# i can't seem to shred. what is wrong with me?



## rx (Aug 22, 2005)

i've been playing for exactly 4 years and although I can play well on the bottom 4 strings and such, I can't seem to go meedlee meedlee meedlee on the to strings in the high frets. I really wanna shred like Yngwie Malmsteen or Rusty Cooley. for now my focus is on getting as fast as possible, and that's it. no theory, no slow playing, just pure shredding and wanking. everyday I do finger exercises but it doesn't seem to help at all! what am I doing wrong? I practice 1 to 2 hours a day usually. I thought I'd become a shredder in 5 years but it seems like it's never gonna happen 

what did you guys do to play it up and learn to smoke on the fretboard?


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## Regor (Aug 22, 2005)

I don't. I can't either. But I'm fine with it. I like being a rhythm guitar player.


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## Christopher (Aug 22, 2005)

rx said:


> i've been playing for exactly 4 years and although I can play well on the bottom 4 strings and such, I can't seem to go meedlee meedlee meedlee on the to strings in the high frets. I really wanna shred like Yngwie Malmsteen or Rusty Cooley. for now my focus is on getting as fast as possible, and that's it. no theory, no slow playing, just pure shredding and wanking. everyday I do finger exercises but it doesn't seem to help at all! what am I doing wrong? I practice 1 to 2 hours a day usually. I thought I'd become a shredder in 5 years but it seems like it's never gonna happen
> 
> what did you guys do to play it up and learn to smoke on the fretboard?



If this really is a priority for you I'd look at your technique. Maybe there's something holding you back. At 1-2 hours a day of practice you're either not practicing the right thing or there's a hole in your technique. Maybe take a pro lesson if there's anyone local that shreds. Sometimes we can't see the little things.


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## Drew (Aug 22, 2005)

rx said:


> for now my focus is on getting as fast as possible, and that's it. no theory, no slow playing, just pure shredding and wanking.



Have you ever thought that maybe, counterintuitively, that this is your problem? 

The best way to build technique is by slowing down the component parts of a particular physical motion on the guitar, and rather than forcing yourself to move as fast as possible, try to learn to move with as little resistance as possible. Move lightly, with as little motion as possible, and a gentle tough. 

If you focus sheerly on raw speed, you're likely to try to muscle your way through a lick, relying on physical excertion rather than fluid motion, and this will actually long-term hold up your playing. Learn to relax, and practice movements at slow speed, focusing on a smooth, relaxed flow rather than speed. The speed will come as resistance decreases. It's very Zen - action through inaction. Shred through un-shred. 

Also, FWIW, guys like Cooley and Malmsteem definitely know their theory cold (Cooley in particular has what I consider a VERY underrated grasp of counterpoint, the bassline the guitar plays under his "Under the Influence" solo owns), and what separates these two in particular from hundreds and thousands of their imitators is their sense of phrasing. Focusing on sheer speed is a dead end, if it's speed and speed alone. 

-D


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## BCrowell (Aug 22, 2005)

Drew hit it on the head. Forcing the fingers to bend to your will, will never work.

It's all about muscle memory. The muscles must learn the CORRECT motion at a slow pace, and graddually speed up. When you start playing fast you aren't commanding each note/movement, rather commanding a set of movements, that preferebly they have memorized.

If you don't do this, or learn bad technique, that's all the fingers will be able to do, because that's what you taught them. PLUS, they are not at ease, and will tense up, which adversely affects your desire to speed up.

It can be painfully slow, but is absolutely necessary. I've had to rip apart my technique many times, and start from scratch...starting at 60BPM at 1/4 notes, and slowly progress to 120+ 16th notes.

As for speed in general you must MINIMIZE and ECONOMIZE finger & pick movement. For example...play a chromatic run, up and down the strings. Pay CLOSE attention to how far away from the strings your fingers move....they SHOULD hover very close to the strings, and preparing for their next movement (IE the first finger should be over the next string, while the 4th finger is playing it's note, etc). As for the pick, work to minimize how far beyond the string it moves after striking. When playing fast you want to hit the string again quickly, and you can't if pick is moving too far away. If you look at shredders, their pick barely appears to move at all...



> thought I'd become a shredder in 5 years but it seems like it's never gonna happen



Dude, I've been playing for almost 16 years, and to this day, I can only do 180BPM pick speed, 160BPM scaler runs. But you know what...I don't care...I can make great solos & music without making the 200BPM barrier...


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## eaeolian (Aug 22, 2005)

Drew said:


> Have you ever thought that maybe, counterintuitively, that this is your problem?
> 
> The best way to build technique is by slowing down the component parts of a particular physical motion on the guitar, and rather than forcing yourself to move as fast as possible, try to learn to move with as little resistance as possible. Move lightly, with as little motion as possible, and a gentle tough.
> 
> -D



Well said.


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## The Dark Wolf (Aug 22, 2005)

Basically, I think the best place to start is to build an arsenal of 'licks'. 

1) Learn as MANY cool lead licks as you can, and then work on putting them together, in the same key. You can transpose these licks throught different keys, for different scales, and even work on transposing them for different modes.

2) Practice the shit out of these licks. Try them in different positions on the neck. 

3) Work on integrating them with some backing tracks. Drums and a bass/rhthm guitar allow you to try them fluidly, at a given tempo, and to hear how they sound harmonically with the backing chord(s), in that particular key (the common 'open string' keys are easiest to start with, like E, A, and D (or their relatives, based on your tuning)

4. Then work on speed. As you more fluidly put them together, the speed comes. Speed tricks generally are 1 and/or 2 things, my man. A) Smooth legato (this includes hammer-ons and pull-offs) and B) speed picking, which is actually not that hard. NEVER underestimate righthand technique.

THIS will get you started. Once you build this up, when you delve into theory, you'll see where those licks/patterns fall into the harmonic and melodic structures that you've been working on.


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## Metal Ken (Aug 22, 2005)

Slow down some jason becker songs and work those up to speed. Learn maiden solos or something simple (solowise) to start off with and go from there. Thats pretty much what i had been doing. That and constantly challenging myself...


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## Drew (Aug 22, 2005)

thanks.  

also, a program worth checking out - do a net Search for YMetronome. alternately, I started a thread somewhere here with a link to it. GREAT metronome application, when I practice picking a lot of the time I'll set it down at like 60 with 16th note clicks, then have it increase 1 bpm every 30 seconds or minute or so, and do chromatic drills. By the time you get up to 160 or so, your arm's fuckin tired*, but you've made progress. 

And if you've been practicing without a metronome, well, that's your problem right there. 

-D


* generally, practicing the same repetitive movement for more than 20 minutes or so at a time isn't a good idea, but in this case most of the time you're playing so slowly that there's minimal stress on your tendons.


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## darren (Aug 22, 2005)

I've been playing for nearly 20 years, and i'm totally happy being a rhythm player. I learned early on that meedly-meedly-meeeeee just isn't my thing.


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## smueske (Aug 22, 2005)

Tony MacAlpine once said "if you can't play it slow you can't play it fast".


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## Vince (Aug 22, 2005)

rx, if you could do a low-budget video of you playing rhythm guitar, then lead guitar, we could critique your playing and suggest some ways to play better.


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## rx (Aug 23, 2005)

thanks for all the suggestions. i know light touches and fluid motion are the key to playing fast, no everyday I practice things slowly... then increase them by about 5 bpm or 10 bpm after 5 minutes of playing with a certain tempo. Drew, I use Ymetronome... that thing is awesome! 

sometimes i think i'm lifting the pick up from the strings way too much. when I skip between strings, I find myself moving my hands from and away from the guitar than moving my hands up and down (to avoid accidentally hitting a string). 

I'd post a video of me playing but I don't have my equpment right now as I'm at my parent's place in korea.  i'll figure out a way somehow though...

sometimes it feels like 2 hours isn't enough.


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## fatherbrennan (Aug 31, 2005)

Really good advice on here. Definitly a metronome is the best friend you could have in this situation. To really shred you have to be fast, but you also have to have great timing. Id recommend finding an example of a song that you think shreds, say a Malmsteen riff. Write out the tab or music for it, and play it slow so that you are playing it correctly, then speed up. Eventually you will be up to a good speed and you will sound great. Also never forget how difficult shredding is. We all take for granted our skills on guitar but we all put in TONS of hours, and years getting to where we are. When I had been playing for 5 years, I was pretty good I guess but did I really shred? Eh, not really. I could play some complex rhythm and I could solo pretty well on like pentatonic and diatonic scales. But by no means was I sweep picking or doing anything all that impressive. If you keep practicing everyday you will get to where you want to be, but be patient because it takes a long time. Its cool that it does though, it makes it that much more sweet when you finally get there.


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## JJ Rodriguez (Oct 10, 2005)

rx said:


> sometimes i think i'm lifting the pick up from the strings way too much. when I skip between strings, I find myself moving my hands from and away from the guitar than moving my hands up and down (to avoid accidentally hitting a string).



I have that exact problem myself. I play a lot of black/death metal, so there's a lot of tremolo picking, and when moving string to string, I find I hit other strings, and it's just sloppy as all hell. I have logged numerous hours with a metronome, and playing songs slowed down in guitar pro, but nothing has alleviated the problem. I've only been playing 4 years as well, so maybe it's just a time thing.


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## Chris (Oct 10, 2005)

Time and focus, really. I've been playing so long, I owe Jesus $5 for my first set of strings, and I absolutely love shredding. Keep in mind that shredding in itself IS difficult. Running a standard blues pattern or your favorite scale is easy. It's fun to do, and it's effortless. When you get to the point where you're trying to chain together 50-60 notes at 150+, it'll never get to the point (unless you're, say, Vai) where you can roll off a 5-string-spanning blast of notes without focusing. 

Remember to focus on the notes, the timing, and both hands. It does get easier, but the amount of concentration required to really fire off a clean, impressive pattern will always be a lot higher than the go-to licks 99% of us play on a day-to-day basis.


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## Chris (Oct 10, 2005)

JJ Rodriguez said:


> I have that exact problem myself. I play a lot of black/death metal, so there's a lot of tremolo picking, and when moving string to string, I find I hit other strings, and it's just sloppy as all hell. I have logged numerous hours with a metronome, and playing songs slowed down in guitar pro, but nothing has alleviated the problem. I've only been playing 4 years as well, so maybe it's just a time thing.



I assume you're muting the notes slightly after picking them, correct? If you're getting open string drone from (for example) the string that you just came off of, try hitting the next series of notes/next string on an upstroke to start the alternates.


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## jski7 (Oct 10, 2005)

Spoken like true masters ! In my case I just focus on what I call "efficiency of motion" . Keep your timing good , keep your fret hand fingers close to the strings (don't lift too high) , and keep your picking hand nice and tight . Also keep the tip of your pick in a fairly tight range of movevment on each string , it helps aleviate "drone" from hitting the other strings randomly . Maybe try focusing on how hard you grip your pick too . If it's loose , it'll be sloppy . I've just gotten back to practicing my alternate picking myself , but only because I'm completely satisfied with my legato at this point . One step at a time - good luck .


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## JJ Rodriguez (Oct 11, 2005)

Chris said:


> I assume you're muting the notes slightly after picking them, correct? If you're getting open string drone from (for example) the string that you just came off of, try hitting the next series of notes/next string on an upstroke to start the alternates.



You're talking about economy picking vs. alternate right? I used to economy pick when I first started, but once I watched Petrucci's Rock Discipline and started alternate picking everything, my picking improved. Maybe it's time I switched back to economy and see if that might improve things a little.


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## Jesse (Oct 22, 2005)

Ive been playing for 6 years now, I leanred how to "play fast" after about 2 years, but did it toally wrong, I had to restart learning about a year ago. Like the other guys have been say, slow it down and build speed.


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## Exhale (Nov 17, 2005)

Speed is a byproduct of accuracy. Concentrate on doing it right first and speed will come by itself.


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## lucasreis (Jul 22, 2013)

I know this is a über necrobump, but I didn't want to make a new topic about this same subject.

The thing is... I've been playing for 22 years and I can't shred, in fact, I can only do really simple solos, and I wanted some tips to improve my soloing. I can play really fast thrash, death and industrial metal stuff. I can play the entire Fear Factory catalogue, so I know I can play fast and I have precise picking and all that stuff, but I wish I could do solos that are a little more complicated. I like all sorts of metal styles, but I just wanted to be able to shred, even if it's just for fun... 

Any kind of advice on how should I start with soloing?


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## Konfyouzd (Jul 22, 2013)

You're doing it wrong... Play slow... Learn scales...


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## EcoliUVA (Jul 22, 2013)

Check this thread:

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/mu...-wax-off-fundamental-guide-sweep-picking.html

Although this is written for one technique (sweep picking), the fundamentals section is of vital importance to anyone who wants to "shred." It's a life-changer when you realize how we as human beings actually learn, and this is how. The 6 tips in the first section of this thread nail it. I've spent a good bit of time trying to explain these basic building blocks in multiple threads, but 80H has taken the time to summarize them very well with this post.

An additional tip: You learn while you sleep. If you tell your brain something is important by focusing hard as all hell on it, the brain will catalog it while you sleep and improve nerve pathing. This is why when you first picked up your guitar it was awkward as hell. The brain slams the general area (your hand) with random signals to try and get the job done. Over time, once it understands the results you want (again, FOCUS) you will become more accurate and faster - i.e. you will shred. Treat your brain right and it will reward you.


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## samthebrutal (Jul 22, 2013)

lucasreis said:


> I know this is a über necrobump, but I didn't want to make a new topic about this same subject.
> 
> The thing is... I've been playing for 22 years and I can't shred, in fact, I can only do really simple solos, and I wanted some tips to improve my soloing. I can play really fast thrash, death and industrial metal stuff. I can play the entire Fear Factory catalogue, so I know I can play fast and I have precise picking and all that stuff, but I wish I could do solos that are a little more complicated. I like all sorts of metal styles, but I just wanted to be able to shred, even if it's just for fun...
> 
> Any kind of advice on how should I start with soloing?



Start small and build up. Cooley's "Basic Training" is an excellent way to get started shredding. Just be diligent and patient, it takes time to develop the muscle control at high speeds.

Speed = Accuracy + Efficiency 

Good Luck!



Chops from Hell Guitar Site - Guitar Instructionals.


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## Solodini (Jul 23, 2013)

Learn to write a melody, ornament it and write another melody to sit in the gaps between notes. Now learn to play it, slowly at first until you get it up to speed. Learn to develop and vary the melody, so you can make it something people want to listen to, rather than just scale runs and linear arpeggios in between the occasional melodic phrase.


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## Basti (Jul 23, 2013)

It could literally be anything. Go slow and analyse your playing: if something feels off, correct it. 
May take some time, but there's no way out of it


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## rx (Jul 23, 2013)

thank you for bumping my thread from eight years ago 

I was only 18 back then. now I can shred


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## bob123 (Jul 23, 2013)

rx said:


> thank you for bumping my thread from eight years ago
> 
> I was only 18 back then. now I can shred


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## sear (Jul 24, 2013)

I hate myself.


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## slothrop (Jul 24, 2013)

rx said:


> thank you for bumping my thread from eight years ago
> 
> I was only 18 back then. now I can shred


So what worked for you? Metronome and shit tons of practice?


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## rx (Jul 25, 2013)

slothrop said:


> So what worked for you? Metronome and shit tons of practice?



i've been playing for about 12 years now and I'm nowhere near as good as the big-time guys, but what did for me is just the time spent attached to my guitar. i try to practice daily for at least an hour but it's not easy fitting the time to practice everyday. practice makes perfect, but I think a lot of it has to do with how long you've been playing and how much the instrument became part of you 

oh and learning songs


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