The Steve Morse Interview: Performance Notes

Steve Morse's mechanical capabilities need no introduction. Marrying blazing chops to an indomitable sense of rhythm and a singular sense of hook-writing creativity, his distinctive brand of rootsy American virtuosity has inspired generations of players to think out of the pentatonic box.

Steve is renowned for reeling off decidedly "un-guitaristic" lines -- to use his term -- of seemingly impossible complexity. These keyboard- and fiddle-inspired trademark phrases often consist of no more than a single note on a string. Such feats are typically regarded as the domain of fingerpickers, not flatpickers. And yet the effortlessness with which Steve nails these gymnastic routines is the obvious tip-off that something magical is at play.

Rotational Motion

And that magic is rotation. Steve augments the pickslanting system with a highly unique rotational motion mechanic which is much wider and flatter than what we typically see in use by hyper-speed contemporaries like John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola. Combining these two Wonder-Twin powers -- directional pickslanting and rotational motion mechanic -- thus allows Steve the special power of switching strings after both upstrokes and downstrokes within the same phrase. And it is this ability which powers his singular vocabulary of seemingly unplayable lines.

Specifically, the rotational motion allows outside string changes to occur against the pickslant, while pickslanting is reserved to handle the technically problematic "inside" string changes. In the case of one-note-per-string phrases, both of these aims are satisfied by pickslanting in the direction of the string-changes themselves -- an ingenious approach which forces the inside string changes to be efficient. The counter rotation of the motion mechanic gets over the outside string changes, and we have a complete and rather magical

solution to the entire mechanical problem of string navigation.

The Six-String Arpeggio

The iconic example of this is the full six-string, one-note-per-string arpeggio:

Six-String Arpeggios.mov

Steve alternate picks this lick with a level of aplomb typically reserved for finger and sweep pickers. When performed as Steve does, the technique is sufficiently effortless to comfortably allow speeds in the range of his arpeggio-picking classic, Tumeni Notes. This "Tumeni Tempo" is approximately 209 beats per minute eighth-note triplets, or the equivalent of sixteenth notes at 157 beats per minute.

Swiping

Even faster tempos are no doubt possible as well. But if the rotational motion flattens out too much, we'll begin to graze the surrounding strings in a process we know from the Masters in Mechanics Antigravity Seminar as "swiping". Swiping is a topic we discuss in much greater detail in Antigravity, but in summary it is the process of alternate picking through a muted string. It is extremely common in the techniques of almost all elite-level players, most of whom use it unconsciously. In fact, there is a good chance you already use it, even if only occasionally, and without a camera attached to your guitar it is unlikely something you can hear or feel.

The practical takeaway is that swiping is often totally silent, since it occurs primarily on outside string changes, which are easily muted by the fretting and picking hands. You'll see this occasionally in the ShredCam example of the six-string arpeggio lick. And again, you'll note that there is little to no sonic impact. In fact, when it comes to one-note-per-string playing, the key is to focus on the strings you are playing, not the ones you aren't. Whether or not swiping is even

occurring at all becomes entirely academic, since it's not a thing that can be evaluated or controlled without a camera anyway. The mechanical efficiency of Steve's approach, when done correctly so that it begins to feel smooth, will take care of the rest.

Rotational One-Way Pickslanting

The included scalar and pentatonic examples are a glimpse of what Steve's rotational system looks like while playing more traditional lines:

Pentatonic Ascending - Downstroke - Tk3.mov

This ascending pentatonic example uses downward pickslanting, much like we've seen in Eric Johnson's technique. The lick begins on a downstroke, so every upstroke clears the strings, just as we'd expect. What we wouldn't expect -- at least not from Eric! -- is how some of the downstrokes in Steve's case also almost clear the strings. This is the counter-rotation at work, and it's pretty amazing to watch. This type of pickslanting and rotational blend is exotic and unusual in high-speed rock playing. It's much more common in the techniques of bluegrass pioneers like Doc Watson, who perhaps most famously cracked the arpeggio picking code in that genre.

The inverse example of this is the descending pentatonic sixes lick:

Pentatonic Sixes - Descending - Upstroke.mov

This is another line reminiscent of Eric Johnson's playing, except here you'll note that it's done in a very un-Eric-like fashion starting on an upstroke. This of course requires upward pickslanting, but you'll note again that in Steve's case this upward pickslanting is smoothed over by a degree of counter-rotation similar to what we've already seen in the ascending downward pickslanting pentatonic example. You'll also note one swipe string change toward the bottom of the pattern, though yet again, one that makes little to no sonic impact.

The takeaway from both of these pentatonic examples that while pickslanting does most of the heavy lifting, the unique design of Steve's counter-rotational movement is always present. By the same token, while it should be theoretically possible to design a picking technique based entirely on a Steve-like rotation with no pickslanting at all, that's not actually what Steve does. His technique is always a blend between the two approaches -- sometimes more, sometimes less.

Two-Way Pickslanting Sixes

A great example of the "more" variety is the final example, descending string-skip sixes:

Descending Skip Sixes.mov

The general concept of descending six-note scale fragments forms the basis of much of the Antigravity investigation, and the fact that there's a string skip here in Steve's version really doesn't change the mechanics. It's the same sequence of pickstrokes on each of the two strings we're playing, and it's the same sequence of pickslanting movements that control them.

What's important here is that this lick, and the adjacent-string version we examine in Antigravity -- like Vinnie Moore's "Pepsi Lick", which you can also find on our YouTube Channel -- are composed entirely of "inside" string changes. The distinction between inside and outside picking is an academic one for the one-way pickslanting style of Eric Johnson and Yngwie Malmsteen. In that world, alternate picking licks only ever contain an even number of notes per string, and string changes only occur after upstrokes.

But in a two-way pickslanting world, and especially in the directional pickslanting world of Steve, it does matter. Pickslanted inside string changes are always directional in nature, and thus, when Steve plays

his string-skip version of the sixes pattern, that directionality emerges quite visually in the form of precisely the same two-way pickslanted movements we see in the Pepsi Lick. Thus, full-time inside picking licks like this one, where each string contains an odd number of notes, are essentially two-way pickslanting licks no matter who's doing the picking.