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To hear Troy Grady discuss his
project, you can only help but feel
a sense of urgency and adventure.
Grady, a lifelong guitar devotee
and shredder himself, realized one
fateful day that a select group of
guitar gods could perform musical
feats that shock the mind and numb
the hands. The unfortunate catch
was very few of us could figure out
just how to replicate those wicked
fast runs. While a dedicated group
(including Grady) would spend
hours watching and rewinding
Yngwie Malmsteen instructional
videos, the rest of us were more
content to just shrug our shoulders
and cop slower licks.
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Eventually Grady’s innate curiousity got
the best of him; the humble Brooklynite
recently set out to discover the secrets of
the shred gods and bring fire back to Earth.
Investing in a $2,500 dollar camera capable
of capturing over 130 frames of full color
video per second (for reference, the typical
movie camera captures 30 frames per
second), Grady set out to produce a documentary,
now titled Cracking the Code,
which will attempt to dissect the playing
and mechanics of some of the fastest guitarists
around.
Make no mistake; this isn’t just a movie
of metal-heads pounding out lightning-fast
riffs. Grady looked up players with bluegrass,
jazz and even classical inclinations,
all in an attempt to discover what techniques
and tricks unite these various musicians.
He has set up an informative blog
to track his effort, and he’s even garnered
the attention of national press outfits like
Newsweek and MTV News. It’s an interesting
and impressive effort, and he was
kind enough to give us a few minutes to
discuss what he’s learned so far.
What brought you to this shred crossroads?
Do you feel you’re qualified to
explore such a mysterious, alluring
area of the guitar?
I think I do a decent job of synthesizing
critical observations into digestible nuggets.
I’ve done a lot of thinking and also
a little writing on the subject of guitar
technique going back at least fifteen years
– some of which appears on my web site
and is perhaps the best available example
of whatever strengths I may have as a
technician and critic. I also have a healthy
appreciation for the scientific method.
I’m innately curious about the way things
work – in a “hey, let’s drop the old TV tube
off that abandoned building” kind of way
– and as a player I can execute much of
the material you’ll see in the film.
But the truth is, I wasn’t really thinking
about any of this when I decided to make
the movie, and it would be more than a
little egotistical if I was. The story of the
Code is essentially autobiographical – it’s
the story of how I learned to play, charting
a path from novice to able practitioner that
probably mirrors what most guitar players
struggle with as they learn the instrument.
So I’m an entirely ordinary guy, and this will
hopefully hit home with anyone who’s ever
watched one of the masters at work and
thought, hell, how do they do that?
The title of the documentary, Cracking
the Code, sounds incredibly intense.
As the secrets unfolded, was there a
eureka moment, where everything just
clicked?
Sophomore year of college, I had been
watching Yngwie’s instructional REH
video all year, pissing off my roommates
to no end. One day I was working on
a lick I had developed, a three-octave
harmonic minor run, fully picked, and for
whatever reason it was going well – very
well. In fact by the end of the day it had
gone from a non-starter to total burn,
completely clean. Shocking.
After looking at it for several weeks, in concert
with the video, I decided there were
things Yngwie was doing – and things he
wasn’t doing – that were true of this lick
as well. I was off and running. I spent the
next couple years elaborating the concept
and analyzing a zillion players, who all, I
had decided, used the same technique as
Yngwie. I ended up writing a manuscript
on these observations and getting course
credit for it at Yale.
Tell us a little about the “shredcam”
and its origins.
Eight or ten years out of college, I decided
to put a band together, and in the process
figured I should polish the chops. So I
went out and bought a stack of instructional
videos I had always wanted to see;
these were things like Michael Angelo’s
Star Licks and Speed Kills videos, and Paul
Gilbert’s Intense Rock. Intense Rock was
a landmark, a ton of players cite it as an
influence, and Mike’s videos are, of course,
as scary as they come. And lo and behold,
the technique I’m seeing is entirely different
from Yngwie’s.
At some point along the way I began thinking,
ok, for as many star players that exist,
are there as many effective mechanical
formulae? I had a little recurring daydream
about retiring from a rock guitar career to
a comfy spot in the guitar department at
Berklee, and using my academic clout to
convince master players to submit to videotaped
pseudo-scientific investigations of
their technique. Then I thought, hell, I’m a
recruiter with guitar skills – I don’t need a
rock career or a chair at Berklee, all I need
is a camera!
Rusty Cooley was my guinea pig. I had not
yet worked out the details of the shredcam,
so I flew down to Houston with my
pocket digital camera for a private lesson.
With this thing a few inches from his picking
hand, I still wasn’t able to get clear
footage of what was going on – Rusty
was faster than the camera was – and I
knew I needed better tools. That’s when I
found the Basler camera that I use in the
film, which can do hundreds of frames per
second depending on the resolution you
request of it. I started writing the software
for it, and I went back a couple more times
to film Rusty and iron out the kinks.
Overall it was hours and hours of footage.
And playing for the shredcam is not
easy. The camera records uncompressed
video, so even a 5-second clip is hundreds
of megabytes. It records directly to RAM
because disks aren’t fast enough, so I can
only record up to about 15 seconds per clip
on the laptop I use. So when I say go, you
basically have a few seconds to nail your
best stuff. Do this for an hour or two, it’s
like doing wind sprints.
Who are some of the players you’ve
tapped (sorry) to explore the world
of shred?
Rusty figures prominently in the film
because of his role in the story of developing
the shredcam, and of course also
because he’s about as scary a player as
you’re likely to find. Marshall Harrison also
lives in Houston and was one of the early
guys I filmed. He’s an interesting case – a
Gambale-level sweep picker and fusion
harmonist who’s also done interesting
work in translating Romantic piano works
– Romantic as in Chopin, Beethoven, that
era – to the guitar.
Otherwise I’m knee-deep in filming as we
speak. I filmed this fantastic player and
songwriter from Canada, Conrad Simon.
If you haven’t heard his demo, The Wrath
of Con, you’re missing out – amazing playing
with highly developed compositional
sensibilities. I met Joe Stump at Berklee a
few weeks ago, who is a rigorous technician
and also greatly relaxed beneath the
shredcam. I’m meeting Rusty Cooley playing for the shredcam Stephane Wrembel,
a world-class gypsy jazz player, and have
dates to speak with Frank Gambale and
Jimmy Bruno. I’ve spoken to Ron Thal’s
people and to Chris Impellitteri via email.
It’s not just about metal players, it’s about
the universality of great technique, and the
many forms it can take.
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“The idea that virtuoso players can play “anything” without really thinking about it is a fantasy.”
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How did you go about approaching
these players about your project? Were
they generally receptive to the idea?
I’ve been pleased with the reception so far.
More people seem to share my curiosity
than I initially expected, particularly in the
mainstream (i.e. non-guitar) media, which
was surprising. My initial thought was,
how do I explain and pitch this project,
and who’s going to care? I was a little worried
that advanced players would see the
whole technical focus of the investigation
as less than relevant to the goal of making
good music. But in certain genres of
music, like the metal/shred scene, the idea
of technical development is at one with
the creative process – great riffs often
emerge from mechanical practice, for
example, and everybody, even the players
that already have the technique, practices
when they can.
What have you learned so far about
technique?
The basic idea is that the guitar is an inherently
inefficient instrument to play given
the layout of the strings and the implement
we use to play them, i.e. the pick. It
was designed to be fingerpicked, where
the multiplicity of fingers (unless you’re
Django!) makes it much easier to select
a particular string to play on. The major
obstacle therefore in plectrum-based playing
is getting from one string to another
with a degree of efficiency. The secondary
concern is synchronizing the hands
such that each pickstroke is mated to only
the note you intend. If you can succeed
in doing these two things, you can play
cleanly, and you can do so at speed.
Witness, for example, that playing cleanly
on a single string is relatively elementary.
The only issue to deal with in this case is
the issue of hand synchronicity. Yngwie
has a great formula for this – you create
patterns that repeat with the same pickstroke,
and you lock that pickstroke to metrically
strong divisions of the time.
When you get into multi-string licks, all hell
breaks loose, and the film will delve into
the various combinations of techniques
that players use to execute them. Yngwie,
for example, only ascends via sweep picking,
though he descends with a combination
of alternate picking and legato – but
almost never sweeping. Something like
what shred guys call the Paul Gilbert Lick,
for example, would be completely alien
to Yngwie, and for that reason he never
plays it. Paul on the other hand does not
commonly use combinations of sweeping,
alternate, and legato to play strictly scalar
passages, though this complex stew of
techniques would be routine for Yngwie.
Doesn’t mean Paul hasn’t done it, and
doesn’t mean he couldn’t do it, of course
– it’s just not part of his active right hand
vocabulary, what I call his pick model.
You might tend to see all this as a limiting
factor but the truth is that the guitar is a
limited instrument anyway. On a keyboard
instrument like a piano, you press a button,
and sound comes out. As many buttons
as you can press simultaneously, that’s
how many sounds you can make. It’s very
powerful. If you lift the lid and peek inside,
you realize just how much complexity is
being shielded from you by the instrument
itself. The guitar exposes all this. It’s up
to you, the player, to discover the most
efficient way to play something – and that
involves whatever combination of left-hand
fingerings and right-hand pick motions your
pick model gives you.
The idea that virtuoso players can play
“anything” without really thinking about it is
a fantasy. It’s a question of what your pick
model can handle. Once you accept this
reality, you can start to make the music
you want to make, without worrying that
you don’t have enough technique to do it.
What about all the guitarists you’ve
interviewed? Is there something that
ties them all together, that even they
might not realize?
The concept of a pick model is what ties
them together. I know this is a bit like
saying the concept of gravity is what ties
everyone together on planet earth, but it’s
true. Even non-shredders have movements
which are comfortable for them based
on their default hand position and which
are therefore commonplace in their playing.
Many of the clichés of modern rock
guitar exist because they fit neatly into
one or more common pick models, and
not because of anything inherently musical about the licks. That unison bend that
everyone plays on the top two strings of
the box position blues scale, that’s one
of them.
Your website has some interesting
words about metronome usage and
practicing. How do you view a metronome’s
effectiveness in improving a
guitarist’s speed?
You shouldn’t expect a metronome to tell
you how to maneuver the pick any more
than you should expect a speedometer to
tell you how to steer. But both are useful
tools in telling you how fast you can take
the next turn without wiping out, and both
can help you gauge your progress in practice
situations. There’s no question that you
should develop cleanliness and efficiency
before speed, and in the context of the
film, metronome usage takes an interesting
twist. Some of the techniques you see
under the shredcam are actually difficult to
play slowly, because they rely on momentum.
So metronome usage can help in
simulating what happens at high speed.
Most practice is a memorization exercise –
it’s not an athletic workout, you’re not supposed
to “feel the burn” like you do at the
gym, that’s different. In fact it’s dangerous,
and can lead to tendonitis if you’re not careful.
In musical practice, when you’re learning
new motions, you’re teaching the brain a
new way of organization, and to do this
correctly, the frequency of repetitions, and
the exactitude of those repetitions, matters
most. You need to repeat something soon
enough after the last repetition – a matter of
seconds, typically – and you need to repeat
it enough times. And you need some way
of certifying that you’re playing it exactly the
same way every time. Marking the relevant
hand motions to different time divisions on a
metronome or drum machine is a good way
to do this when the tempo you’re practicing
at might not be fast enough to supply the
necessary momentum.
The fact that many important pick
motions happen only at high speed is
also why, when it comes to some of
the more esoteric ones, the players
themselves are only partially aware of
them. Every guy I’ve filmed so far has
had some lick he plays where he doesn’t
exactly know what’s going on, and we
have to film it to find out. Each time, it’s
like, hurry, get it quick before I forget what
it is. I know from my own playing that if
you stop me mid-sequence and ask me
what I just played, or what pickstroke I
used, I very often cannot tell you. And
this is me, the guy with the film, and I’m
supposed to be the expert on this stuff.
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“...many important pick motions happen only at high speed...”
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When can we expect this documentary
to hit the streets? What’s after that?
I would love to get this done in the next
six months, but let’s just say 2007, to be
conservative. Readers in search of more
granular updates on the film’s progress can
sign up for the mailing list on my site.
There’s been a fair amount of interest from
the community on the instructional side,
and a few music schools have even gotten
in touch. But I’m wary of milking the
concept, so I’ll only do an instructional if
there’s significant interest. I’d love to get
past the mechanics and into the creative
zone, write some songs and get a band
thing going. I’ve also considered putting
together a concert with some of the guys
in the film. I am in New York after all. Other
than that, I would like to use my vast analytical
abilities to explain why Ginsu knives
never need resharpening and to quantify
just how much quicker of a picker-upper
Bounty is.
Troy Grady
Cracking the Code
troygrady.com
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