Shredding demystified? Maybe!

[Christian Schulze]

Whaddup folks!

So for a while now I was floating in Limbo so to speak. I did not know what to do with my guitar practice. Once day I wanted to become blues man 2000 and the next mister shredder. There is just so much stuff to learn after you got the basics down. After you know the basics, the road you need to take to get to the next level is hard, cause there are just too many detours.

On my daily youtube binge for guitar mastery info, I rediscovered a video that I remember floating around here:

And It resonated with me this time, specially after remembering something Jak said after a talk she had with Papa Gates: "In order to become better, one must focus on one thing at the time!". something that the guy in the video also said.

I used to have a practice sheet with a million of things to practice, a bit of sweeping, fretboard memorization, tapping,etc. Nothing much came from it....well some frustration for sure.

I kept watching this guys videos and stumbled upon this one:

Which is a free pfd file with a work sheet so to speak that is a roadmap to shreddsville. I contacted him, talked a bit and it all made sense to me. In order to run one sometimes needs to take a step back and analyze step by step on how to do it the most efficient way.

I highly encourage you guys to watch the videos, I will try to follow his worksheet...which will be at least a year commitment, but its for guitar! Patience is what I need now!

Thats all, cheers Fam!

Thats

 

[Calvin Phillips]

Its easier to focus one thing at a time. Not only is this a massive confidence booster cause you progress faster on that 1 thing rather then progressing a bit at a time on everything.

For example. First I startes with the g minor scale. Once I was confident.. i went into the arpeggios. (First caged major then minor to match g minor) Once they were memorized (not the sweeps but the ones themselves and positions) I went penatonic. Now.. im working on the sweeping side of it all. And joining oenatonix with sweeps and the whole scale all together when its time to shred. Once im confident there.. im going back to penatonics 3 1 3 patterns. I've already mapped them out.. just the work load now and practicing. I think doing 3 1 3 will help the sweeps so inshould have done them before the sweeps.

Basically though my point is that as I went to the next one I realized my other techniques just got better without working on them.. the confidence and timing all kept getting better and better. Now I feel I can pick pretty fast when I want to. And quite honestly I dont really stop to actually play the gminor scale much as a whole.. but rather trying out different positions as my descends are still sloppy. (Another area to focus separate. I also have added small licks like this when I can and the fingerings has improved a lot. More work to be done tho.

I have to get back into warming up before jams though. My first song is usually a little rough manly cause I'm not warmed up as much as I should be.

 

[Christian Schulze]

Its easier to focus one thing at a time. Not only is this a massive confidence booster cause you progress faster on that 1 thing rather then progressing a bit at a time on everything.

For example. First I startes with the g minor scale. Once I was confident.. i went into the arpeggios. (First caged major then minor to match g minor) Once they were memorized (not the sweeps but the ones themselves and positions) I went penatonic. Now.. im working on the sweeping side of it all. And joining oenatonix with sweeps and the whole scale all together when its time to shred. Once im confident there.. im going back to penatonics 3 1 3 patterns. I've already mapped them out.. just the work load now and practicing. I think doing 3 1 3 will help the sweeps so inshould have done them before the sweeps.

Basically though my point is that as I went to the next one I realized my other techniques just got better without working on them.. the confidence and timing all kept getting better and better. Now I feel I can pick pretty fast when I want to. And quite honestly I dont really stop to actually play the gminor scale much as a whole.. but rather trying out different positions as my descends are still sloppy. (Another area to focus separate. I also have added small licks like this when I can and the fingerings has improved a lot. More work to be done tho.

I have to get back into warming up before jams though. My first song is usually a little rough manly cause I'm not warmed up as much as I should be.

Uff, I gotta warm up a lot its like my machine needs some time to get into the work XD!

 

[Calvin Phillips]

I usually use my hands a lot at work so theybl usually are already warmed up.. I think its cause I haven't played at night just weekends lately. Life has been giving me curve balls lately and I haven't had the urge to play. Needs to change.