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"Screechy" pick-slides


Hypnos

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How are these performed? Two examples that immediately come to mind is the slide on "Crazy Train" intro where Randy Rhoads performs it immediately after the quick volume swell. Tony Macalpine's instrumental "The Witch and the Preist" starts off right away with such a pick slide. Someone told me that the technique requires you to scrape the unwound strings and go heavy on the distortion. True?

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I'm not a pick-slider myself, but it seems to me that there would be nothing to "scrape" on the unwound strings. Heavy distortion sounds right, but try it on the A and D strings.

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Use the side of the pick and scrape it up the wound strings. Experiment with what you do with the left hand - you can mute the string... fret a note, fret a note and slide it as you scrape etc. etc.

 

Making the scraping noise is easy, getting it to sound good/fit in with the music isn't so easy, but i'm sure if you try it enough times it'll work out for you.

 

One neat trick if you have Gibson LP style controls is to roll the volume off on one pick up to make an impromptu 'kill switch' with the 3-way selector switch. You can then make DJ style scratching sounds using a combination of the switch and the string scraping (I'd put the pick in the left hand to do this) and toggle the switch with the right... it's a alot of fun, but if you have housemates, neighbours etc. they will start to hate you very quickly :lol:

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You can get way more screechy if you use a very thin pick. It sits between the winds of the low e better than a heavy pick. A thin pick will desintigrate quickly so try sliding with a part of the pick surface you dont use.

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In Crazy Train Randy's Amp is cranked so you get that high feedback mixed with the pick slide.

 

Killer sound but hard to duplicate if you don't have a cranked tube amp right in front of you.

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