Guitar Noize - guitar news, crazy guitar designs and cool guitar videos

You may have seen recently that I reviewed the Ultimate Guitar: Speed Soloing Techniques by Andy James instructional DVD from Lick Library. Well Lick Library were kind enough to also send me Metal Edge: Metal Soloing Techniques Volume 2 by Andy James which is designed to increase your musical knowledge with an arsenal of licks and techniques including string skipping, sweep picking, tapping techniques, alternate picking, metal rhythm techniques using tracks written by Andy James himself. There are 3 tracks that Andy dissects, “Flight Of Icarus”, “Jump To Light Speed” and “Aftershock” you can get to the full performance of each of these tracks at any time on the DVD by going to the Performances section. The backing Jam Tracks for each of these are also available to download from the LickLibrary.com website.

This DVD has a different style of tuition to the “Speed Soloing” DVD being more performance based as Andy tackles each section of the track rather than concentrating on quick licks and riffs to illustrate a technique. This means that you are learning fairly large chunks at a time that encompass many different facets of Andy’s technique. “Flight of Icarus” (See video above) is a Neo-Classical sounding track that involves passages of alternate picking, arpeggios, string skipping and tapping in fact almost every technique that Andy uses. This is challenging in itself but is made even more tricky by the lack of Tabs which mean you need to memorise as you go. I mentioned this with my review of “Speed Soloing” but with this DVD it does involve a little more concentration because of the length of each example. This isn’t to say that the DVD is not useful though, the tracks are all fantastic studies and I feel like I learn more watching Andy James play for 5 minutes than I do sitting practicing for an hour!

The 2nd track “Jump To Light Speed” starts off with an incredible tapping and string skipping arpeggio section which is some of the scariest and most impressive guitar playing you are ever likely to see, and that’s just the opening 45 seconds! The next section launches into a super fast alternate picking section a la Paul Gilbert, in fact this track is very Racer X except with more tapping. Of course each section is broken down by Andy into bite size chunks and the excellent camera work shows in detail how each pattern should be played and of course the backing track is available from LickLibrary.com. I’d love to be able to play this one up to speed (although with a 3 week old baby in the house my time is incredibly limited!) it would certainly be an impressive track to have in your repertoire!

With each track you can choose to watch the complete performance or the broken down lesson section by section, that is you can choose Verse, Chorus and Main Solo etc. each lesson is subdivided into chapters which let you skip from each sub-section or pattern to make it nice an easy to navigate.

The final track again utilises all of the techniques discussed previously although this one has more of a metal chord based riff to begin with and a slow melodic passage before the shredding takes off and then it is alternate picking, sweep arpeggios with tapping and huge bends to really get your fingers hurting. There is also a multi-finger tapping section that is very Steve Vai, in fact it is similar to the intro to ‘Building The Church’ and a cool technique to learn, I guarantee it will impress your guitar playing friends.

Andy James is by far one of the most talented Metal shredders in the world and a great resource for learning how to construct instrumentals and guitar solos this DVD along with part 1 will definitely have you ripping up and down the fretboard with both hands in not time as long as you are prepared to realise that it will take a lot of time and practice to get anywhere near the level of his playing.

Metal Edge: Metal Soloing Techniques Volume 2 by Andy James on LickLibrary.com

Part 1 available from Amazon.com:

You should follow me on twitter @guitarnoize