Masters in Mechanics Antigravity: Performance Notes Imagine a world where there exist at least four versions of the "Paul Gilbert Lick", each with identical sound and identical tablature, and yet where each is still different from the others in significant ways. It is a world in which we parse pivotal differences between playing strategies that most guitarists don't even know exist. Ironically, Ironically, this includes the players who pioneered those strategies, who can neither hear nor feel that they are using them. It is a world in which so many possibilities abound for the playing of similar things, that choices must be made about musical and technical goals lest you fall down a rabbit hole of infinite practice. This world of possibilities is real -- and we call it Antigravity. Antigravity. This pack contains 62 examples of such possibilities that track the discussion of the three-hour Antigravity seminar. It was quite a challenge to assemble, again because of the many strategies that exist for playing each example we examined in the talk. Each seminar is slightly different, veering off on its own path based on the interactive flow of the discussion, and the pack contains a representative sampling of all this diversity. diversity. In the pack, those examples now include a real-time, medium-speed rendition of each lick alongside the high-speed version. Given the difficulty of mastering the often subtle movements involved in two-way pickslanting, the slower speed offers a look at how these movements adapt to more practice-friendly tempos. Both speeds are of course included in slow-motion capture as well.
The First Scale In his Code Archive, Michael Angelo Batio describes his formative experiences with alternate picking: "I taught myself how to alternate
pick. I would just do simple riffs like this -- just that riff, 1,000 times." And that riff riff was the "First Scale". Considering its pivotal importance in Mike's own technical development, it's probably no coincidence that the First Scale was also the very same phrase that unlocked Mike's approach to scalar picking for the rest of us. If we had to guess what it was that Mike was teaching himself over the course of those thousand repetitions, there's a good chance it was exactly what we first noticed while watching him: two-way pickslanting. The giveaway was the brief and highly distinctive forearm supination that occurs at the sixth note of the phrase. We soon learned to recognize this signature rotational blip not just in the "First Scale", but everywhere in Mike's free-form playing, even without the aid of slowmotion video. And it simultaneously communicated two incredible facts. First, is the fact that Mike's default pickslant was, impossibly, impossibly, upward. On the heels of a decade of habituated Yngwie-style downward pickslanting, this by itself was an almost incomprehensible revelation to me. Second, is the fact that both upward and downward pickslanting could be combined in the same phrase -- indeed, on the same string , across a transition of just three notes -- to enable switching strings after both downstrokes and upstrokes. The sequence should be familiar by now. On the first string: downstroke, upstroke, long downstroke. On the second string: upstroke, downstroke, rotate. The rotational sixth note of the phrase accomplishes the switch to downward pickslanting. It is timed to coincide with the upstroke that allows the pick to complete its work on the second string in the position we have now come to understand from the Yngwie world: above the plane of the strings, thanks to downward pickslanting. Thus the Batio ascending scalar approach is distilled into a simple sequence of six movements. And that's powerful: an alternate picked, three-note-per-string scale isn't just a neverending stream of alternate pickstrokes played randomly against any old fingering. It is a highly choreographed sequence, each part of which is attached to a
specific pickstroke and fretted note. This sequence effectively becomes a chunk -- a self-contained collection of movements memorized as a unit and triggered by its initial pickstroke.
First Sixes This six-note fundamental chunking unit of three-note-per-string scale playing contains properties we are already intimately familiar with. It starts on a downstroke. It is composed of an even number of notes. And it ends on upstroke with upward pickslanting. This is precisely the same set of attributes possessed by every Yngwie-style one-way pickslanting pattern we learned in the first two episodes of Season 2, from the Pop Tarts lick to the Yngwie six-note pattern, to the ascending and descending fours single-string patterns. And because of this, we should be able to treat this six-note chunk in exactly the same manner as we do any even-numbered one-way pickslanting pattern. And this turns out to be true. Like Yngwie's six-note pattern, the sixnote 3nps scale chunk can be repeated in a single position. Initiating the sequence with a comfortable downward pickslant honed over years of Yngwie-style one-way playing, the slightly modified sequence is this: down, up, rotate; up, down, rotate. This more portable sequence both begins and ends with downward pickslanting, and thus connects seamlessly with itself to form a perfectly looping pattern. The fact that the pattern moves away from downward picklanting in its center, to enable the string change, is properly ignored when memorizing the chunk itself -- it's simply a series of movements like any other lick. Once the movements are memorized, the pattern can be repeated in place, across a pair of strings, and the string change in the middle becomes unnoticeable, both by feel and sound. The smoothness of this repetition can be polished by taking advantage of the full three-note transition phase on each string to
make the rotation happen. Now it's worth noting that Mike's trademark "blip" is more aggressive than this. The rotational movement on the second string of the "First Scale" is shoved closer to the last note of the string, and the transition back to upward pickslanting on the subsequent string is nearly instantaneous. It's harder to do this without unnecessarily accenting the initial note on the new string, and Mike's use of high gain and the neck pickup helps smooth this. As you can see in the Code Archive, his movements are uniformly small, with minimal pick against the string, and this also minimizes the potential negative impact of overly aggressive pickslanting movements. His choice of the Jazz III makes a lot of sense for this small movement approach, since it is rigid enough to still produce a confident attack even with only a small amount of pick on the string.
Circular Sixes But a small pick isn't strictly necessary to make these movements work, and neither for that matter is a small attack. As a general rule, any desired dynamic, from small and delicate to large and aggressive, can be achieved by modulating three factors: the transition phase, the degree of pickslant, and the degree of edge picking. This is done by both feel and sound, and not by looking at the picking hand. A good starting point is to shoot for the midpoint of all three, since that allows some headroom to modulate both more aggressively and more delicately as your musical choices dictate. Attaining this type of dynamic control is one of the fundamental challenges of picking technique, and indeed all musicianship. When it comes to two-way pickslanting, the two-string sixes pattern is the place to begin dynamic practice. In the "Circular Sixes" clip, I'm using a somewhat more aggressive Batio-esque transition phase where the movement is biased toward the final note on the B string. This is a rough approximation of Mike's own circular sixes clip in his Code Archive. From this starting point I'm dialing the attack and speed down and back up again to practice dynamic control.
Interestingly, you'll notice that although the lick's speed is variable, the size of the movements really isn't. The commonly-held belief that fast playing equates to smaller picking movements in many cases turns out not to hold up under real-world observation. Very often, speed within broad limits is achieved by simply making the same movements faster. Dynamics, on the other hand, are commonly modulated by a combination of movement size, force of attack, and pick grip. A lighter touch and smaller movements produce a more delicate sound, while the most aggressive attack is produced by a heavy pick with a strong grip, and larger, more forceful movements.
First Sixes - Positions & Connected Just as the loopable nature of the sixes scalar chunk allows it to be repeated in a single position, it also allows the chunk to be repeated in separate positions on the same pair of strings. Even more powerfully, the same chunk can be repeated across different pairs of strings, in effect producing a scale. The transition from a scale fragment to a true, one-octave-plus scale would seem to entail a leap in difficulty. But really, how much more difficult is this in actual practice? The single-position repeating figure already switches strings. The final note of the pattern is an upstroke that uses downward pickslanting. The first note of the pattern is a downstroke, also using downward pickslanting, that occurs one string higher. Since both notes utilize the same pickslant -- one we're already comfortable with -- it's not a huge leap to move from one to the other. And the distance in question is just that of a single string. Well, what if instead of one string higher, we simply moved one string lower? Doing so produces the aural illusion of unbroken scale playing, but the compartmentalized, chunked nature of the underlying process is unchanged.
Full Scale 2wps, Nylon & Jazz III
Continuing this sequence to a third pair of strings encompasses the entire instrument. And in so doing, it achieves a feat of uninterrupted scalar travel that is rarely heard in flatpicked guitar music. This is especially true in the descending direction, since downward pickslanters -- arguably the guitar majority, whether or not they know it -- avoid switching strings after downstrokes, and especially so when it's against their pickslant. In truth, of course, the instrument is entirely symmetrical, and ascending and descending scales are mechanically identical. Any perceived difference is one you yourself introduce by way of your choice of pickslant. To maintain picking symmetry, these six-string licks employ position shifts at the turnaround points. This ensures that both the descending and ascending legs start on downstrokes. It also makes metric notation simpler, since each leg can start on a downbeat given the right time signature. Finally, two versions are included, with two different pick choices. I noticed I had a couple different takes in the can when I sat down to edit the footage, filmed on different days with whatever pick was at arm's reach. And since pick choice is a common question from viewers of the show, I included them both. In actual practice I don't have strong feelings about pick choice for scalar playing like this, and have used a wide variety of gauges and materials in filming our clips and lessons.
Sixes and Threes World War I was originally called the "Great War", only because nobody dreamed there'd be another one. Similarly, I never thought of Yngwie's ingenious picking strategy as a "one-way" strategy. It was simply pickslanting, and for all I knew it was the only way to play anything. For sure, it was the way I'd played for a solid ten years. And this allowed ample time to discover and fully inhabit a wide range of stock patterns and fingerings that worked well with even-numbered
note groupings. In combination with both sweeping and legato, the practical applications of this system were nearly endless. And it's why, even today, it is probably still the strategy I reach for first. But if the discovery of two-way pickslanting in Mike's playing opened a door to a world of odd-numbered note groupings, it also simultaneously redefined the existing downward pickslanting world as a specific choice to use one and only one pickslant. And that world now had a twin: upward pickslanting . The implications of such a thing were immediate and profound. If upward pickslanting exists, then every single downward pickslanting pattern I already knew could be learned all over again. By simply flipping the pick structure, and using the opposite pickslant, I could play those very same patterns mechanically inverted. The Yngwie six-note pattern is an obvious starting point if only thanks to its nearly universal role among rock players as a gateway to chunking and downward pickslanting. And by starting it on an upstroke, and using upward pickslanting, we can now play it just as efficiently with inverted mechanics. In fact, we can take either version -- the dwps version or the uwps version -- and play it across all six strings, both descending and ascending, by employing the positionshift tactic to keep the picking structure uniform across both legs of the journey. Soon after discovering downward pickslanting, I had realized that simply repeating any three-note fingering would produce a compact six-note pattern with the same properties as Yngwie's pattern. I had heard players like Vinnie Moore do this before, but it just sounded like a pattern of threes, repeated indiscriminately in various positions. Of course in a post-Yngwie world, I understood the deeper structure. This pattern of threes was precisely two repetitions of a given fingering. It started on a downstroke, contained precisely six notes, and then moved either to a new position, or if I wanted, to a new string. Likewise, in a one-way upward world, the same transformation
to upward pickslanting was now possible by repeating the same sequence on an upstroke.
Gilbert Sixes I then realized that the threes pattern could, with a small modification, be spread across two strings to present the illusion of a six-note scale fragment. In the descending example of this, you'd start on an upstroke, play three notes on the first string, then play three more notes on the next lower string. Then, without moving to a third string, you'd start the pattern over. That second string would ultimately contain six notes, or one complete iteration of the threes pattern. And so would every subsequent string of the lick. In fact, with the exception of the first string, this new sixes pattern, and the threes patterns, were not just similar -- they were identical. The threes and sixes patterns possessed all the same properties, except that conceptually, the sixes pattern "started" on an upstroke. If this seemed unusual, the truth is that starting on a downstroke was an artificial requirement. The only real requirement of a one-way pickslanting lick is that every string terminate on the same pickstroke. If the pattern is repetitive, then the pattern must contain an even number of notes to make consistent termination possible. But -- and here's the key -- this could just as easily be achieved by displacing some of the notes in the pattern to another string, so that each string contains an odd number of notes. Although counterintuitive, this actually works out fine. This sixes pattern was three and three. But it could also have been one and five. Or five and one. As long as the pattern starts over on the same string on which it finishes, those two units of odd numbers -- the tail end of one pattern, and the head end of the next one -- will always add up to an even number, and all will be well. To put this another way, any two odd numbers when summed will always produce an even number. Cool right? All of which is to say that displaced patterns could also be flipped to
begin with the opposite pickstroke and still retain their one-way properties. And when you did this with the sixes pattern, and flipped it to start on a downstroke , you inadvertently created one of the bedrock cliches of virtuoso rock picking: Paul Gilbert sixes. I had actually never watched Intense Rock in college -- Yngwie's instructional tape was where I had spent my time, and my summer job money. So I didn't know that I had stumbled across someone else's relatively famous scale pattern. I also never thought much of its difficulty. Despite its displacement, and the requirement that you start it on an upstroke with dwps, the overlapping Gilbert sixes pattern was perhaps even easier to play than Yngwie's six-note pattern because each string involved simply repeating the same three-note fingering. Flipped to the opposite pickslant, and now starting on a downstroke, the lick became only marginally more difficult. But this was only thanks to the unfamiliarity of upward pickslanting itself. Over time, playing it this way became second nature -- particularly in the descending direction, which is its more popular and classic configuration. What's interesting about this is that Paul is often quoted as saying that he prefers outside picking to inside for reasons of difficulty. But the descending Gilbert sixes lick is entirely inside picking. And it is of course no more difficult than its ascending counterpart, which is entirely outside picking. And why should it be? It's the same pattern in both directions, and it's a one-way pickslanting lick at all times. And this reveals a quirk in the common thinking about picking technique. Most of the time, players who express a preference for outside patterns over inside patterns are not really thinking about inside and outside picking at all. Instead, what they're really describing is two-way pickslanting. And not just any occurrence of two-way pickslanting, but a particularly specific instance of two-way pickslanting in which a lick moves back and forth repeatedly between two strings. This is a pretty isolated case that does not occur in
straight-line scale playing. In fact, it is not a common occurrence at all unless you want it to be. Consider that players like Yngwie and Eric Johnson almost never play these types of sequences without the aid of legato or sweeping. Ultimately, this highly specific description of inside picking is quite a different proposition than something like Gilbert sixes. The many variations of Gilbert sixes -- ascending, descending, uwps, dwps -move only in one direction across the strings, and never vary their pickslant. And this is why Gilbert sixes in all its forms, even the "inside" ones, are as dead simple to play as any of Yngwie's one-way pickslanting patterns. To summarize: Any lick containing an even number of notes per string, when played in one direction across the strings, will be outside picking. That same pattern, played in the opposite direction, becomes inside picking. Neither of these observations has any relation to the difficulty of the lick. The only thing that matters is the final pickstroke on each string. If it's an upstroke, then you need downward pickslanting to play it. If it's a downstroke, you'll need upward pickslanting. That's really all there is to it!
Two-Way Sixes and Threes The threes and sixes cliches were not just academic, redundant ways of playing the same patterns. They were simulations of what would happen in real-world playing when a lick which ended on an unpredictable pickstroke must be connected to another phrase. Developing true picking hand freedom meant being able to move seamlessly from one phrase to another regardless of the pickslant or pickstroke required. Learning each of the cliches in each of its variants was a way to experience this various connection possibilities. It was also a vehicle or the controlled practice of two-way pickslanting. One point we make continuously in Cracking the Code is the ironic
status of scale playing for guitarists. Scale practice is an elementary exercise on other instruments, but it is seemingly an elite feat on guitar. And now, we're beginning to understand why. Scale playing not only requires the mixing of opposing pickstrokes, but also opposing pickslants. And it demands that this be done nearly continuously. Because each string contains only three notes, there is never really a point where the pickslant is static. You may notice in some of these clips that the middle note on each string can sometimes appear to have no pickslant at all. But this is really just the coincidence of the pickslanting movement passing through the zerodegree pickslant point in perfect phase with the melodic flow of the lick. The end result of this is that three note per string sequences move pretty quickly from one string to the next, and it is challenging to do this while maintaining continual and correct pickslant alteration. But by taking one-way patterns and linking them into monster licks of opposing slants, we can slow down the pickslanting frequency as much as we'd like, without altering the frequency of the actual picking motion itself. In the two-way cliche examples, we've avoided the position-shift tactic at each turnaround point. This forces the number of notes on that string to become odd, and triggers the switch to the opposite pickslant. What this means is that the pickslant only needs to change once for each leg of the journey. Whether you see this as a true two-way pickslanting lick, or simply two different licks played back-to-back, is semantic. The real value here is the opportunity to practice pickslanting angle changes without having to do so at every single string change.
The Rusty Cooley Patterns: Fives and Sevens But what if you did want to practice two-way pickslanting at every string change? One way to do this of course is to play 3nps scales at
slower tempos. But there's only so slow you can go before the movements themselves are no longer accurate reflections of the form you'd use at more realistic playing speeds. This is because the association of one specific pickslant with one specific picked note is actually not the best way to practice two-way pickslanting. This kind of robotic strategy is really only possible at very slow speeds, and quickly breaks down as tempos increase and movements naturally blend together. Instead, at medium and fast tempos, pickslanting changes track phrases rather than individual notes. In fact, the pickslanting movement itself becomes a kind of metronomic chunking that helps coordinate the entire system of picked notes and string changes: one rotation for one string, the opposite rotation for the next string, and so on. This kind of smooth rotation is hard to do at super slow tempos. One solution that does work is to increase the number of notes per string, while keeping the total number of those notes odd. This way, each string change triggers a pickslanting change, but at a slower frequency than it would in a 3nps sequence. Any odd number will work. Rusty Cooley's vocabulary of interesting odd-numbered scalar sequences is a great starting point for this. You can think of these patterns like a variable gear ratio, capable of slowing down the frequency of string changes by different amounts. The sevens patterns provide the greatest geardown, with over double the number of notes per pickslant change compared to traditional scale playing. The fives patterns, less so -- one and two thirds slower. And again, the idea here is to use these patterns to make it easier to maintain a faster picking speed without having to encounter the hurdle of string changes as often. They're also fun to play. If you've done any amount of three-note-per string practice, you'd probably like to break out of that rut, and these patterns are a cool way to do that. The fingerings can feel unusual at first, but will become second nature within a relatively short amount of
time. And they really are easier than straight 3nps scale passages from a string-changing perspective -- the sevens pattern especially. Sevens are just about at the limit of chunking efficiency. And even at really fast picking speeds, this large of a chunk allows you to spend a fair amount of time on a single string before switching to the next string. You'll notice that I do not typically utilize the entire seven-note window to make the transition, instead biasing the movement toward the final notes on the string. I have practiced extending the rotation over the full seven notes, and the results are indeed smooth. But its feel somewhat unnecessary, and in actual practice what you see here under the camera is typical of the type of rotational window to which I default when not thinking too consciously about the process.
Primary Pickslant - Up, Down, and Neutral The issue of primary orientation is fascinating, extending the already mysterious topic of two-way pickslanting into a realm of subtlety that honestly took me years to fully grasp. The crux is not simply the tendency of some players to prefer a particular pickslanting orientation. That much was clear from the beginning, with Yngwie's downward pickslant, and later with Mike's use of upward pickslanting. What was also clear almost immediately, is that simply flipping these preferences upside down did not feel the same. Theoretically, once we enter the topsy turvy world of two-way pickslanting, the difference between upward and downward pickslanters should be neutralized by the immutable requirements of two-way string changes. After all, regardless of which pickslant you "prefer", you're still obligated to use the opposite pickslant every other string in a typical 3nps sequence. And yet, when I began Mike's sixnote chunking sequence with upward pickslanting -- which was still new and awkward to me -- I found that the resulting scale wasn't
nearly as smooth or fluid as when I began the process with downward pickslanting and played the scale backwards. The end result was the same -- dwps for upstroke string changes, and uwps for downstroke string changes. But the feel of the two systems was entirely different. What gives? The difference, as it turns out, was relative. While the primary down player still switches to upward pickslanting on occasion, this occurs with much less of an upward pickslant than the primary up player. Similarly, although the primary up player must become a downward pickslanter to enable upstroke string changes, this happens with much less of downward pickslant than the primary down pickslanter. The actual range of motion is the same in both cases -- it is simply the absolute values which have been shifted either north or south of the equator. What makes this all possible is the great flexibility of pickslanting to the precise degree of angle used. We've seen even in S2E1 that varying degrees of downward pickslant are possible, from Yngwie's nearly undetectable slant, to the great forearm arch of the gypsy players. In truth, the only practical definition of downward pickslanting that really matters is that the pickstroke clears the plane of the strings on the upstroke. This turns out to be possible starting from the slightest slant below the perpendicular, and extending all the way to the almost comically aggressive, nearly flat pickslant employed by players like Marty Friedman. In actual practice the factors that influence primary up and down orientation are numerous, and intertwined with the motion mechanic a given player uses. Mike's bridged forearm stance, and the long fingers he uses to achieve it, likely help him maintain the upward pickslant with extremely high consistency across even the lowest strings on the guitar. It's also likely that this approach prevents him from using the sometimes aggressive degree of downward pickslanting you'll see in bridge-anchored players like Yngie, Eric, and my own playing in this pack.
2wps Advanced: Nines, Twelves, and the Batio Trademark Skip I included these patterns in the demo pack mainly as a way of illustrating, up close, what true two-way playing actually looks like, since we had not yet covered any of this material in the show itself. We also uploaded two of these clips -- Nines, and the Antigravity Lick -- in full slow-motion regalia to our YouTube channel. If you've never seen these movements before, they really are quite striking. They are also quite obvious. Several non-guitarists to whom I've played these clips were easily able to identify the pickslanting movements once I pointed them out, and this despite their general invisibility in normal high-speed playing. To this collection I've added a Batio signature lick: his 3nps scalar string skip. You'll notice that despite the intimidation factor of the string skips, the actual picking pattern is the same sequence used in the "First Sixes" clips. The fact that there are strings in between is largely irrelevant. The increased difficulty of the lick -- if any -- stems from the slightly greater distance that the pick needs to travel between strings. But again, the fact of the "string skip" is really a red herring that does not change the approach in this lick or any other lick that involves "skipping" strings. As a point of interest, you'll notice I'm using the Nylon in this clip. It's much larger than the Jazz III. Not only is this not a hindrance compared to the smaller pick, it actually helps to cover that that greater distance thanks to its longer reach. If you take a quick browse through the Mike Stern code archive, you'll see a larger pick used to similar advantage. Mike plays a number of truly adventurous 1nps 2wps patterns for which the greater reach of a longer pick -- provided you allow more pick to reach past your grip, like Mike does -- is a definite advantage.
The Mystery Change: Kickback Connection, Dorian Loop No sooner had we deduced Mike's formula for two-way pickslanting than we began to notice something very strange: not all his playing seemed to conform to it. The "Kickback Connection" featured segments of four-string scale playing where no two-way rotation was visible at all. The "Dorian Loop" was a pristine example of circular three-string scale playing whose cleanliness was as awe-inspiring as it was perplexing. The descending side of the Dorian Loop seemed to feature no two-way rotation at all. What was going on here? Swiping was of course the answer, hypothesized through a process of deduction when no other option seemed possible. Although I first failed to produce the effect with left-hand muting alone, I later stumbled across the missing ingredient via hands-on experimentation: upward pickslanting. The combination of simultaneous left-hand muting and right hand upward pickslanting allowed the pick to flop over the muted lower string with comparatively little sonic penalty. The brunt of the attack of the muted string was drowned out by the ringing fundamental of the masking note. This instantly enabled the rotation-free execution of the descending portion of patterns like the Kickback Connection and the Dorian Loop, and a new era of alternate picked efficiency was upon us.
Swipe Power: Eights and Fours Suddenly, licks on Speed Kills which were formerly impossible feats of athleticism, were now a fascinating combination of impossible athleticism and impossible finesse. Eights is the simpler of the two patterns. This circular eight-note sequence is roughly similar to the famous "Paul Gilbert Lick", save for the addition of an additional note on the second string to change the rhythm from triplets to sixteenths. As such it requires only one swipe on the descending side as the lick returns to the loop point.
Fours is another matter entirely. The circular version of the pattern, as featured here in its "First Scale" attachment, contains two swipes on the 8th and 14th notes of the repeating circular pattern. In between is a beautifully choreographed sequence of string changes that are all enabled by upward pickslanting, and require no two-way rotation at all to work their magic. Particularly ingenious is the way upward pickslanting powers the string changes on notes 9 through 13 -- a sequence that would be avoided at all costs by downward pickslanters thanks to the way its two descending string changes occur after downstrokes. As we've discussed, string changes which are candidates for swiping are traditionally the outside string changes that move in the same direction as the pickslant. In Mike's case, this would mean descending outside string changes -- in other words, up-down, from the higher string to the lower string. Very simply, just imagine that the pick is likely to hit the strings in the direction of its slant, so long as it also picking in that direction. The fascinating corollary to this is that the pickslant which creates the swipe also helps execute it. It is the pick's slant in the direction of the swipe which helps it slide over the string rather than slamming through it. In the fours pattern, you'll see that all these factors converge on notes 8 and 14 as indicated above. In practice, however, there's catch. You'll also notice here in the fours licks the occasional swipe on ascending outside string changes as well. In other words, you may notice that during down-up string changes from a lower string to a higher string, the pick may graze the upper string as passes over. This is less systematic than the descending outside swiping that more commonly occurs in upward pickslanting, and does not happen on all repetitions of the pattern. It is also a much less direct hit, and as a result, much less likely to make any kind of noticeable sound. In fact, I wasn't even aware I was doing this until I filmed the lick. And yet, as it turns out, this is actually consistent with the way Mike plays the lick in the Code Archive. Ascending outside sweeping is clearly visible on many of the
repetitions in his version of the pattern as well. In fact, with so much swiping going on, sometimes back-to-back in both directions, it is pretty amazing that the descending fours pattern can be made to sound as clean as it does. And that's really the point. When done properly, swiping is neither audible nor even physically detectable by the player. And this is why it remains perhaps the most mysterious and unheralded of all the Code techniques. In this light, the fact of its use in Mike's playing is even more remarkable. It is far from a random mistake. Instead, it is a highly consistent -- and highly ingenious -- engineering solution.
Swiping Revealed: Swipe Sixes Despite my ability to replicate swiping in my own playing, it wasn't until my interview with Mike that I was able to confirm with certainty that this was really what was going on in his technique. Unlike two-way pickslanting, swiping is absolutely invisible in traditional filming situations, and this includes even the many revealing close-up camera angles on Speed Kills. The lick that revealed swiping once and for all was this one: Swipe Sixes. For a one-way upward pickslanter, swiping is the necessary outcome of ascending sixes that begin on a downstroke. In such a case, it's the sixth and final pickstroke of that pattern that grazes the low string on its way back to the loop point. If the muting isn't tight, this can produce obvious open-string noise, and we've heard the sonic effects of this in Vinnie Moore's playing and in DiMeola's playing. Swiping in Mike's playing, although slightly audible at various points in the Code Archive and on Speed Kills, is harder to detect thanks to the systematic muting that Mike himself mentions in the "Muting Mystery" clip. But we were able to spot it with the original ShredCam rig, and of course we can see it clearly here in this intentional recreation.
Reverse Batio
What goes up... must come down. If swiping can work for upward pickslanters, then the same rules, inverted, can also work for downward pickslanters. In many cases, they can even work better . As we've discussed, the rule of swiping is the outside string change that matches the pickslant. In the case of downward pickslanting, that means the ascending outside string change -- in other words, the downstroke that moves from a lower string to a higher string. And thanks to the natural muting that occurs when fretting-hand fingers rest on higher strings, the dwps swiper has an even greater cushion to deaden the attack of a swiped string change. This series of seven dwps inversions of Batio uwps licks explores precisely this possibility. And nowhere is this possibility greater than in the case of fours. Thanks to the comparatively large degree of pickslant available in the downward direction, swiping in dwps fours really only ever happens in the one instance it's supposed to: the ascending outside string change. In fact, the two-way swiping that we see in the uwps version of the pattern is now entirely eliminated here. The aggressiveness of the pickslant also enhances the effectiveness of the swipes that do occur. You can see clearly in the slow-motion clips how the sloped shoulder of the pick slides over the swipe string. The string still vibrates, but it's more of a glance rather than a distinct pickstroke, and the sound is easily deadened by the fretting hand fingers. While it's tough to compare apples to apples in terms of performance, the dwps version of swiped fours is certainly at least as capable as the descending uwps version -- and likely even more so given its more aggressive slant, and extra muting power.
Moore Minimal Pickslant Vinnie Moore's primary up technique is paragon of pickslanting economy, and really shines on a thorny inside-picking sequence like the Pepsi Lick. Built around a descending sixes primary up picking sequence, we could notice only the smallest of temporary dwps
rotation between the fifth and sixth notes of the pattern. This was just enough dwps rotation to get over the B string, and back to the loop point. And it was only via massive 10% slow motion that we could spot it. This type of hyper 2wps economy would have been all but invisible to VHS viewers in the '80s, as it most likely is to Vinnie himself. This clip is an experiment to see just how small I can make 2wps movements in a descending sixes downstroke sequence while still switching cleanly between the strings. Because this is an inside picking pattern, swiping is not really an option and it essentially absent from this clip. But I'm not thinking specifically about pickslanting motions -- I'm intentionally tuning them out. In fact, I couldn't tell how much, if any, 2wps I was actually using when I filmed the clips. Across three fast takes and two slow takes, the pickslanting movements become gradually smaller. They are still clearly evident under the closeup camera, but as they were in the Pepsi Lick and so many other classic instructional videos, they are almost totally invisible to the wide-angle camera.
The Gilbert Ah, the Paul Gilbert Lick. Have four notes ever been more obsessively repeated by generations of aspiring rock guitar players? It is hard to explain the enduring popularity of the famous Gilbert pattern. It is neither particularly commonplace as a sequence in most melodic playing, nor particularly instructive about its two-way pickslanting requirements. In fact, for a picking exercise of such ubiquity, it probably ranks with the four-note chromatic exercise in terms of the sheer number of guitarists who have played it -- often very well -- without really understanding how it works. Make no mistake: the Gilbert is certainly a two-way pickslanting lick. Yet because it's a phrase built around outside picking, it is also easily swiped -- as it is, audibly, by Paul himself on Intense Rock . You can
hear this particularly clearly in repetitions on the lower strings, where the descending-outside swipe sounds the open string aggressively on its way back down. Because of the Gilbert's susceptibility to swiping, it's almost impossible to draw conclusions from traditional instructional material about the proper way to play it. In practice, there are a few common solutions. In the first 2wps example, I'm intentionally re-creating the instructional "worst-case scenario": a primary neutral pickslant, with the smallest possible 2wps movements that occasionally slip into swiping. It's remarkable just how small the pickslanting movements can be, even under close examination with the slow motion camera, and still clear the strings. The swiping that does occur -- outside-ascending, as per dwps -- is utterly inaudible. Were it not for the slow-motion camera, we would never even know it existed. I certainly couldn't feel it when I was playing it. The next two examples illustrate the classic deliberate swiping variants of the lick. The first is the Batio uwps strategy, based around one-way uwps and descending outside swiping. The final two repetitions of the pattern feature two-way swiping -- both descendingoutside and ascending-outside. As in the uwps fours clips, this occurrence was unplanned and also inaudible. And again, this is consistent with Mike's own uwps strategy in fours and other Code Archive clips. The second is the reverse Batio strategy, with a fixed downward pickslant and no two-way pickslanting. I'm making no effort to avoid hitting the G string, and instead allowing the pickslant and the fretting hand fingers to work their swiping magic. Of all the Gilbert variants, this is the simplest for experienced downward pickslanters. And I'm sure many dwps players who practice the Gilbert probably already do it this way without realizing it. The third example is a hybrid approach that reflects my particular style
of primary down 2wps. Compared to the dwps swiping example, with its fixed downward pickslant, the pronounced two way pickslanting rotation in this approach is obvious even in the wide angle clip. And it becomes only more obvious under the slow-motion camera. Interestingly, you'll notice that what the continuous 2wps in my standard approach actually does not do is eliminate swiping. In fact, you can see clearly in the slow motion clip that swiping occurs on every repetition of the pattern. Instead, what it does do is lessen the impact, so that any contact with the swiped string is incidental, and any sound produced is inaudible. The resulting performance is cleaner sounding than the fixed dwps / swiping version, and as is almost always the case when swiping is done gently like this, I can neither feel it nor hear it as I'm playing. In the subsequent "Stacked Gilberts" clip, I'm applying this same hybrid approach to Paul's extended, six-string, overlapping Gilbert pattern. Swiping is occasionally present on ascending-outside string changes, although not on every repetition. And again, its effects aren't simply small -- they're inaudible. The "Reverse Gilbert" clip flips the picking structure of the traditional Gilbert to inside picking. And in so doing, it creates the perfect storm that most players complain about when they think of inside picking. And what's the problem, exactly? Swiping, of course. Or, more appropriately, the lack of it. Swiping is generally less possible in inside picking sequences. And when it does occur, it is felt much more obviously by the player as a mistake. To be clear, you're no more likely to hit the strings in the reverse Gilbert than you are in the standard Gilbert. You're just more likely to feel it, and also to hear it. As a result, the Reverse Gilbert isn't really more difficult. It is simply more specific . It requires that your two-way pickslanting movements be completely correct, and it will telegraph clearly when they are not. The real problem with this, and the source of its perceived difficulty, is simply the inability of most players to
determine exactly what those movements need to be. And again, it's not that the solution to the standard, outside Gilbert is any different -the standard version is just more forgiving when you get it wrong. Our final Gilbert concoction, "Stacked Flipped Gilberts", is simply a stacked sequence of standard and reverse Gilberts. Its combination of both Gilbert variants makes it the most Gilberty lick possible. If it is played precisely at midnight on Paul's birthday, it is said he will suddenly appear in your living room. I take no responsibility for what, if anything, he may be wearing when this happens.
Gilbert Arps Paul's scalar two-way pickslanting is notable for his incredible economy of motion, where two-way pickslanting movements are small and difficult to see, especially from traditional camera angles. By contrast, his approach to Yngwie-style three-string arpeggio shapes is interesting because it affords the opportunity to examine his two-way pickslanting technique in a larger, more visible movement. And while the lick is indeed included on Intense Rock, the front-facing wide angle camera makes this type of analysis much less easy to do than the awesome backstage historical clip we examine in the seminar. Like Yngwie's solution, Paul's approach is neither swept nor alternatepicked: it's both. The top string is two alternate-picked notes, starting on a downstroke, that lead into the three-string, descending sweep. The final swept note then reconnects to the loop point via an alternatepicked string skip downstroke, and the pattern begins anew. The lick is a fantastic exercise in balancing the athletic demands of alternate picking with the fluidity challenges of sweeping. The final pickstroke that simultaneously rotates to dwps and string-tracks back to the first string is the athletic challenge. Immediately dialing down the energy of that downstroke into a smoothly flowing sweeping motion is the exercise in control. Doing this at a moderate tempo, with
a focus on fluidity and looseness, and not speed, is the way to go.
McLaughlin Arps Last but certainly not least, John McLaughlin's contribution to two-way pickslanting is a very cool two-string arpeggio sequence executed with his typical laser-like precision. These are fragments of seventh chords that evoke various flavors in the underlying chord progression, from Dmaj7 to Bmin/maj7, by simply altering a melody note above a repeating pedal figure. Mechanically, what's interesting about the picking pattern is that it is precisely the same picking pattern we've seen numerous times already in service of descending sixes and other scalar licks. It is simply three notes on the top string, followed by three notes on the B string. If the top string begins on a downstroke, we have the classic inside 2wps sequence from First Sixes, the Pepsi Lick, and so many others. Its use here in an arpeggiated context is notable because it feels entirely different to play. And this is a testament to the holistic way in which we learn. We do not learn hands separately and then merge them -- and this makes sense because we would likely need two brains to do so. Instead, we learn by memorizing the sensation of everything that is happening in a given instant. By cycling through these sensations sequentially, like images in a flipbook, we can recreate complicated sequences and patterns that may sound like they require more limb independence, or polyrhythmic sensibility, than they actually do. In other words, the reason trill figures like the ones present in so many of John's awesome two-finger 2nps licks may feel different at first, is because as far as your brain is concerned, they are different. The fact that the picking sequence may be shared with other licks you already know is incidental. When a picking pattern you've already mastered is
combined with a novel fingering, the overall experience of practicing the lick is then partially new. As a result, it must be re-learned the same way you initially learned everything: at a slower speed, until the movements are burned in. The good news is this second time around, the work you've already done in mastering the right hand will translate to faster learning overall for both hands.
