# What's your go-to shredding-exercise?



## Tobias Von Lanthen (Sep 8, 2021)

Hi everyone! 

To cut to the case - I've been playing for around 12 years now - mostly different metal genres, Djentier stuff, etc. 

I've always been the riff-guy when it comes down to composing and playing and therefore never invested much into solo-related stuff. My shredding abilities are getting better after months of daily exercise - accurate and fast but I'm simply lacking the exercises / diversity in exercises.

So - what's your shredding-exercise? What helped you gain more speed and accuracy? Any recommendations? And, as a side question related to shredding: Did string gauge ever had a huge role in this for you? Heavier gauge for better playing "stability" or anything like that?

Thanks in advance!


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## Matt08642 (Sep 8, 2021)

The ultimate shredding exercise is the most boring one: Metronome at a slower speed until you can play it cleanly, then bumping up and up and up till you're at/above speed.

That and simply playing a _lot _more made it easier


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## bostjan (Sep 8, 2021)

The problem with striving to be a good "shredder" is that there is no magic bullet. You only get to that sort of level by practicing anything and everything that challenges you.

If you practice that one technique over and over, out of any musical context, you will get really good at that practice exercise, and nothing else. You have to integrate it with other techniques in different contexts before you even master the technique itself.

And then to be a "shredder," you have to rinse and repeat with at least a dozen techniques.


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## michael_bolton (Sep 8, 2021)

I was in a similar boat 3-4 years ago - been playing for couple of decades but mostly riffs (without too much of a "system" to boot), something like the Ace of Spades or Paranoid solos being at the top of my soloing ability.

wasn't really aiming much higher but kind of got into a habit of playing 3 nps scales up and down - alt picking and economy picking, then proceeded to arpeggio sweeps mostly cuz I was interested in the theory aspect of these. 

not that I became an accomplished shredder but these did wonders for my overall playing ability. string gauges - don't think I've made any changes there, picks - yes - switched to smaller jazz 3 style picks.


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## jaxadam (Sep 8, 2021)

I have a couple of good ones. I’ll post them up in a little while, but I really just need to fire up an Instagram for “jaxadam’s weekly shred tips and tricks and how to get chicks”.


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## Spaced Out Ace (Sep 8, 2021)

Troy Grady is helpful. It isn't really an exercise, but I use the Paul Gilbert "Everyone's First Shred Lick" from Intense Rock to warm up.

I think it is helpful to pick the right picking for a lick (inside alternate picking, outside alternate, economy picking, etc.) and experimenting with them to determine the best per lick. Don't just use one and ignore the rest.


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## jaxadam (Sep 8, 2021)

I’ll say this though, I notice a lot of players have a really good pointer or ring finger, but neglect the middle and pinky. I think a lot of good exercises should train these fingers so that all are fluent in movement, bending, starting/stopping, and vibrato.


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## wheresthefbomb (Sep 8, 2021)




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## SpaceDock (Sep 8, 2021)

Don’t neglect your theory because that will help you know when to play what notes.


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## ScottThunes1960 (Sep 8, 2021)

I like to play this after warm-ups.


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## Tobias Von Lanthen (Sep 9, 2021)

So I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to reply! 

I usually create an own pattern within the same scale that consists of single note shredding, double note shredding with string-skipping and a sweep from 5th to 1st string and back down. 
I started with "just" shredding out of context, as you mentioned @bostjan, and it definitely isn't helpful respective fluent playing within a song - wish I had that realization earlier!

And @jaxadam - I'd appreciate the exercises you mentioned! I'm really on the lookout for just "new" stuff to practice. Same goes for you @Spaced Out Ace - thank you for the recommendation - I'll definitely check it out this weekend.

For anyone else I didn't reply to in this post - thanks for the recommendations and sharing your experience - it is appreciated!


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## Tobias Von Lanthen (Sep 9, 2021)

Oh and...



jaxadam said:


> ... but I really just need to fire up an Instagram for “jaxadam’s weekly shred tips and tricks and how to get chicks”.



Please do and let me know when the account is up and running


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## NoodleFace (Sep 9, 2021)

I have a few I do. After I warm up for a few minutes I do the chromatic 1234 up and down the neck exercise with a metronome to keep me honest. That just improves my coordination between both hands. 

Another I do is 1324 up and down the neck. Just a variation of the first. 

One I picked up from Steve Stine that I like a lot is take the 3rd string 5th fret. Hammer on 5-6 as fast as possible for 20 seconds. Then 5-7, then 5-8, then 6-7, then 6-8 and finally 7-8. I do that a few times with rest in between. I feel burning in my forearms doing this much like any real exercise.


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## j3ps3 (Sep 11, 2021)

The lick at 1:41


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## jaxadam (Sep 11, 2021)

ScottThunes1960 said:


> I like to play this after warm-ups.




Not bad but a little homogenous. I prefer this one as it's got a little bit of everything:


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## Tobias Von Lanthen (Sep 12, 2021)

NoodleFace said:


> I have a few I do. After I warm up for a few minutes I do the chromatic 1234 up and down the neck exercise with a metronome to keep me honest. That just improves my coordination between both hands.
> 
> Another I do is 1324 up and down the neck. Just a variation of the first.
> 
> One I picked up from Steve Stine that I like a lot is take the 3rd string 5th fret. Hammer on 5-6 as fast as possible for 20 seconds. Then 5-7, then 5-8, then 6-7, then 6-8 and finally 7-8. I do that a few times with rest in between. I feel burning in my forearms doing this much like any real exercise.



Oh that's a good one! Thank you! Especially the hammer on one seems like fun!


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## Drew (Sep 16, 2021)

Matt08642 said:


> The ultimate shredding exercise is the most boring one: Metronome at a slower speed until you can play it cleanly, then bumping up and up and up till you're at/above speed.



I'm mixed, at best, when it comes to slow speed slowly increasing metronome work. I did a LOT of this in my youth, with decidedly mixed success. I think it has its place, especially when it comes to fretting hand accuracy... but if this was all it takes to become a good shredder, then pretty much the whole of the internet would be shred monsters. We're not, which is a pretty good reason to call some of that conventional wisdom into question.

I think Troy Grady has the right of it, when it comes to faster playing, that a lot of the challenges that come with faster alternate picking (and I would add to a lesser extent legato, where muscular independence of fingers comes into play and there's only so much you can improve before you're hitting biological walls) don't really exist at slower speeds, so if all you do is practice slow you're not actually practicing any of the mechanics (namely, however your body figures out how to get the pick up and over the strings to facilitate string changes) that you need to play fast, and at least _some_ "fast but sloppy" playing is necessary for figuring out how to do some of this stuff. 

So, I'd strongly recommend watching some of the Cracking the Code stuff, though keeping in mind the web series, while awesome and a lot of fun, is very much focused on Yngwie Malmsteen and Eric Johnson, who by chance both evolved pretty similar mechanical approaches (weirdly so, in fact) to do very, very different things, and there are more than one way to skin a cat (speaking for myself, I use the same sort of slanted mechanic that they do, but in the inverse, where my pickstroke escapes on downstrokes, not upstrokes, and I have a bit of a rotational mechanic that feels like I'm "cocking" or "winding up" my picking hand when I need to escape on an upstroke, which is a combination not all that dissimilar to what they see MAB doing in their analysis of his playing - again, which is weird, since our styles are nothing at all alike, but probably makes sense in that it's a pretty effective combination). 

Then, taking that insight, and figuring out how YOUR pickstroke works, will go a long way towards working out what sort of licks work well for you and are good "shred" runs, and what sort won't. Yngwie is a stuggle for me, for example, because while he has a very "complete" set of motions, they're basically the mirror inverse of my own, so it's tough for me to do some of the stuff that's effortless for him. Ditto with Johnson, which you wouldn'y expect, because as a shred-ish guy rooted in blues and rock, you'd think superficially we would be more akin. But, on the other hand, stuff like the fast run from the Technical Difficulties intro, what Troy refers to as the "Gilbert 6s" motif, while doing it at Gilbert's tempo is a challenge for me, that basic pattern is something that is pretty easy for me and I've spun tons of variations of it, even before I actually knew what I was doing or why some of those runs were easy for me. 

So, I guess spend some time figuring out how your pickstroke works, and what it's optimized for and what it isn't, and start to buuld out a vocabulary of tings that ARE efficient for you. That's the best advice I can give. 

(fretting hand, by the way... your finger independence between your 3rd and 4th finger, no matter HOW much you drill it, is never going to be great. You will never trill faster between 3 and 4 than you will between 1 and 2 or 1 and 3. For fairly "linear" movements that's not a problem - you can do a 1-3-4-1-3-4 pattern fairly efficiently over and over, but trying to do 1-3-4-3-1-3-4-3 over and over is mechanically very hard and very inefficient. 1-2-4-2-1-2-4-2 however is much smoother since your 1st, 2nd, and 4th fingers are all controlled by different groups of muscles, and since the human hand evolved with a focus on grasping, 1-2-4-1-2-4 is about as efficient a pattern of fingers as your body can make. After someone with a good undestanding of the biology of the human hand explained this stuff to me, I started to change up a lot of my fretting hand chouces and rely a LOT more on 1-2-4 combinations than I used to, and it's made a huge impact in the "liquidity" of my playing. Focusing on finding a fretting hand posture where your hand is relaxed and has no default-position tightness baked into it helps a lot too.)


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## Emperoff (Sep 16, 2021)

I have this approach that I read somewhere ages ago and I still think it's quite useful.

- Get your excercise of choice and your metronome. Start slow and rise 5bpm/run.
- You'll get to a point where you will start making mistakes, but still being able to play the lick. Repeat step 1 until you just _*can't* _play it at all.
- Then move your way backwards and lower the metronome 5bpm/run until you reach the point where you can play the excercise comfortably without making mistakes.
- You'll realize that point is higher in tempo than it was before. Do a few runs without rising bpm (3-5) to let your brain retain well executed (and not sloppy) motions.
- Move to something else!

This logic teaches your brain to play accurately and push your limits at the same time.

Of course this is useful to build up speed or memorize patterns/scales. It doesn't add up to musical context. So be sure to mix what you practiced with other techniques over a backing track, your band, etc.


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## Lopp (Sep 19, 2021)

Emperoff said:


> - Get your excercise of choice and your metronome. Start slow and rise 5bpm/run.
> - You'll get to a point where you will start making mistakes, but still being able to play the lick. Repeat step 1 until you just _*can't* _play it at all.
> - Then move your way backwards and lower the metronome 5bpm/run until you reach the point where you can play the excercise comfortably without making mistakes.
> - You'll realize that point is higher in tempo than it was before. Do a few runs without rising bpm (3-5) to let your brain retain well executed (and not sloppy) motions.
> ...



I love the concept of that exercise and look forward to trying it.

Some players can get stuck because of all the advice emphasizing playing a riff cleanly before increasing speed. Thus, they keep practicing at slow speeds to avoid practicing mistakes. However, the body adapts when it is pushed, so you should sometimes practice at faster speeds past the point of which you are making little mistakes. This gets your body used to the mechanics of playing at the faster speed, which can become quite different from mechanics used to play at slow speeds.

This sometimes gets frustrating when making so many mistakes while trying to play fast cleanly. Your tip about repeating step 1 until you cannot play at all is great, as well as reducing the tempo back to retain accuracy.


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## Dushan S (Sep 20, 2021)

Tobias Von Lanthen said:


> So - what's your shredding-exercise? What helped you gain more speed and accuracy? Any recommendations? And, as a side question related to shredding: Did string gauge ever had a huge role in this for you? Heavier gauge for better playing "stability" or anything like that?
> 
> Thanks in advance!


I started long ago with with bad VHS copies of Vinnie Moore and Paul Gilbert stuff (It was only possible to get blurry pirated copies in my country at the time) 
As others have said, using metronome and making sure to playing cleanly is important. 

Through the years of giving lessons there are some things I have noticed people tend to miss when working on their shredding abilities:
- you should practice your patterns by starting also on count 2 3 and 4, not only on 1. Also play them as 2/4/8 notes on the beat but also try to play 3/6 notes on the beat.
- when you learn a pattern, or a lick, play it through all the shapes and positions. I would use one key as my basic starting position, usually A minor, so I can "connect" new stuff with old knowledge easier, but after I got it, it is a good idea to practice stuff in different keys and places on the neck
- some people tend to practice patterns separately, that is OK in the beginning, but try to make up your own exercises by mixing two different patterns or licks and move that up and down the neck or up and down through the scale in same position.
- even when shredding have in mind what scale degrees are you playing and why lick sounds like it sounds, what notes it uses. That will help you to use it in a meaningful way when composing a solo or improvising
- when learning lick or pattern, do not just learn it blindly and leave it at that. Think about what it implies and are there possibilities to turn it around, modify it. Play it in reverse. replace some notes. Play it stretched. Modify it so it uses string skipping. If it is legato try to pick it and vice versa, etc.
- If you are learning new solo, analyze it and cut it into pieces where every piece is a lick. Than use those licks as material for practicing, play them in different positions etc. In that way, you will incorporate something new into your music vocabulary. I have seen to often guys who play amazing stuff note for note live, and then when it comes time for improvising, it becomes obvious that all the stuff they learned to play doesn't comes through in improvisation or their own solos.
- some people neglect pentatonic stuff, but make sure to learn it and then add a twist to it by adding some additional notes, 2nd, dorian 6th etc, and mix it in with other stuff if you don't want to sound like Zakk Wylde or whatever.
- shredding is nice but make sure that you know how to bend, that bends are in tune and vibrato sounds great. Nothing looks worst to me than a guy shredding thousands of notes and then ending solo with a amateurish bending note with a bad vibrato.
- record videos of yourself with a phone, and record improvisations over backing track on your DAW, and analyze after. What is good and what is wrong? What works and what not?
There is more but these are first things coming to my mind. I hope some of this is useful!


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## Tobias Von Lanthen (Oct 1, 2021)

Hi to everyone who shared their experience and knowledge the past 2 weeks as well and sorry for the delayed reply!

@Drew - The amount of extremely useful knowledge you shared in that one comment is blowing my mind! Thanks a lot for sharing this!



Drew said:


> So, I guess spend some time figuring out how your pickstroke works, and what it's optimized for and what it isn't, and start to buuld out a vocabulary of tings that ARE efficient for you. That's the best advice I can give.
> 
> (fretting hand, by the way... your finger independence between your 3rd and 4th finger, no matter HOW much you drill it, is never going to be great. You will never trill faster between 3 and 4 than you will between 1 and 2 or 1 and 3. For fairly "linear" movements that's not a problem - you can do a 1-3-4-1-3-4 pattern fairly efficiently over and over, but trying to do 1-3-4-3-1-3-4-3 over and over is mechanically very hard and very inefficient. 1-2-4-2-1-2-4-2 however is much smoother since your 1st, 2nd, and 4th fingers are all controlled by different groups of muscles, and since the human hand evolved with a focus on grasping, 1-2-4-1-2-4 is about as efficient a pattern of fingers as your body can make. After someone with a good undestanding of the biology of the human hand explained this stuff to me, I started to change up a lot of my fretting hand chouces and rely a LOT more on 1-2-4 combinations than I used to, and it's made a huge impact in the "liquidity" of my playing. Focusing on finding a fretting hand posture where your hand is relaxed and has no default-position tightness baked into it helps a lot too.)



I read your reply when you posted it and I immediately focused on this. My pickstroke escapes on downstrokes too - though I realized that, at least for now, my shredding is a lot better and cleaner when I lay the focus on a mix out of finger movement (pickhand) and arm placement / forearm muscle. Depending on speed and string this works very well now up to 160 bpm in 16th notes - with a lot of persistence too. I still really do struggle on fast stringskipping at this speed but I will just keep practicing this. 



Emperoff said:


> I have this approach that I read somewhere ages ago and I still think it's quite useful.
> 
> - Get your excercise of choice and your metronome. Start slow and rise 5bpm/run.
> - You'll get to a point where you will start making mistakes, but still being able to play the lick. Repeat step 1 until you just _*can't* _play it at all.
> ...



Glad to hear this! I've been using this method for a couple of years now for learning riffs, songs, etc. I'm using the same method for my shredding exercises now. There are a couple of solos I'm learning atm with this method - works great until approx. 95% speed. The last 5% are always the ones that take me weeks if not months to master. Anyway - thanks for sharing this! 



Dushan S said:


> I started long ago with with bad VHS copies of Vinnie Moore and Paul Gilbert stuff (It was only possible to get blurry pirated copies in my country at the time)
> As others have said, using metronome and making sure to playing cleanly is important.
> 
> Through the years of giving lessons there are some things I have noticed people tend to miss when working on their shredding abilities:
> ...



Again - mind blowing! Thanks for sharing this! I've already focused on some of these but there are also a lot of points in there I definitely neglected - never even thought about it. The "ends a solo with amateurish bend note" would be one of those things (especially between fast parts or sweeps).

A huge thanks again to everyone sharing their experiences with this! This is beyond helpful! 

Oh and in case someone has as much fun learning this one as I have: Born of Osiris - Exhilarate (solo)
Probably not everyones taste but the solo combines a lot of techniques - especially the ones I'm practicing so much at the moment.


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## Drew (Oct 4, 2021)

Tobias Von Lanthen said:


> I read your reply when you posted it and I immediately focused on this. My pickstroke escapes on downstrokes too - though I realized that, at least for now, my shredding is a lot better and cleaner when I lay the focus on a mix out of finger movement (pickhand) and arm placement / forearm muscle. Depending on speed and string this works very well now up to 160 bpm in 16th notes - with a lot of persistence too. I still really do struggle on fast stringskipping at this speed but I will just keep practicing this.


Honestly, the best advice I can get you is to join the Cracking the Code forum. There's aLOT of really good information there on the mechanics of how pickstrokes work.


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## HungryGuitarStudent (Oct 5, 2021)

Tobias Von Lanthen said:


> Hi everyone!
> 
> To cut to the case - I've been playing for around 12 years now - mostly different metal genres, Djentier stuff, etc.
> 
> ...



Personally, I build my technical chops by learning whole songs or whole solos. It has the benefit of keeping things musical and keeping you motivated. Side benefits: makes you work on other things (vibrato, intonation, ear training if no tab is available, etc.); you'll also build lead vocabulary and phrasing.

Example: If I wanna work on my alt-picking in a lead context, then when taking my daily walk I'll listen to songs with "picking heavy leads". I'll choose one I like and that meets the objective I want to aim for (e.g. alt-picking three notes per string sextuplets at 130+ bpm). Then I'll try to learn said solo (e.g. John Petrucci, Paul Gilbert, Jason Richardson, Stephen Taranto, etc.). While practicing, I take a lot of short breaks; helps me to be more focused and analyzing instead of blindly going through reps.

Another avenue: sometimes when warming up I'll come up with patters for picking, sweeping, legato, etc. that'll end up being a full-fledged "exercise" (but more musical than simply going up and down a scale or arpeggio).

If you want to get into analyzing your picking mechanics, I second @Drew 's recommendation: go to the Cracking the Code website and forums. For how to build speed, Martin Miller also has a lot of great advice (see his YT video where he coaches a student to increase his alt picking speed). His advice really helped me get through a hump in my max alt-picking speed.

At the end of the day, there's no silver bullet, it's a lot of consistent and hard work while being focused and analyzing your playing. Recording yourself also helps. Don't hesitate to ask if you want specific examples.


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## Lax (Oct 7, 2021)

1) Basic chromatisms on metronome (1234 spider)
2) John petrucci - Rock discipline
3) Ben eller punisher exercise and all variants


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## bassisace (Oct 7, 2021)

Lax said:


> 1) Basic chromatisms on metronome (1234 spider)
> 2) John petrucci - Rock discipline
> 3) Ben eller punisher exercise and all variants



Yuck. That would totally kill my motivation. I'd also be scared it would kill my inspiration. I have the belief that playing only exercises is likely to make your improvisation and writing suck. To each his own I guess.


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## Lax (Oct 8, 2021)

Songs can be exercises, like erotomania - dream theater main riff etc


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## Tobias Von Lanthen (Oct 12, 2021)

To @Drew and @HungryGuitarStudent - I've never heard of cracking the code but I immediately checked that out. Didn't have time yet to look fully into it but it looks promising - thanks for the recommendation! 



HungryGuitarStudent said:


> Personally, I build my technical chops by learning whole songs or whole solos. It has the benefit of keeping things musical and keeping you motivated. Side benefits: makes you work on other things (vibrato, intonation, ear training if no tab is available, etc.); you'll also build lead vocabulary and phrasing.
> 
> Example: If I wanna work on my alt-picking in a lead context, then when taking my daily walk I'll listen to songs with "picking heavy leads". I'll choose one I like and that meets the objective I want to aim for (e.g. alt-picking three notes per string sextuplets at 130+ bpm). Then I'll try to learn said solo (e.g. John Petrucci, Paul Gilbert, Jason Richardson, Stephen Taranto, etc.). While practicing, I take a lot of short breaks; helps me to be more focused and analyzing instead of blindly going through reps.
> 
> ...



That's what I've been doing since well, ever - Learning songs and solos I like or are built on techniques that I want to improve. Because of that, I feel like I may miss something like consistency or the ability to play those techniques in a non-musical context. But it really kills my motivation if I just practice to 1234 stuff or simple scales. I do it daily but really only for a few minutes. So I agree with @bassisace here. But back to the point - @HungryGuitarStudent I would appreciate specific examples a lot! I often record myself too - audio and especially video - sometimes something feels right but the video evidence clearly shows the opposite. This has also it's upside that I sometimes have a video or two to share with friends, Soundcloud or IG.

Thanks to everyone!


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## Drew (Oct 13, 2021)

Tobias Von Lanthen said:


> To @Drew and @HungryGuitarStudent - I've never heard of cracking the code but I immediately checked that out. Didn't have time yet to look fully into it but it looks promising - thanks for the recommendation!


It sounds infomercial-y, but honestly the premise is pretty simple; the challenge of alternate picking isn't trem-picking along a single string, which anyone can do from early on, but rather in switching strings while picking at speed. To do this well, you have to have some sort of highly efficient way of lifting the pick up and over the strings that can be done without adding additional stress to muscle groups, and while there's a LOT of different ways to do this, all advanced alternate pickers have some sort of solution to this problem, and oftentimes this informs some of their fretting hand decisions because some of these solutions are optimal in some situations and not others. 

The fact that Yngwie Malmsteen, once you start getting under the hood a bit, never switches from a thinner string to a thicker string after a downstroke, and only does this after upstrokes (and either switches after an upstroke or sweeps through a single downstroke when going in the other direction, from thicker to thinner) is a pretty perfect example of what I'm getting at, where a lot of his fretting hand decisions are actually a byproduct of the fact his picking motion doesn't really allow him to make that string change after a downstroke at speed.


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## HungryGuitarStudent (Oct 14, 2021)

Tobias Von Lanthen said:


> Because of that, I feel like I may miss something like consistency or the ability to play those techniques in a non-musical context.
> 
> @HungryGuitarStudent I would appreciate specific examples a lot



About consistency: practicing whole songs or solos, over and over as well as analyzing and correcting your mistakes builds consistency. Am I missing something? Maybe my definition of the word “consistency” is different from yours.

Why would you want to be able to play in a non-musical context? What do you mean by that?

I’d be happy to give specific examples, but first I’d need to know what type of example you’re looking for. What’s your goal? Practicing a specific technique to build endurance vs speed vs … ?


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## Tobias Von Lanthen (Oct 15, 2021)

Drew said:


> It sounds infomercial-y, but honestly the premise is pretty simple; the challenge of alternate picking isn't trem-picking along a single string, which anyone can do from early on, but rather in switching strings while picking at speed. To do this well, you have to have some sort of highly efficient way of lifting the pick up and over the strings that can be done without adding additional stress to muscle groups, and while there's a LOT of different ways to do this, all advanced alternate pickers have some sort of solution to this problem, and oftentimes this informs some of their fretting hand decisions because some of these solutions are optimal in some situations and not others.
> 
> The fact that Yngwie Malmsteen, once you start getting under the hood a bit, never switches from a thinner string to a thicker string after a downstroke, and only does this after upstrokes (and either switches after an upstroke or sweeps through a single downstroke when going in the other direction, from thicker to thinner) is a pretty perfect example of what I'm getting at, where a lot of his fretting hand decisions are actually a byproduct of the fact his picking motion doesn't really allow him to make that string change after a downstroke at speed.



I guess I never looked at it this way. This would explain that some licks and solo parts are coming way "easier" to play while I struggle a lot at other parts, even though they are in the same speed and fret area. I will analyze this more - especially in some of the solos I mentioned. Thanks for the explanation and recommendation!



HungryGuitarStudent said:


> About consistency: practicing whole songs or solos, over and over as well as analyzing and correcting your mistakes builds consistency. Am I missing something? Maybe my definition of the word “consistency” is different from yours.
> 
> Why would you want to be able to play in a non-musical context? What do you mean by that?
> 
> I’d be happy to give specific examples, but first I’d need to know what type of example you’re looking for. What’s your goal? Practicing a specific technique to build endurance vs speed vs … ?



I apologize - English is not my first language so I may used the wrong term here. Consistency as in, I fear that if I "only" learn specific solos and licks, that I will end up as someone who can play a few impressive solos but can't use these techniques properly in general. Does this make sense? The "in a non-musical context" adds to my last sentence. I imagine that I will be able to play certain techniques more consistently around all scales and frets if I learn shredding, sweeps and more in "1-2-3-4" examples or a "non-musical context" too - and not just in specific solos. Which brings me to your last question! I'm looking for examples that help with general speed / accuracy but especially for fast parts that stretch over as many strings as possible (with string-skipping as well). Is this oddly specific? Anyways - I'd appreciate every little lick and example you've got for me!

Thanks a lot in advance!


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## HungryGuitarStudent (Oct 15, 2021)

Tobias Von Lanthen said:


> I guess I never looked at it this way. This would explain that some licks and solo parts are coming way "easier" to play while I struggle a lot at other parts, even though they are in the same speed and fret area. I will analyze this more - especially in some of the solos I mentioned. Thanks for the explanation and recommendation!
> 
> 
> 
> ...



No problem, English is not my 1st language as well 

If you want to be more “at ease” to solo in various musical contexts, then looking into improvisation could be a good idea.

Youtube has tons of backing tracks you can practice your improv skills on. Try it out, it’s fun.

You can also check out Tom Quayle’s web page and YT channel if you want to be more conscious of your note choices and how they relate to the chords you’re playing over (fretboard visualization). It’s not mandatory IMO, but it can be a long term goal that might increase your versatility. I’m currently working on that.

Knowing a bit of theory (scales, intervals, chord progressions) can help, but is not mandatory IMO. One benefit is that it can speed up the improv/composition process. It can also be a good tool to figure out the ingredients of solos you like. You can then try to apply these ingredients in other musical contexts. One negative can be that it hampers your creativity (only if you view it as a prescriptive tool).

Composing solos also helps. I did that for a few years, recording solos at home and occasionally participating in solo contests as a writing exercise (not because I thought I’d win or wanted to show off).

I’m by no means a pro, but that’s the path I’m on and it yielded a cool progression of skills in my case. I still have tons to learn, but the process is really enjoyable with this approach, rather than drilling exercises for days, playing uninspired lines and sounding like a robot afterwards.

String skipping and stretches: Stephen Taranto released tabs called “IG licks volume 1-2-3”. These are short lines (max. 1 min.) involving stretches, alt picking (2 or 3 notes per string), sometimes sweeps and sometimes tapping arpeggios. Let me know if difficulty level is too high. Link: https://stephentaranto.bandcamp.com/merch/instagram-licks-tab-pack-1

The solo to Erotomania (Dream Theater) may be easier to learn and has a nice string skipping section. There are tons of other examples, depending on which artist you like.

For increasing alt picking speed, I followed advice given by Troy Grady and Martin Miller: practice at the speed at which things start to fall apart, don’t practice at speeds where you’re comfortable. You’ll make tons of mistakes, which is the point. Experiment with pick grips, arm position, wrist position, etc.. Take many many short breaks and change those parameters every time. When something seems to work, note it. I used to take pictures of how I hold the pick when I made progress. Frequent failures and analysis is the quickest way to make progress IMO.

According to Martin, the « slow and steady metronome » approach will build control and timing (which are super important), but will not help figure out the mechanics of breaking a speed barrier. In other words, know what you want to practice and choose how you practice accordingly.


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## /wrists (Oct 19, 2021)

I came in here looking for tabs haha.


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## HungryGuitarStudent (Dec 9, 2021)

For speed building, I follow this advice. See 1:57 onwards for an explanation as to why playing fast immediately is better to learn to pick.


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## jaxadam (Dec 9, 2021)

evade said:


> I came in here looking for tabs haha.


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