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    Shred!: The Ultimate Guide to Warp-Speed Guitar
    Shred!: The Ultimate Guide to Warp-Speed Guitar
    Shred!: The Ultimate Guide to Warp-Speed Guitar
    Ebook129 pages1 hour

    Shred!: The Ultimate Guide to Warp-Speed Guitar

    By Pete Prown

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    About this ebook

    With knuckle-busting lessons covering surefire techniques, Shred! will light a napalm-hot blaze under your fingers and kick your playing up to ludicrous speed! Shredding is a challenge, but this book breaks it down, demystifying guitar solos that sound intimidating on record. Each chapter examines one killer technique in-depth, including: sweep picking, thrash-chording, blues shredding, tapping, legato playing, and the whammy bar. Each exercise is demonstrated via audio tracks.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRowmanLittlefield
    Release dateMay 1, 2006
    ISBN9781617133473
    Shred!: The Ultimate Guide to Warp-Speed Guitar

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      Book preview

      Shred! - Pete Prown

      1 Alternate Picking

      Alexi Laiho ofChildren of Bodom

      Alternate picking is the King Kong of shred techniques. It’s the biggest, baddest, and, indeed, the hardest shred skill to master. But it’s worth the effort—and you just can’t shred without it.

      Difficult as it may be to get right, alternate picking (sometimes called alt picking) is a simple concept: pick each note cleanly, once with the pick going up and the next note with the pick going down. The trick to achieving high speed is that the up/down motion never stops, even when you’re jumping strings. The one and only commandment of alternate picking is that you cannot hit two upstrokes or two downstrokes in a row. The picking sequence is always up-down, up-down (or down-up, down-up), no matter what.

      WORSHIP + SUBMIT

      If you’ve ever heard the fast, single-note staccato solos of Al Di Meola, Paul Gilbert, or Dimebag Darrell (or, indeed, of many top jazz and country guitarists), then you’ve witnessed the power and glory of alternate picking. For many shredders, it’s the most exciting thing around.

      Fortunately, there are many great examples of alternate picking for you to listen to. This technique came into the metal world via ’70s jazz-rock fusion, where flatpicking was the name of the game for guitarists. Di Meola, Larry Coryell, John McLaughlin, John Aber-crombie, Frank Zappa, Jorge Strunz (of Caldera and later Strunz & Farah), and Daryl Stuermer (from Jean-Luc Ponty’s band) were all pivotal in establishing the alt-picking lexicon.

      The prominent rockers to glom onto this style were Ritchie Blackmore, Steve Morse, UFO’s Michael Schenker, and the Scorpions’ original guitarist, Uli Jon Roth. His playing on the Scorps’ 1976 masterpiece Virgin Killer was a breakthrough in many ways; for our purposes, it was a revealing prediction of shred to come. Roth’s ripping Mixolydian breaks on Catch Your Train were unparalleled for clean, fast picking chops. (Not surprisingly, Uli was one of Yngwie Malmsteen’s biggest heroes.)

      In the ’80s, alt-picking became even more popular, thanks to right-hand rock wizards like Steve Lukather, Steve Vai, and Billy Idol sideman Steve Stevens. (Fortunately, in real life your name does not have to be Steve to pick like the devil.) By the end of the decade, there was no shortage of shredders who had adopted alternate picking, John Sykes, Tony MacAlpine, and Night Ranger’s Jeff Watson among them.

      The technique dropped off the map for much of the 1990s, thanks to the anti-shred stance of grunge and modern—dare we say—alternative rock. Bah! In caves and subterranean grottos around the world, shredders hid out and privately ripped for glory. Among that decade’s best pickers were James Byrd, Jon Finn, John Petrucci, Alex Skolnick, and the late, great Dimebag Darrell of Pantera.

      We’re happy to report that shred is alive and well in the 21st century, as you well know. With young monsters like Alexi Laiho of Children of Bodom, Jon Donais of Shadows Fall, and Nevermore’s Jeff Loomis stalking in our midst, hot alternate picking is once again the monster ape of our jungle.

      Key Players

      John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra, Shakti, solo)

      Meeting of the Spirits, Inner Mounting Flame (1972)

      Mind Ecology, Natural Elements (1977)

      Al Di Meola (Return to Forever, solo)

      Flight Over Rio, Elegant Gypsy (1977)

      Mediterranean Sundance, Friday Night in San Francisco (1980)

      Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs, Steve Morse Band, Deep Purple)

      The Great Spectacular, Dregs of the Earth (1980)

      Tumeni Notes, High Tension Wires (1989)

      Steve Vai

      The Attitude Song, Flex-Able (1984)

      Tony MacAlpine

      The Stranger, Edge of Insanity (1986)

      Paul Gilbert (Racer X, Mr. Big)

      Scarified, Second Heat (1988)

      Alex Skolnick (Testament, solo)

      Perilous Nation, Practice What You Preach (1989)

      Dimebag Darrell (Pantera, DamagePlan)

      Cemetery Gates, Cowboys from Hell (1990)

      Rise, Vulgar Display of Power (1992)

      John Petrucci (Dream Theater, G3)

      Pull Me Under, Images and Words (1992)

      FLEX BUILDERS

      indicates a downstroke.

      Alt 1

      Alt-picking this exercise doesn’t start to feel tricky at all until you get to the 4th string (D). When you jump between the 5th and 4th strings, it can seem counterintuitive to use an upstroke. While this is the tough part to master, it’s also the key to all the power in alternate picking.

      This can be hard, but over time it gets easier—and your speed will definitely increase. Do not speed up your metronome or drum loop until you can do the exercise flawlessly. Once you start to get that under your fingers, start back at the top, but this time begin with a downstroke instead of an upstroke. Repeat until you are just as fluid with down-up-down-up as you are with up-down-up-down. Now do every scale you know until your fingers fall off. (You should never practice to the point of pain or stiffness. Always warm up, and play these and our other Shred! exercises only as long as your fingers feel relaxed. When you start to tighten up, you’re tearing down, not building,

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