“This gives me the sound I am after in my head”: Spiro – the virtuoso tipped for greatness by Tim Henson and Tosin Abasi – shares the secrets behind his speed picking technique that will help you play faster

Spiro, the emerging electric guitar virtuoso whose talents have left Tosin Abasi and Tim Henson’s jaws on the floor, has revealed the secrets behind his otherwordly right-hand speed-picking technique.

From his signature muted sweep picking trick to a tremolo technique that could cut glass, Spiro’s right hand is his all-powerful but not-so-secret weapon. It's led to a raft of comments on his Instagram posts begging for a breakdown of the wizardry behind it – especially since his hand is able to move so little, yet still generate Dragonforce levels of speed.

Now, the guitarist has taken to Instagram to play to the crowd and reveal his speed shred secrets.

“Why that instead of a larger motion?” he asks after a quick demonstration of his extra-terrestrial talents, during which his picking hand barely moves. “Imagine you have a bouncy ball, a floor, and a ceiling, and it's hitting both of them. The distance between those two points is gonna dictate how fast that ball moves.

“If you lower that ceiling, what happens to the ball? It has no choice but to speed up; the same thing applies to picking. If you restrict your range of motion, your hand has no choice but to oscillate at a shorter distance, which means you'll play faster.”

The concept is simple and leans into the well-established notion that players should be economical with their range of motion. Pete Townshend-style windmills are out, minimalist movement is in.

He also adds that the particular sound he gets is a personal preference, and so “mileage may vary” between players depending on how they execute this technique. Nevertheless, as Spiro explains, “This gives me the sound I am after in my head, and the feel I’m after.”

Speaking to Guitar World about his muted sweep picking technique, which he intentionally designed to sound “alien”, Spiro says the angle of the pick can also heavily influence the sound.

“It comes from experimenting with the mechanics of economy picking and what you can do with different angles and muting,” he explains. “There’s this notion that economy picking gives you a more fluid or bubbly sound than alternate picking – but I've been proving the opposite.

“You’ll see alternate pickers change their angle between downward and upward slants every few notes, which creates an opening and closing sort of envelope. I can maintain the same mute and envelope with every note.

“You have all these beautiful chord voicings that, if you're diligent about your technique and the tone you dial in, you can use to get a really wild mechanical, percussive sound. I’m actively seeing how far I can push it.”

The methods behind his right hand are a direct result of that mentality, and the results of his virtuosic approach can be heard throughout his body of work, most notably Negative, which he wrote to promote Neural DSP’s Archetype: Nolly X.

Spiro - "Negative" | Archetype: Nolly X Playthrough - YouTube

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“If you look really carefully, I’ll very subtly lift my fingers off of the previous string, but they’ll still be making contact with the fretboard,” he adds. “When ascending, I’ll tilt my thumb down so that I’m always muting the strings with it on the way up.”

Spiro has caught the attention of some elite players, with Tim Henson and Tosin Abasi calling him their favorite new guitarist.

Henson said, rather elegantly, “that guy is fucking crazy,” while Abasi described him as “shred’s next great hope”.

“[He has] alien levels of precision,” Abasi told Guitar World. “It’s like, you can’t believe it until you sit in front of him and you’re like, ‘Whoa.’”

Spiro’s oddball playing style has been met with some detractors, however. He regularly posts stories on his Instagram debunking those who think his playing is fake. Check out the first shot of the video below to see his right hand up close – the motion is extremely minimal.