Posted by Pure Speed on Monday, November 30, 2009,
In :
Amazing Licks
Multi String Gilbert Mayhem
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This lick is inspired heavily by one of Paul Gilbert's favorite speed picking licks. It's the old four-notes-up-and-down-much-harder-than-you-think-lick that I've taken across the strings while creating an uneven 3/8 feeling. It's an excellent alternate picking exercise since you get to perform the string shift with both and upstroke and a downstroke. Practice playing the first two bars over and over again before you move on to the third. ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Pure Speed on Sunday, October 25, 2009,
In :
Amazing Licks
Diminished String Skipping Legato Lick
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The main challenge of this Paul Gilbert inspired string skipping lick, is to get the string skipping right. But the secret to getting it right is to make sure that you are using "outside" picking when you do it. When you move from the G to the high E-string you start with a down stroke and end with an upstroke. This will make it very easy not to hit the B-string in between the two. When you go from the high E-string to the G-string ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Pure Speed on Sunday, October 4, 2009,
In :
Amazing Licks
The Reversed Malmsteen Sequence
I've decided to create a category with nothing but licks in it. This allows me to offer you some value even when I haven't got much time on my hands. This is a sequence I came up with by reversing a well known Yngwie lick. I haven't included the original lick in this video but if you wonder what it is just reverse today's sequence. It feels extremely awkward to play these notes in the beginning. It's almost like there's something wrong with the lick! But be pers... Continue reading ...
Posted by Pure Speed on Thursday, September 24, 2009,
In :
Easy Music Theory
Confusing Names And Symbols
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Let's keep the riff raff out
So we know what to call the white keys on the piano. But what about the black ones in between? Well they actually have two names depending on where you're coming from. "There's no reason to keep it simple" the monks said "The more complicated we make it, the easier it is for us to keep the riff raff out." Let's humor these guys from the past and see what they came up with.
Posted by Pure Speed on Wednesday, September 16, 2009,
In :
Easy Music Theory
The Fast Practical Approach To Theory
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Cut the crap and give me a practical approach
When I decided to get serious about my guitar playing I also decided to become an expert on music theory. And so should you. Because music theory is a nothing less than a basic understanding of the mechanics of music. This understanding will help you immensely when you improvise, when you compose or when you want to learn any chord progression or solo simply by listening to it. When y... Continue reading ...
Posted by Pure Speed on Tuesday, September 8, 2009,
In :
Power Blues 101
Tone Changers & Trem Tricks
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Today I'm going to show you three techniques that you can use to bring some variety into the sounds you produce when you play. Use them all the time until they become a part of you. When this happens you'll find yourself using these techniques intuitively, without thinking about it.
Squealers
The first technique is also one of the most used in the "business". Most people call them "pinch harmonics" and they are really very easy to do with ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Pure Speed on Wednesday, September 2, 2009,
In :
Power Blues 101
Power Blues Phrasiology - Bending
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A keyboard with strings instead of keys
In this article and the next to come, I'll be touching on something essential to blues rock soloing: Phrasing. When I started out, I looked upon the guitar as sort of a keyboard with strings instead of keys. You fretted the note and picked the string and that was that. This attitude also made me focus on cool effects and gimmicks first and on pickups and amp second, but that's another story.
Posted by Pure Speed on Saturday, August 29, 2009,
In :
Power Blues 101
The Wicked Brothers of Doom
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Using the Harmonic minor to produce the blues sound
Yes, I’m not kidding. Today I’m going to show you how you can use the Harmonic Minor scale to produce some cool blues rock lines. The sound of any scale is deeply influenced by what chords you play with it. This is why your regular C-Major scale has a mode for every note in the scale. The “mode” is really an expression of the sound you get when you play this scale with th... Continue reading ...
Posted by Pure Speed on Saturday, August 15, 2009,
In :
Power Blues 101
3 notes per string blues freedom
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The best of Paul Gilbert
Did you try out Paul Gilbert 3-notes-per-string Blues scale patterns? Then perhaps you’ve also found them difficult to use when playing solos. The 3 notes per string blues scale patterns involves weird stretches and unusual fingerings but it's well worth the effort mastering them. These patterns allow you to use all the sequences and licks that you know from the Major / Minor realm, because you have the same... Continue reading ...
Posted by The Wizzard on Wednesday, August 12, 2009,
In :
Power Blues 101
The Diminished Blues Sound
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My favorite blues phrasing tool
This is one of my absolute favorites when it comes to blues scale expansion ideas. The concept I'm going to discuss today will make your regular old blues scale sound like a screamin’ demon. I’m talking about the diminished triad which fits very nicely within the blues scale as you can see in the illustration below. Again this is your number one E-blues scales shape with a E-Diminished triad on top of it.... Continue reading ...
Posted by Pure Speed on Friday, August 7, 2009,
In :
Power Blues 101
Sweep Picking Power Blues
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Dramatic Arpeggios
The blues rock context embodies a whole range of different sounds. You can put almost any scale, arpeggio or lick in there and if you do it right it’ll sound really cool. Today let’s stick an E-minor triad in there and hear how it sounds. I’m going to take a sweep picking approach to this idea. But you can use the notes of the E-Minor triad to produce a lot of interesting sounding slow licks as well. If you’ve been... Continue reading ...
Posted by The Wizzard on Wednesday, August 5, 2009,
In :
Power Blues 101
How to play melodic power blues
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Mixing the blues scale with the Dorian scale
Today’s idea requires a little more work than the two previous ones. I’ve written about this before but here it is again: Mixing the blues scale with the Dorian scale. The Dorian scale is, of course, your regular Major scale but with it’s second note as the root note.
Here’s your number one regular pentatonic / E-Blues shape again:
Posted by Pure Speed on Thursday, July 30, 2009,
In :
Power Blues 101
How to expand the pentatonic scale in two minutes
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More freedom and choices
I’ve been looking forward to writing this series about how to master the blues rock sound in all it’s different manifestations. This is by far the most used sound in all of rock music so mastering it is crucial. But most people often feel a bit limited by the measly five or six notes that you have at your disposal in the traditional pentatonic blues scale. I use to feel that way for sur...
In this last article in this series, I would like to bring your attention to the obvious. From my perspective Malmsteen has one final lesson to teach us mortals and it revolves around the concept of passion. Most of us start out in life with a lot of hope, enthusiasm and passion. But as the years go by we find ourselves with an increasing amount of responsibilities and “stuff” that clutt...
Is it possible to play a solo that only consists of fast runs, without it getting boring to listen to? Some would say no. But in my experience there's a perpetually long haired swedish male who masters this art to perfection. Whether you like Yngwie Malmsteen's music and style or not, his playing is a treasure chest of ideas and insights that you can use to radically improve your playing, no matter what style or... Continue reading ...
This article contains one very important distinction when it comes to soloing. It’s applicable to any style of music and any instrument really. When I figured this one out, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard about it anywhere. At the time, I had read my way through a lot of material on music theory and improvising, but nowhere had I come across this simple idea. I promise you this: If you will, no...
The second principle that Yngwies brain seems to work by is the concept of “The path of least resistance” Choosing the easiest way around anything sounds like a no-brainer but in this case it isn't. This principle can make or break your success in shredding and when I started applying it to everything I did, I made so much progress in so little time, I couldn't believe it.
If you want to play like the best, you should know how the best became the best. If you know that, you can do the same thing they did, and achieve the same results. In the next series of articles I’m going to give you every little nugget that I’ve picked up in my study of Yngwie Malmsteen. I've found that there are two sides to cover when it comes to this guy. 1. How to play like Yngwie and 2. How to think like him. It's...
Yesterday I gave you some ideas on how you can integrate sweep picking with economy picking. Today let's look at the Major and Diminished shapes. But before we begin let's repeat the "integration recipe" that I talked about yesterday, here it is again:
1. Come up with a simple lick that uses sweep picking and another picking technique
2. Repeat that lick until it's easy
3. Come up with another lick and repeat the process
Sweep picking is a one-of-a-kind technique. It's so radically different to perform than alternate and economy picking (Though it is closer to the latter) For a long time I wondered why I wasn't using sweep picking very much when I was soloing. Even though I was very good at it, I didn't use that technique very much. Then I pin pointed the problem and found out that I needed to integrate the techn...
In this article, I'm going to give you the basic sweep picking patterns that I use when I improvise. They are very simple and can be used in any type of music. I'm talking about the Major, Minor and diminished triads. While there are many variations on these basic arpeggios, these are the fundamental three types you really need to master. You can add chord extensions like the 9th the 11th or other add-... Continue reading ...
The skill of sweep picking offers you very few challenges. I'm not saying that it's easy. I'm saying there aren't that many things to think about when you sweep pick. If you've got the angle of the pick right - and you're using your arm and not your hand to do the sweeping, you're doing great. But there is one little challenge that I would like to address in this article though.
If you've read my articles on alternate picking, you know that I recommend moving your arm and hand to fit the string you play - as opposed to letting the hand stay in the same place. Here's a key point to remember: Sweep picking is the only picking technique that is performed by your arm and not your hand! Here's the deal:
Your creator gave you different tools to use for manipulating the world around you. You...
The more distance there is between the notes you play, the harder it becomes to play them using conventional picking techniques. Picking the notes of an arpeggio, using alternate picking, and doing it fast, can be quite a challenge. This didn't keep me from trying back when I was learning the secrets of shredding. I was an alternate picking fanatic and if you used any other technique to produce the notes - y...
There's a mental process which you can go through, that will ensure the achievement of what you want faster than anything else. It's easy to do and it has an amazing effect on your progress. Your brain is a goal seeking organism: 24 hours a day it's occupied with figuring out how to get what you focus on. Notice I didn't write "what you want" - the brain doesn't react to your wants and needs, but to what you... Continue reading ...
How would you feel if you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you had the ability to become one of the most skilled guitar players in the world? Absolute certainty drives us. Uncertainty makes us hesitate. When you have a goal that you desire strongly, and you know you have a strategy that will get you there for sure (Read the category "Get more out of practice) and you believe, at a gut level, that the "pain... Continue reading ...
Scroll down to see tablature How we learn to stop learning
Have you ever made a decision and then failed to follow up on it? Have you ever decided to do something only to realize that you didn't have the self discipline or the will power to go through with it? Of course you have. Everyone knows the feelings we get when we let ourselves down. When we do this enough times we stop trusting ourselves and every attempt to try something new is quickly followed by scep...
There's an element in the human psyche that destroys more dreams than any other single factor. If you're not consciously aware of it, chances are you will become a victim of it. In order to understand the mechanisms behind it, you need to know the following:
For two hundred thousand years, human beings have been 100 % dependant on each other. We don't have a thick fur to protect us from the weather. We can't... Continue reading ...
Imagine your favorite guitar player on stage. See and hear how cool it sounds when he or she is playing. Feel the emotions you would feel if you where there right now. How would your face look? How much fun would you have? Then imagine taking his place. Switch parts with your favorite shredder and imagine that you are on stage, playing with the skills of a guitar super hero. Imagine everyones amazement. See t...
You basically need two things in order to become a world class shredder:
1. A strategy that will get you there 2. The motivation to implement that strategy
You must know how to aquire the skills you want. And the more efficient your strategy, the faster you'll arrive at your destination. I’ve described the strategies I used to build my skills in the articles in the category “Get more out of practi...
When I started this series of articles I promised you that if you stayed in the key of A-Minor/C-Major long enough, I would teach you to name any note on the fretboard in as little as a day. Well here's the simplest and easiest way to do this. But it will only work as well as your ability to visualize the A-Minor/C-Major scale. If you don't feel very confident at this yet, be sure to stay in that key ...
I'm an impatient guy. I like to be able to use what I learn very fast. This article as about the strategy that I have used to go from playing the standard blues scale pattern, to using all of the fretboard and all of the available scales and arpeggios. It's simple, easy and fun to work with. But first I would like to expand a bit on my last article. Yesterday I showed you how I navigate around the fretboa... Continue reading ...
In this article I'm going to give you a quick, easy tool you can use to instantly know what scale to play over any rock, pop or metal chord progression. I'm not going to go into the deeper realms of music theory, I'm just going to give you a simple and very effective tool.
So let's say you have to figure out which one of the three scale tools you can use to play a solo. Here are the two things y...
The last tool you need to be able to improvise over any rock, pop or metal chord progression, is the Harmonic minor scale. This scale is our old friend the Minor / Major scale with a slight change and a new name. You take your natural A-Minor scale but change the 7th step and push it up one fret. Here's our well known A-Minor / C-Major pattern:
Now let's push the 7th step up one fret (The G not...
Let's get one thing straight: The "Natural Minor scale" is just your old Minor / Major scale, used over a Minor chord progression. In the last article I covered blues rock and how to mix the "Dorian" scale (Which is still the old Minor / Major scale with a new name!) with the blues scale. To play over chord progressions in a regular Minor key we'll do almost the same thing. We won't ... Continue reading ...
This article will show you ways to master all the things I've talked about. And the first and most essential thing is the concept of planning. This doesn't have to take more than a couple of minutes but it's essential to your success. Planning is deciding what you will do and for how long you will do it. Here's what happens when we don't plan:
When dealing with large amounts of information we must do two things in order to get the most out of our brain.
1. We must group things into manageable chunks 2. We must look for easy patterns to remember 3. Then we must put those chunks of information together like a jigsaw puzzle
Any four notes per string scale pattern consist of one easy pattern, repeated three times across the strings.
When you've given yourself sufficient time to learn to play all the notes on the top two strings, it's time to move on. But remember, the top two strings should feel like home now. You should be able to clearly visualize all the notes on this set of strings quickly and effortlessly. If you still feel a little slow at this, here's another strategy you can use:
Place your guitar besides your TV-set in an upr...
The fretboard can be compared to a city with it's roads and locations: If you try to find your way around the whole city at once, you have to refer to the map at every crossing and corner. But if you live in one part of the city for a couple of months, you get to know that neighborhood so well, that you can find your way in the dark. And if you then move to another part of the city, the sam...
In this series of articles, I'm going to give you, what I consider to be, the fastest and easiest way to "fretboard vision": The ability play over the entire fretboard like it was the easiest thing in the world. If you apply every element in my strategy and really go for it, you will not believe what will happen to your skills in this area. This subject is such an amazing example of how much progress yo...
I'd like to add a little note to yesterdays article. Most people that I have introduced these two methods to, has been very sceptical to whether they would really work or not. If you feel the same way, here's my recommendation:
Pick a one or two string lick that you would like to master. Then practice playing it to the point where you can do it without referring to the tablature. Then use the methods I described in th...
How to improve your chops when you are away from your instrument
In this article I'm going to give you two methods that you can use to practice when you don't have a guitar. With these two strategies, you can practice everywhere. Depending on what you do for a living, you might add as much as 6 to 8 hours of valuable practice time to your daily shedule. When you use them enough, they become automatic and you'll start to...
How to program your mind to achieve extraordinary results
Greetings fellow shredder. This article will give you a vital strategy that you can use to improve your results dramatically. It's a little long but reading it is well worth your effort. By now you should have laid down a plan for the ten days. You have scheduled every possible 30 minute session during this period and should be clear about the rules of the game. Now it's t...
Now that you've laid down a plan for the next ten days, let's talk about the rules of the game. The first thing to be very conscious of, is what kind of practice routine you are preparing for. It's important to distinguish between these two kinds of practice:
1. Technique 2. Integration
Practicing technique
Improving your technical skills requires repeating a certain pattern of movement until it's embedded in the brain. When you engage...
Let's begin the planning part of your ten day challenge. The first thing you must do is to find three licks that you would really, really like to master. Don't aim too low when you select them: They have to be so far away from your current skill level that they really inspire you. Ideally, the thought of "acquiring" them should make you feel like a little kid before Christmas eve.
I'm very excited about this particular subject. This ten day strategy has meant more to the development of my skills than any other single thing. You will not believe what will happen to your skills when you use this strategy on a regular basis. This is the way to crush your challenges in the fastest way possible.
Here's the basic mistake that we all tend to make:
When ever we are confronted with a challenge of any kind, we estimat...
Today I'm going to introduce you to a simple but radical picking technique: It's the "Pick-the-notes-in-the-easiest-way-possible-technique" It's the most versatile and effective way to pick, that I know of. Alternate picking has a vital advantage. It doesn't care much about how many notes you play on each string. It's based on such a simple mathematical up and down process that you can use it ...
If economy picking is the only picking style you master, you have to be very careful with how you structure your licks. You have to have an uneven number of notes on each string in order to be able to make the string shifts happen. Also there are a few things that are practically impossible to play with economy picking only, because of this mathematical limitation. But there's a quick and easy way around thi... Continue reading ...
As with alternate picking, the hardest lick to play is a full three-notes-per-string scale pattern over all six strings. That's why it's so essential to start with very few string shifts and build from there. If you do that, you virtually guarantee that you'll progress faster than most people around you, and you'll create those little successes - that will motivate you to go for more. In the last article we we... Continue reading ...
Practicing economy picking is a radically different process than practicing alternate picking. And the reason is this: Because economy picking involves a sweeping motion, you have to use two different practice routines to get the best results fast:
1. Playing the metronome game 2. Chunking several movements into one 3. Integrate immediately
If you want to play like the wind and the water, economy picking is for you. Alternate picking feels and sounds like a machine gun, where as economy picking flows like a river. Once you have it down, economy picking feels easy in comparison to alternate picking. It feels completely effortless and that frees up a lot of energy to focus on other things. As a consequence, I always use economy picking unless I...
Before I end this series on alternate picking I want to give you some of the "exercises" that I have used to build my picking speed. Please pick the ones that you are most comfortable with. The first two are super simple but also very fundamental. I use these licks all the time and you will too once you have them down. You can take these two licks and use them to go all the way up and down the neck. Try going all the way up an ... Continue reading ...
Years agohttp://sitebuilder.yola.com/ide/index.jsp?siteid=8a49866a2000460f0120146473da37f1, I thought that any skilled guitar player should be able to play fast on any guitar. Even though I loved playing on a guitar that had all the qualities that I'm going to discuss in this article, I still did nothing to make my own instrument more playable. "Playing on an impossible instrument will ...
Every technique has its challenges. When it comes to alternate picking, shifting strings is definitely one of them. What most people aren’t aware of is that this is a two headed monster. There are two different string shifts that you can make:
1. Outside shifting
2. Inside shifting
Outside shifting is when you go from picking down on, let’s say the B-string, and then picking up on the high ...
The strategy described in this article could increase your speed instantly! (Seriously)
I assume that you are using the methods described in the category “Get more out of praticing”. If you are not, you are going to experience a lot more challenges than I describe in these articles. But even though you do everything right, at some point, you are going to hit the wall. You are going to reach a level of speed that you cannot ... Continue reading ...
The engine in a car is a complex piece of machinery where everything has to fit together to produce the power needed to drive the car. Imagine if some part of the engine suddenly started to loose it's place. If the explosions in one cylinder suddenly misfired and worked against the rest of the engine, then what would happen? The way to ensure that our alternate picking engine works perfect...
The hardest lick to play with alternate picking is just going up or down the scale, shifting strings for every third note you play. Why? Because there’s an element of alternate picking that we rarely see or focus on. But before I reveal it to you, let’s make a quick list of the challenges involved in alternate picking:
1. Picking rhythmically up and down (Accenting every third or fourt...
Alternate picking is, in my experience, one of the hardest techniques to perform with precision. But it is also the most aggressive sounding technique I know. The consistent up and down motion with the pick, produces a machine gun like sound, that I can't seem to produce with any other picking technique. I'm also going to cover all other picking techniques on this website, so please don't as... Continue reading ...
The one key that determines whether or not you will become a master
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You now have all the tools you need to practice effectively and get the most out of what you put in. But what’s going to make you practice? Why would anyone spend hours performing very small and repetitive movements with their fingers? Why do we bother? Well, it’s really quite simple right? We’re doing it to get something. It’s not a new car we want and it’s not a thing really, it’...
How do you put together a jigsaw puzzle? Do you look at the picture on the box, then pick a pice up in your hand and try to place it in the correct spot right away? Or du you find pieces that are similar and try to fit them together until you have something that makes sense? Most people choose the latter.
But because of our curiousity and drive to learn something new, we nearly a...
Mistake number 5 Practicing licks in an uneven tempo
This seems like a small sin but it isn't. This will totally sabotage your chances of becomming a world class shredder. When you practice a lick, don't play the easy parts faster than the hard parts. Put your focus on getting the hard parts to be easy instead. If you fall into this trap, buy a metronome and make sure that it is your constant practice companion.
Mistake number one: Biting of more than you can chew
Because we humans are impatient by nature, we tend to bite of more than we can chew. This is quite normal, but it is not an effective strategy. We suddenly decide to loose weight and since it has to happen now rather than later, we go for a 20 mile run. Then one of two things happen: Etiher we actually run the 20 miles, but because or body isn't ready for that kin...
How to gain an extra 4 hours of practice time a day
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The art of Practicing while watching TV...
It's no joke... When I first started playing guitar I needed tons of practice time because I didn't have the luxury of practicing effectively (You don't have that excuse anymore) I had 7 hours of school to attend to and I had to get some amount of homework done in able to survive the next day. (My teachers where lethal) But I managed to put in 6 hours of practice a d...
In this blog I'm going to show you exactly how I went from playing like a turtel to shredding like a lamborghini. This is the most effective way, I know, to build incredible technique. It will not only make sure that you progress as fast as possible, it will also give you amazing precision in what you do. I call it The Metronome Game (Tadaaa). And it is truly a game. Besides making your practice sessions many times more effecti...
How to nail that new lick in minutes instead of days
I once heard of a guy who ate his bicycle... Really! He sawed it into little pill sized peices and swallowed them one by one. You can do anything if you eat your challenges one bite at a time, but if you don't, nothing is possible...
3. Challenge Isolation
Rule number three: Never take on more than one challenge at a time! The third principle isthe principle of challenge isolation. It’s about how much informatio...
In this blog, I’m going to cover the second principle of effective practice. Learning a new lick to the point where it becomes easy and effortless to do, is all about the right kind of communication between your brain and you. Basically we want to send this message to the brain: “Put this lick in the part of the brain where I’ll never forget it and where it becomes automatic... Continue reading ...
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How to develop insane shredding skills
4 keys to getting better fast!
In this blog, and in the next to come, I’m going to show you specific ways in which you can speed up your learning curve. I will take you through each and everyone of the principles I developed and used to build my own level of playing skill. I’m also going to show you a way to predict the future. Let me explai...
