sam bush's triplets

[jwalsh]

i recently read, in a source that i cant remember, that sam bush had a unique way of doing triplets. from what i recall, the pattern of picking was to pick the first and third notes of the triplet and to hammeron, pulloff, or slide for the middle note. makes sense on paper more than it did under my hands. anyone have any more to say bout this? does it work for multiple triplets in a row? thanks, joe

[WJF]

Don't have my instrument in hand but I think the formula is down stroke-up stroke-p. This would assume that the triplet falls on the beat in a straight bar of eigth notes. If the triplet occurred on the "off" beat, you'd start with an upstroke-downstroke-p. Regardless, the idea is to pick through the triplet in such a way as to not mess up a nice smooth pattern of down-up strokes.

This probably makes no sense ... sorry. I could show you easily enough if we were face to face. It's not really magical ;-) just different than the way I first learned to play through these things. Mike Marshall is the guy who showed me this way of playing through a triplet and I'm guessing his approiach is pretty similar to Sam's

Anyway, hope you can get the gist of what I'm trying to say here and that it helps somehow.

[jalimando]

Joe,
Sam does do the 'downstroke - pulloff - upstroke' for his triplets. And yes, you can do them in succession. Take for instance, Sam's tune "Brilliancy", in the second section variation, he does a set of six triplets in a row beginning on the high octave E (10th fret E) and walks it down. He covers this detail in one of his videos. Tough at first, but like WJF stated above, it is not magical, just a different technique. Good luck!#

~Jeff

[John S]

Sam does that, as does Adam Steffey and others. To my ears it's a much nicer ornamentation than a simple pick-hammer-pulloff type of triplet. Harder to execute, though.

For the triplet using a hammer-on, my left hand does what it normally does for a pick-hammer-pulloff but I pick the third note as my finger leaves the string during the pull-off. Seems to work.

JS