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Masters in Mechanics Antigravity - Performance Notes PDF
Masters in Mechanics Antigravity - Performance Notes PDF
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, 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.
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 slow-
motion video. And it simultaneously communicated two incredible
facts. First, is the fact that Mike's default pickslant was, 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.
First Sixes
And this turns out to be true. Like Yngwie's six-note pattern, the six-
note 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.
Circular Sixes
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What was also clear almost immediately, is that simply flipping these
preferences upside down did not feel the same.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gilbert Arps
McLaughlin Arps
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.