Post by blackjack on Sept 13, 2016 8:17:13 GMT -6
Michael, I've been watching you being interviewed by Troy Grady as well as sections of "The Masters Of mechanics Series" in which Troy discovered that when you are doing very fast alternate picking, you make use of pick slanting and most interesting of all, to me, your use of an alternate picking technique which Troy Grady named "swiping." Swiping is defined as using pick slanting in a way in which rather than picking, for example, a note fretted on the D string with a downstroke and then crossing completely over the top of the G string before picking a more fretted on the G string with an upstroke, you do something else which is designed to make the string change faster and more efficient.
When swiping, if you are playing a lick such as the one I just described which contains a downstroke on the D string followed immediately by an upstroke on the G string, you don't use the usual technique of moving the pick in a way so that after you play a note on the D string with a downstroke you then move the pick past the G string in a way that you clear the top of the G string before then immediately playing a note on the G string with an upstroke. By the way, the purpose of clearing the top of the G string with the pick before then picking a note on the G string with an upstroke is to avoid making the noise that would usually be created by by striking the G string with the same downward pick stroke with which you picked the previous note - the note you picked on the D string with a downstroke. This unintended hitting of the G string with the same downstroke which you used to pick a note on the D string occurs when the guitarist fails to move the pick in a way which causes the pick to move over the top of the G string before then picking the G string with an upstroke. This is usually highly undesirable because by failing to clear the top of the G string with the pick and unintentionally hitting the G string with the same downstroke, the guitarist creates an unwanted noise which usually sounds messy and sloppy instead of clean.
I say it "usually" sounds sloppy rather than clean because there is an exception and that exception is created by using the technique you developed which Troy Grady named "swiping." Grady says the technique of "swiping" which you developed is a brilliant solution to a problem, "a solution of the highest order" to the problem of being unable to consistently clear the top of a string immediately after picking the lower adjacent string with a downstroke or the higher adjacent string with an upstroke. Apparently the motion of making the pick clear the top of the adjacent string in such a situation causes the guitarist to use extra motion of a type which prevents the guitarist from being able to pick the notes of the lick as quickly as he would other wise be able to.
The solution which Troy Grady credits you for engineering to this problem is what he calls "swiping." When swiping, you don't clear the top of the adjacent string in the previously described lick. Instead you allow the pick to hit the adjacent string but by slanting the pick in the proper direction while also muting the string with your fretboard hand, you minimize the noise of the pick failing to clear the top of the string and you make it so that so little noise is created by hitting that string with the same pickstroke with which you just picked the adjacent string that it's practically imperceptible.
I'd like to know if what Troy Grady has named "swiping" is even a technique that you were aware that you used or if you only became aware that you used "swiping" after Troy Grady told you that thanks to a special camera which he actually attached to the neck of your guitar and filmed your picking at never before seen camera angles as well as having the ability to play back the footage he recorded at extremely slow speeds which is what made it possible for him to be able to see your pick hitting the adjacent string rather than clearing the top of the string but doing it in a way that the pick was slanted in the proper direction to keep the wanted noise to an absolute minimum while you also muted that string with your fretboard hand to cut down the unwanted noise even further to a degree that was either imperceptible or nearly imperceptible.