Want to play Shred licks?
Many players would agree that alternate picking chops are the foundation of “Shredding”… And almost all the teachers, from me, to Silvio Gazquez, to Paul Gilbert, all advocate building up your picking chops on a single string, first.
But where do you go from there? And how do you play something fast that also sounds musical?
One of most the musical but short phrases involves simply going up and down a 3 note section of a scale…(at a fast tempo, its more musical sounding to me than simply repeating notes going up or down). And you can do this on a single string. For example, B C D C B C D C etc… Try coming up with some of your own musical ideas based on this kind of pattern…
Here’s my idea of the day:
As with any 4 note pattern, you can repeat this on multiple strings and get the same “down up down up” picking pattern.
Let’s try this on 4 strings of the C major scale, starting on the B note, and repeating the lick 4 times on each string before going to the next string.
Crank the tempo up to 200 bpm, and we have some genuine shred guitar. wow…
To finish the phrase, i’m just continuing the pattern for 3 more notes, sliding up from the 10th fret to the 12th fret with my pinky on the last note , giving it some vibrato and a final slide down.
More to come! 🙂
