Cracking the Code S2E4 Generations

Steve Vai Spotlight: Crossroads Fours

Cracking the Code, Season 2, Episode 4 "Generations" sees the

return of a gallery of heroes and villains from Season 1. On the side of
fantastical villainy, none played that role better than Steve Vai, whose
nefarious turn in the 1986 film "Crossroads" sent legions of kids
scurrying to their metronomes in hot pursuit of his blistering
neoclassical chops.

For many of us, Vai's incredible playing in Crossroads, and more

specifically in the Crossroads TV trailer, which ran with near ubiquity in
the spring of 1986, was our introduction to the neoclassical style.

It was also an anomaly.

The genre's standard bearer was Yngwie Malmsteen, whose swept

arpeggio technique soon become the de facto standard for integrating
baroque leads and rock riffs. But the difficulty with the amazing
"Crossroads" neoclassical solo is that it was entirely alternate picked.
Its various intricate fretboard combinations, to the extent that we could
even reverse engineer what they were, simply did not map neatly to
Yngwie's three-string arpeggio shapes.

And the complicated mix of scalar and one-note-per-string playing in

the solo's famous Paganini quotation did not square with Yngwie's
scalar technique either. As we've seen, Yngwie's right-hand system
has very specific rules for combining alternate picking and sweeping
based on the string changes involved. Attempting to organize the 5th
Caprice in accordance with these rules leads to numerous fretboard
dead-ends that require either hybrid picking or unassisted hammers to
solve.

Perhaps no moment in Eugene's Trick Bag is more emblematic of

these challenges than the famous descending diminished fours lick:
diminished fours.mov

This blistering cascading sequence, placed prominently in the TV

commercial just before title card, succinctly captured the essence of
the solo's neoclassical inspiration as well as its impossibly precise
execution. This one lick was responsible for convincing an entire
generation of players that classical music contained the key to
plectrum precision. And it was also this same lick that, months of
fruitless practice later, was probably responsible for dashing those
hopes.

And it turns out, there was good reason for it.

Divide and Conquer

Attempting to play this with strict alternate picking, as Steve most

likely does, usually results in a jumble of stringhopping movements as
the picking hand attempts to navigate the string changes. The lick can
seem almost unsolvable in any kind of graceful way, and certainly not
with the incredible touch and dynamics that Steve displays.

The key to banishing stringhopping, and finding the smoothness in

Steve's torture test, lies in dividing and conquering. In the simplest
configuration, and the one likely used by Vai in recording it, it's actually
two licks in one:

diminished fours fretting.mov

The first four-note pattern is arranged as a two-string lick, where each

string contains two notes. Then the second grouping of four notes is
spread across three strings: a middle string that contains two notes,
and two surrounding strings that contain only one note apiece.
The EJ Way

On its own, the first half of the lick is easy. Starting on a downstroke, it
fits neatly with downward pickslanting mechanics, as both strings
terminate on upstrokes:

diminished fours dwps.mov

This is a method we've seen especially prominently in Eric Johnson's

playing, where two-note-per-string sequences form the foundation of
his style.

Of course this falls apart immediately as we segue to the second half

of the pattern. We've just finished the initial sequence on an escaped
upstroke, which hovers above the strings. So hitting that first isolated
single note on a downstroke is trivial. But where do go from there?

The next note is on a lower string, so there's no way to sweep it. And
it's the only note on the string, so legato is out of the question. We
might consider an unassisted hammer, but that's not the Crossroads
sound. What we need is fully-picked way to tackle this.

And for that, we need a new pickslant.

Upward Pickslanting

If we simply consider the second sequence by itself, apart from its

connection to the first sequence, the problem becomes clear. Each of
the two string changes in this half of the pattern are downstrokes. And
what's the best way to handle downstroke string changes? Upward
pickslanting:

diminished fours uwps.mov

By simply leaning the pick upward and starting on a downstroke, the

string change navigation is effortless. The fact that these strings
contain only single notes is of no consequence, since we're always
switching strings when the pick is escaped. This is the same logic we
apply to downward pickslanting sequences, simply flipped upside
down.

We haven't discussed upward pickslanting yet in Season 2 of

Cracking the Code, principally because, in the chronology of the show,
I didn't yet know that it existed! But because the Crossroads
diminished fours pattern splits so neatly into two separate licks, it
provides a nice way of skipping ahead in our timeline, to get a handle
on this new pick orientation.

Upward pickslanting is of course useful entirely on its own, just as

downward pickslanting has been. In fact, in the case of pure alternate
picking, any lick that can be played with downward pickslanting can
also be played with upward, provided we flip the picking to start on the
opposite pickstroke.

Gluing the Halves

Considered individually, the two halves of the diminished fours pattern

are simple to execute. Really the only tricky thing here at all is
connecting them together.

When we play the halves separately, the first half is entirely dwps, and
the second half is entirely uwps. But when we connect them, we
actually play the first five notes — including the first note of the second
half — with dwps:

diminished fours connection.mov

If you think about it, this makes sense. The first pattern terminates
with an upstroke on the B string. Then we need a method for getting
back to the high E string to start the second half of the pattern. And
downward pickslanting is that method.

It's when we hit that note on the E string that we change the picking
orientation. This is essentially one movement, that strikes the note and
simultaneously changes the pickslant to uwps. I do this with forearm
rotation, and we can see in Steve's playing in the Paganini section of
the film that he also uses forearm rotation. But pickslanting changes
can also be done with fingers, or a combination of the two.

Once we've made the transition, the next two string changes work out
just the way we've been practicing them:

diminished fours connection.mov

We go up-down on the B string, and then up on the isolated G string

note. And this is where we flip the pickslant again. In a mirror image of
our first pickslanting change, we're going to simultaneously strike the
note and change the pickslant. And once we've done this, we should
be escaped from the strings, and ready to start the pattern all over
again, this time, on the B string.

By simply repeating this sequence of movements, we can take the

pattern all the way across the strings:

diminished fours pickslants.mov

What's even more exciting is realizing that this sequence of picking

and pickslanting will work with any fretting sequence that is based on
two notes per string organization. And of course in the world of rock
guitar, that very often means pentatonic:

diminished pentatonic fours.mov

Here, we're combining diminished sonics and pentatonic sonics in a

kind of implied V-I chord progression within in a lead line. This kind of
rock and neoclassical fusion is a very Nuno-esque recipe, and he's
another player that we'll be looking at in Generations. It's really
exciting to be able to combine interesting sounds with interesting
patterns with this kind of freedom, in ways that would have seemed
like science fiction not too long ago.

Avoiding the Robot

In many of these slow demonstration examples I'm using movements

which are somewhat digital and robotic, so you can see clearly which
pickslants need to be paired with which pickstrokes. And there is often
a tendency, when first learning a new movement, to practice this way.
But the goal is actually to make these movements smooth and natural.

One way to avoid unnecessarily staccato hand movements is to do

much of your experimentation at moderate speeds, as opposed to
slow speeds. At super snail speeds, the movements become
separated, and it's hard to be anything but robotic. But moderate
speeds allow you to get the sense of what it might feel like to perform
a movement with natural curvature, while still being slow enough that
you actually do it.

Note also that I'm using relative terms here for a reason. What
constitutes "moderate" will vary individually, so what we're really
talking about here is developing graceful flow, at any speed — kind of
like the movements you make when swimming.

You may even occasionally try blazing through a new lick, even if it's
sloppy, just to see what sorts of movements your hands adopt as you
speed up. These can often be a clue as to what methods you might
want to practice at more moderate speeds.

And this is where modern smartphone technology comes in handy. If

you have a phone capable of 120fps or greater, filming this high-speed
experimentation can often be fascinatingly revealing. You may
discover that you're doing certain things better than you think, and this
can be a valuable indication of where to focus your efforts.

Un-Practice

The intuitive nature of these adaptations, where your brain and your
hands naturally engineer optimal methods for doing things, is entirely
fascinating. And it's exactly this kind of adaptation that we're trying to
encourage when we learn new movements.

In fact, I wouldn't think of this as "practice" at all in the traditional

sense. This is not memorization through repetition, like when you
made flash cards for learning mathematics in elementary school. This
is skill acquisition. It's more like riding a bike, where you have to learn
the coordination first.

To do that, you need to be free to experiment with different hand

positions and movements, at different speeds, and sometimes even
purposefully inconsistent speeds within a phrase. Being forced to
conform rigidly to one tempo can kill the freedom of this process, so
you might get better results switching off the metronome when you do
this type of exploration.

Extreme repetition is also counterproductive. Don't do hundreds of

repetitions of something if you feel like it's not working — that's only
going to cement the wrong habits. Instead, do enough repetitions to
evaluate the feel for smoothness and accuracy. If it's not where you'd
like it to be, change one element of your form, and try again.

These changes can be tiny: a little more edge picking, a little less
edge picking. Slightly different hand position with respect to the
bridge. More muting, less muting. Different motion mechanics —
deviation, rotation, elbow, and so on. Be creative. When you're trying
to learn what it feels like to do something you've never done, it's
almost like hunting for buried treasure. You may need to dig in a few
different locations before you find it.
Smooth Over Small

There is also no need to make these movements super tiny. Economy

of movement is a thing guitar players love to talk about, but this can
be misleading. As we've seen in Steve Morse's technique, efficiency
sometimes means choosing larger movement with a graceful
curvature.

No matter where you start, your movements will naturally become

smaller as you speed up, and you can see this in the included slow
motion clips:

diminished fours slowdown.mov

In the case of this pattern, the string clearances can also become
surprisingly close, and the amount of pickslanting rotation used to
achieve it pretty slight, as you begin to master it. The key here is that
this will only happen if the movements are graceful first and foremost.
Try using a movement size that is comfortable, regardless of whether
it is objectively "small" or "large". By the same token, if small
movements feel most comfortable, then by all means use them.

Butler Mechanics

As an example of just how unusual those movements might turn out to

be, we can look at Steve himself. We don't actually see Steve play the
fours sequence in the movie. Instead, Ralph Macchio does a pretty
good job of miming it. In fact, much of the slide playing throughout the
film looks utterly realistic, as do a number of moments in the
neoclassical duel.

But we do get a few nice closeup shots of Steve's picking mechanics

in the Paganini section of Jack Butler's response. And it's fascinating
to look at. Steve's use of two-way pickslanting is evident, both in the
picking movements themselves, as well as the intermittent forearm
rotation he uses to create the pickslanting changes, which you can
see in the video lesson.

What's interesting here is that the fingers also appear to play a role in
string changing, particularly on descending upstroke string changes,
where we can see what appears to be a lifting movement of the thumb
that Steve uses to get over the lower string. This is really interesting,
and not all that common. But it does fit a general pattern we see in
upward pickslanters where the descending side of their technique
employs a different strategy than the ascending side.

For example, many upward pickslanters use swiping on descending

upstroke string changes, and simply play through the next lower string
rather than getting over it. We see this in Batio and Di Meola's
approaches, and we even see it in the famous "Paul Gilbert" lick,
where the lower string is swiped on the return. In that sense, Steve's
use of finger movement here fits broadly into this category of
asymmetrical uwps strategies, where the tendency is to maintain the
upward pickslant by whatever means necessary.

Steviation

But the Paganini technique, fascinating though it is, isn't the only
approach Steve uses, nor is it even his most typical. Most of this time,
Steve appears to use a pure downward pickslanting technique based
on wrist deviation for fast scalar lines.

This technique, which you can see in both the historical Alcatrazz clips
we examine in the lesson, as well numerous fan-recorded live
performances on YouTube, does not include obvious finger movement
or pickslanting rotation. Instead, it looks like the forearm is locked in
place, with mostly upstroke string switching — similar to what we've
seen Eric Johnson do, even though Steve achieves this with different
hand position. Downward pickslanting is such a straightforward
concept, and it's used by so many players, that it's always surprising
how many different mechanical systems are used to achieve it.

An Instant Neo-Classic

The performance sequences in Crossroads are an incredible time

capsule from a moment in history when Steve was a fiery upstart with
something to prove. The movie's riveting guitar duel succeeds not just
thanks to Steve's mechanical precision, but also his relentless
creativity, deftly weaving classical themes into a crowd-pleasing
format that would thrill just as mightily at any rock concert, even today.
For all these reasons, and most importantly for its supreme musicality,
the Crossroads solo remains an unforgettable benchmark of guitar
performance.