any player. Translating this pattern to the phrygian fingering generates a classic Yngwie trademark lick: six note pattern phrygian descending.mov The phrygian version of the pattern actually moves through strings and positions simultaneously, as each pattern is precisely one octave lower than the previous. This makes it an ideal system for connecting remote parts of the fretboard, particularly if you've developed a vocabulary of other phrases that you can access in the positions where the lick both starts and ends. Harmonically, the tritone that is outlined by the first note on each new string strongly telegraphs its phygian dominant character as it descends. It's such a flavorful lick, and considering the overwhelming preponderance of generic blues solos typically played in rock music, it's really striking how many possibilities for creative expression are suddenly are opened up by Yngwie's pickslanting approach. Like everything in Yngwie's one-way pickslanting world, both patterns work ascending as well: six note pattern ascending.mov six note pattern phrygian ascending.mov Astute observers will note that both of these patterns are now entirely dependent on "inside picking" string changes. You'll also note that this is essentially irrelevant to the challenge of playing them. The only requirement for clean string switching in a downward pickslanting system like Yngwie's is that each string terminate on an upstroke. The pick escapes the strings the same way it does in the descending version of the pattern, and the mechanical efficiency is identical in
both cases. If anything, the challenge of playing these patterns in reverse are likely to stem from the unfamiliarity of string tracking in the opposite direction, or from the unfamiliarity of the fretting hand stepping across the strings in the opposite direction. Any such difficulty derives mainly from practice habit, and not usually from any intrinsic difficulty of one direction versus the other.
Multi-string Connections When you're ready to experience the thrill of playing the whole guitar, you can thank Yngwie for busting you out of your box-position jail cell: six-note pattern - connected.mov six-note pattern phrygian - connected.mov Amazing right? With no extra effort other than the foundational skills employed in mastering each of its components, the full brawn of Yngwie's string-switching power instantly connects distant parts of the fretboard into a sprawling monster lick that exploits almost the entire range of the instrument. Mastering the connections so that they flow perfectly seamlessly still requires finesse. And doing this at speed requires a motion mechanic that's loose and efficient enough to play 60+ consecutive notes, while tracking across all six strings, without seizing up and losing its rotational flexibility. The good news is that there are no substantial differences between doing this at 60% speed and 90% speed. Once you surpass the stringhopping threshhold, where pickslanting must be used in order to move efficiently across the strings, you've entered the domain of your high-speed form, but with the benefits of practicing at relatively moderate tempos where you can certify that you're doing it right. You
need not make any overt effort to get "faster" until the patterns and string changes themselves become completely second nature and perfectly loose at these moderate tempos. To put this another way, the big difference between practice in the pickslanting era, and practice in decades past, is that you are now rehearsing absolute correctness with every single repetition. The effect of this is dramatic. A hundred absolutely perfect repetitions at a moderate speed is worth months or years of fumbling around in the dark for mechanics that never seem to materialize. The paranoia that we need to constantly be practicing at our absolute fastest possible speeds derives principally from the lack of results that incorrect practice produces. This is especially true for experienced players who have already developed good hand speed. There is no need to re-develop that hand speed. You're just learning to memorize what it feels like to do something with perfect accuracy. And you can't memorize that feeling if it's flying by too quickly to recognize. Once it's burned in, you'll have no problem utilizing it with whatever level of warp drive you've built over the years.
Advanced Examples Where do you go from here? Well, more pickslanting of course! Yngwie's vocabulary includes so many examples of interesting and musically useful things to practice, that it seems almost wasteful to return to exercises like this: chrom 4nps exercise.mov Sure, if you're a jazz player, there's probably some utility in this type of figure. But then again, you'd probably not play something like this classic chestnut of a practice exercise across all six strings. And if
you've already built that level of harmonic awareness, you can probably compose something with similiar mechanics that's infinitely more interesting anyway. Among Yngwie's compositions, there are some really amazing examples of four-note-per-string lead playing that would make for great practice vehicles: trilogy 3oct.mov This is another ingenious three-octave phrygian pattern which began life as a lick in Yngwie's repertoire -- check out the 3:30 mark, once again, in Little Savage. A few albums later it resurfaced as the head to Yngwie's classic Trilogy, from the album of the same name. It's based on four and eight-note-per-string sequences which work out perfectly with downward pickslanting, and the entire ridiculous six-string expanse of it can be performed with pure alternate picking and no legato whatsoever. Even the humble six-note pattern can be elaborated into interesting sequences, like this one from his solo spot in that classic 1984 live performance with Alcatrazz: ping pong sixes.mov This is notable for its continual travel from the first string to the second string and back. And because it does this over the relatively small distance between only two strings, it sidesteps any potential complications introduced by string tracking. This simple example is great introduction to the unimpeded bi-directional flow that is now possible within Yngwie's system. Even once you've graduated to Yngwie's universe of multi-string fluency, there's still plenty of reason to look at his repertoire of singlestring patterns:
fours - ascending.mov fours - descending.mov Chief among those are his single-string solutions to the fours problem, both ascending and descending. Because these are four-note chunks rather than six, the chunking frequency is higher, and this is a little more challenging to do at speed. The other challenge here is, of course, position shifting. Each chunk contains a position shift, and paying extra attention to the landmark note is critical to making sure this shifting doesn't devolve into a slippery-sliding mess with no definition. Because of the confluence of increased chunking speed and challenging position shifting, Yngwie's fours licks are really tremendous practice vehicles for developing hand synchronization and motion mechanic fluidity. Here's another four-note chunk used in the service of a classic lick: evil eye breakdown.mov This lick appears in a breakdown section to a another first-album gem, Evil Eye. There's a classic moment on the album recording where you can hear the volume knob switch on in the silence just before the lick begins. And in that instant of echo, just after the click of the knob, and before the assault began, was the sound of a thousand guitarists saying "uh oh". , Yngwie turbocharged the breakdown at about 210 beats per minute, and looked utterly fluid doing it. Tackling this kind of tempo with perfect accuracy, while managing the wide position shift leapfrogging the pattern requires, is no small feat. It's fun to play and again, a great practice example for motion mechanic fluidity. One thing you'll notice about the ascending and descending version of Yngwie's fours solutions is that, like so many of his creations, they're portable. Because they each start on downstrokes, you can run the
ascending pattern straight into the descending one, and they connect perfectly together. In fact, taking this logic to its extreme conclusion, if you did this over precisely one ascending position and one descending position, you'd arrive at this: shift triplets.mov This shift triplets pattern is almost like the neutron star of fours -- the very essence of the fours mechanics condensed into the smallest possible amount of space. In fact, its position shifting construction is so ingenious, very few of us back in the day knew how he was doing it. I for one assumed it was some kind of two-string pattern, because I couldn't imagine how you'd get four fingers into such a small space, especially on the upper frets where there's just not much room to move. Yngwie uses an unorthodox fingering for this that derives from his preference for 1-2-3 left hand fingerings: 3-2-1 on the top repetition, 1-2-4 on the lower repetition, then 4-2-1 on the top reptition, and then 4-2-1/1-2-4 on every subsequent repetition. For simplicity and consistency, I most often use 4-3-1 on the top, and 1-2-4 on the bottom. The challenge of position shifting accuracy, chunking synchronization, and motion mechanic fluidity are the same either way.
Conclusion Thirty years after Yngwie's neoclassical takeover of '80s guitar, it's tempting to think of his pattern-based constructions almost like a quaint set of Legos you had as a kid. But let's be honest. Even today, in the era of fancy sweeping and tapping, and eight-string guitars, and digitally modeled amplifiers, there are relatively few players that construct lines of this scope, this audacity, and this much fire. And even if you're not specifically an Yngwie acolyte, his innovations, if only as better practice vehicles than the boring exercises of yore, are
worth a look. Descending from the highest frets on your instrument, all the way down the open E string, with perfect accuracy, at whatever your current maximum speed happens to be, is an unmitigated thrill. It's playing the entire guitar, the way it was meant to be. The way you and I always imagined it to be.
