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I have been playing a couple of tracks recently one to help my alternate picking the other to help my phrasing, the tracks are “Curse of Castle Dragon“ by Paul Gilbert and “Gone“ by Andy Timmons. Whilst learning these tracks I came across a couple of great string skipping licks that I thought would make good exercises. I have recorded both examples played at a slow speed follow by the correct tempo. The first example is from “Gone“, I have included the actual lick on the video immediately after the fast version (it is at 0:45). As you can hear from my example I still haven’t got it down perfectly yet but that is what examples like this are for, increasing your coordination and accuracy.

If you want to make this even harder you might want to try alternate picking the entire example, start very slowly and increase the tempo as you get comfortable with it.

The second example is a string skipped arpeggio with a tapped slide, not a particularly easy example to master but fun! You might have a bit of difficulty at first with the stretch so break it down into sections, try first working on the first 3 notes making sure your pull-offs are equally timed and clear, then move on to playing the first 6 notes over and over etc. Finally work up to playing the arpeggio without the tapping slide and then once you are comfortable introduce the tapping.

This week I was listening to Megadeth’s ‘Countdown to Extinction‘ and it suddenly struck me that Marty Friedman’s solo in the track ‘Sweating Bullets’ was almost a technical exercise covering a few techniques which I thought was worth sharing.

UPDATE: Reader Yann pointed out that this solo was actually played by Dave Mustaine which when you think about it makes much more sense. Thanks for the info Yann!

As you can see I recorded a video of myself playing the solo using a backing track I found on guitarbt.com and I have tabbed a few examples that I thought would be useful for both beginners and advanced players. The first example is the chromatic run staring at 0:23 and ending around 0:28 in the video above. This is a great alternate picking exercise and you need to be very precise with your left and right hand coordination. For beginners this is a great exercise as I always find descending runs more tricky than ascending. Use a metronome or if you have Guitar Pro download the tab for this song and use the trainer feature which I set to start at 50% of the actual tempo and each loop it automatically increments slightly giving you a chance to build up speed for the lick. If not use a metronome, start slowly (80bpm maybe) and concentrate on playing every note with a quick clean attack, try to keep your left hand relaxed. I have tabbed the example as triplets but you can still think of them as 3 sets of 4. If you’re confused just forget the actual notation and concentrate on the tab and playing the 4 notes per string, then as you get more comfortable work up to quaver triplets at 165bpm as per the record. The tab for this example is below:

Example 1

The 2nd lick I have tabbed is the palm muted ascending triplets that immediately follow Example 1. Again this lick uses alternate picking starting with a downstroke and ends with a pull-off (G-F-E) and ending on a crotchet F ready for the final example. Use your palm to mute the strings until the final 2 beats of the second bar (the pull-off lick).

Example 2

The 3rd and final lick is the section that follows Example 2. This part is a really great exercise in hammer-ons and pull-offs. The entire lick except for the final beat of the last bar are all quaver triplets and you need to focus on keeping these consistent and the hammer-ons and pull-offs smooth. The 1st and 3rd bars are the same pattern moved down a string but pay attention to the pattern in the 2nd bar which is a little trickier in a descending form. The final bar is a simple alternate picked descending pentatonic run.

Example 3

I hope you enjoyed this departure from my usual posts to share a few playing tips and tricks, if you want more like this why not use the feedback tab and add an item to my UserVoice Feedback forum.

If you want to buy the official TAB book for ‘Countdown To Extinction’ I have included a product link below.

On saturday I finally got around to recording a video using my new Ibanez JS1000BP and one of Steve Vai’s recently released Naked Tracks (see my post about the release here). I chose “Answers” from Passion & Warfare not because it is easy but because it… no wait it was because it is easy. Lets face it, attempting a Steve Vai track in one take is no mean feat so I decided to take some of the pressure off by editing the track down into its original form in Ableton Live 7, the actual Naked Track has an extended solo section which would have meant a couple minutes of improvising which would have meant mistakes which would have meant all day recording takes…

I decided to promote this video a little on Facebook and Steve Vai’s forum and the next thing I know it had been favourited on Steve Vai’s YouTube channel. Now I’m no fool, I know Steve didn’t add this literally himself, but it is nice to know that one of Vai’s team thought it was worth the add and so far it has earned me the prestigious honour of “#30 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Musicians - Australia“ which apparently doesn’t take much as I’ve only had 539 views! But hey you’re going to watch it aren’t you? Great thanks, lets see what it takes to break into the 20’s!

I will be attempting more of Steve Vai’s tracks, it is great having the actual track to play over rather than a fan made recording with dodgy midi instruments, but I should really slot in a review of my JS1000 before that (which gives me time to decide on a track and learn it!).

UPDATE: I’ve risen to #14! ooh yeah, there’s no stopping me now!

UPDATE: I’ve hit number 10 with 1073 views!

After recently featuring BluesJamTracks.com on Guitar Noize (see here) I was not only inspired to record some audio of myself playing over the Larry Carlton track (see my review for the audio) but I was inspired enough to finally get my arse in gear and record a video for the Guitar Noize YouTube channel. The video embedded on the left is my rendition of Guthrie Govan’s solo over Cold Winter Blues, the Contemporary Blues collection all come with audio and video samples of Guthrie playing over the backing tracks and include a pdf and powertab transcription. So now you are probably thinking I’m incapable of improvising… damnit now I’m going to have to record a whole series of BluesJamTracks!

Check out BluesJamTracks.com for more backing tracks. Also check out BluesJamTracks on YouTube to hear Guthrie Govan and Ainsley Lister jamming!

Update: I forgot to mention what I used to record this video. The guitar is a ‘94 Patrick Eggle Berlin Stage going directly into a Vox AD50VT and then due to the lack of a decent mic, straight out into a Tapco audio interface and finally into my Macbook Pro. The tone is a hell of a lot better if you don’t bypass the power amp’s 12AX7 tube like this.