Have you ever experience fatigue in your fingers when playing or practicing? Of course you have. I'm not refering to the sore feeling you get AFTER you've practiced all night and day. I'm talking about the inability to produce the notes you want due to lack of endurance and strength in your fingers. Or is that really the problem? Or is it something completely different? In this article I'm going to try and prove that strength and enduran... Continue reading ...
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 18, 2009,
In :
Amazing Licks
The Reversed Malmsteen Variation
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In this lick, I use position shifting and a lick from one of the previous articles, to create a third lick. Combining licks in this way is a great way to develop the ability to improvise at very high levels of speed. The more you can combine what you know, the more choices you have.
As an exercise, try to come up with at least one new way of using these ideas used in today's lick. See if you can play the whole thing backwards. Play the... Continue reading ...
Posted by Pure Speed on Saturday, October 10, 2009,
In :
Amazing Licks
One String Flying Triplets
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Playing this lick always makes me smile. It's an insane way to utilize position shifting to create a one string sequence that looks and sounds this frantic. But it's also an incredible left hand exercise (If you're a right handed person) Think about it: In order to play any 3 notes per string scale pattern from string to string, you have to change fingering to match the notes on each of the six strings you play. You do the same thing here, ... 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 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:
What's best: A totally improvised solo or one that is carefully prepared and structured in advance? I used to not like the improvised solos very much. "Go home and come up with something worth listening to" I thought to myself whenever I heard Jazz players dive into mass quantities of, what seemed like, random notes. But at the same time I was convinced that you should be able to improvise your way thor...
This article contains one very important lesson that we can draw from the playing of Yngwie Malmsteen. It represents an important key to building effective solos while having immense fun. When you apply it consciously to your own playing, you will experience a greater sense of freedom and playfulness than perhaps ever before.
How to get beyond repetitive playing
Why is it that Malmsteen's solos seem so alive? Wh...
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...
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.
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 ...
