Steve Morse's almost mythical musical capabilities need no introduction.
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Marrying blazing chops to a singular sense of hook writing creativity, his distinctive brand of rootsy American
Steve Morse's almost mythical musical capabilities need no introduction.
Marrying blazing chops to a singular sense of hook writing creativity, his distinctive brand of rootsy American virtuosity has inspired generations of players to think outside of the pentatonic box.
Morse is renowned for reeling off what he calls "un-guitaristic" lines of seemingly impossible complexity. These keyboard- and fiddle-inspired trademark phrases often consist of no more than a single note on any given string.
This kind of one-note-per-string arpeggio picking is typically regarded as the domain of fingerpickers, not flatpickers. Yet the effortlessness with which Morse nails these gymnastic routines is the obvious clue that something mechanically magical is happening under the hood.
I was fortunate enough to interview Morse for the Cracking the Code documentary project, and the high-speed camera provides a rare look at the mechanical magic of his arpeggio picking technique.
Morse has written on a number of musical topics right here at Guitar World under the "Morse Code" banner. Now it's time to take a crack at identifying the elusive ingredients of his arpeggio code.
Getting into the Swing
The most important of those ingredients is rotation. Morse moves the pick with a highly unique rotational method that's immediately apparent under the camera:
This smooth, graceful swing serves dual purposes. The most obvious is simply as a way of generating the alternate picking movement itself. In Cracking the Code terminology, we call this the "motion mechanic." Morse's smoothly swinging motion mechanic is very beautiful and quite different from what we see when we look at most other hyperspeed pickers.
For example, Morse contemporaries like John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola utilize wrist-based movements, which move the pick back and forth in a mostly flat plane:
Anatomically, this type of side-to-side, "clock