Shreditation Follow-up

(Due in part to the surprising amount of views the original Shreditation post received, here is another article, which will further expound on visualization technique... the regular shred madness posts and videos shall resume shortly.)

Last time, I left off with a basic visualization practice to use along with a legato piece I'd written. I'd like to start off even simpler this time; let's work on any short lick which you haven't fully mastered. It can even be something as simple as a single chord; it really doesn't matter. The only two rules are that it must be short, and it must be difficult for you.

I want your practice to be painstaking, for now. If you decided to tackle a lick, all notes are to be articulate and even in volume, and all physical movement economical and relaxed. If you are working on a chord, play it slow enough that all of your fretting hand fingers are moving to their destinations at the exact same time. Make sure each note in the chord is fretted well by arpeggiating it (play it one string at a time). Above all, make sure this feels easy before you move on.

The key here is your own awareness of what it feels like when you are doing everything correctly. Think about how it feels for both of your hands when they are working in perfect coordination, listen to the sound the guitar is producing when you've done everything right. How do you feel? Be aware of as much as possible; we are going to need to recall this information for our shreditation.

After you've practiced thoroughly, sit comfortably. Close your eyes, and slow your breathing; count along with your inhalations and exhalations, keeping them the same length of time. Neither inhale nor exhale maximally; just keep things comfortably slow. Once you feel fully relaxed (don't fall asleep!), the shreditation starts.

Picture yourself where you normally practice; as mentioned in the previous article, the more details you can recall, the better. Imagine the typical temperature of the room, what it smells like, etc... we want to make your brain feel like you're actually there. Then, see yourself playing whatever you decided to practice before, but see yourself gradually doing it faster, better, while recalling all the playing details you became aware of in practice earlier. Do not allow any negative thoughts to take control; if any slip in, keep concentrating on the idea of your own perfection, and they will fade away.

The goal is to convince yourself that you can achieve incredible swiftness or accuracy by envisioning just that, while recalling the feelings you noted earlier, of correct playing and effortlessness. Regularly using shreditation will, at the least, aid in removing mental roadblocks and enhance confidence, which when combined with typical practice will yield tremendous results. Keep these visualization sessions down to approximately 10 minutes daily, but don't keep eyeing the clock; if you go too short or too long sometimes, it won't matter, but constantly breaking the visualization to check the time will.

If you have any questions or comments about mental techniques, fire away! More articles and videos are on their way; stay tuned!

Wanna Be Good, Maybe Great? Come On Y'all, Let's Al-ter-nate!

Pick, that is. Nothing else quite sounds like an electric guitar firing off a salvo of precise alternate picked runs; the "arrrgh! I mean business!" factor simply can't be matched by any other instrument (no matter what you say). For the maximum in sonic assault, alternate picking is your weapon of choice.

In this post, I'm going to show you how to take ordinary alternate picked 16th note patterns, that are 16 notes long and phrase all nice and tidy, and spice them up a bit by adding 2 notes (creating 16th note patterns that are 18 notes long). This will turn an otherwise cool, but plain-sounding run, into a whirling vortex of ear-bullets. Here's what I mean; take a gander at this D minor idea...

Finished gandering? It certainly sounds nice as is, but if we add 2 notes to it, we can make it sound much more complicated; how about we repeat the A and G in beat 4 of measure 1, and the D and C in beat 4 of measure 2? Let's see...

EXAMPLE 1:

Whoa! Our humble little pattern, perfectly happy to last exactly one measure before beginning anew, has mutated into a monster more at home in 9/8! What have you done, Apex Shredator!?!? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!??!?

As you can see, by adding the two notes to the run, we now have something that doesn't quite fit into 1 measure anymore, but that's what's cool about it. We have a pattern which, when played over a chord progression in 4/4, doesn't sound quite so pattern-y. To land on my feet in the above example, I finish off by running through the scale linearly, and ending squarely on D.

Let's check out some other 18 note runs I constructed from standard patterns; runs-of-the-mill, if you will.

EXAMPLE 2: A 3 measure descending delight...

EXAMPLE 3: and a Michael Angelo Batio-sounding thing...

Here's a video of me playing all three. I hope you enjoy it, and please, give me feedback!

Until next time, keep firing off salvoes of whirling vortexes... of ear-bullets.

Shreditation

You're practicing your butt off, slaving over alternate picked runs in lydian augmented mode until they're perfect, but despite all the effort you hit the stage and immediately become afflicted with a terrible case of the sucks. "Gee whiz", you exclaim, "those licks worked out fine at home. What went wrong!?" Well, I'll tell ya what went wrong... your brain.

Playing the guitar at a high level, much the same as any other physical activity, requires both movement practice AND "brain practice". Since I dig ludicrous word-play, I hereby dub it "shreditation" for you guitar nuts. If you want to get the most out of your guitar playing, and your life in general, you must shreditate.

Sound like hocus-pocus? It's not. In a 2004 study, it was concluded that the subjects were actually able to increase physical strength merely by thinking about it; they visualized making strong contractions for 15 minutes, 5 days a week, over a 12 week period, and increased strength between 13.5% and a whopping 35%, depending on the movement. Again, that is with no physical training at all, only using visualization. Imagine what results you could get from combining the two!

While I'm not aware of any studies examining musicians and visualization, there's certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence, and there's obviously a strong connection between what one thinks and what one does. How can we use this to enhance our guitar playing? While there are a multitude of mental practices one can use, we will start simply.

Our shreditation will consist only of visualization exercises for now; namely, you will spend a bit of time simply imagining a specific thing. First, loads of legato for you to learn:

Spend an ample amount of time learning the piece first, and once it's memorized, the shreditation starts. After practicing the piece as you normally would, I want you to then sit comfortably, close your eyes, and envision yourself playing it flawlessly. Get as detailed as possible in your visualization; "feel" the strings under your fingers, hear the notes, and believe that it's all completely effortless. Imagine you can play it better than anyone else ever could, and don't think for a second that it's hard in any way.

Apply this technique to any specific exercise or piece you are working on, but be specific. The more general your visualization is, the less you shall gain from it. Give it 10 minutes daily for a month, and let me know the results! In a future article, I will discuss further tactics one can employ to get your brain squarely on your side.

Frosted Mini Sweeps

What does a shredder do when they wake up, if their goal is smiting all other guitarists before them? Why, consume a big bowl of KILLogg's Frosted Mini Sweeps, of course! In this post, I'll show you how to use the sweeping technique to create small patterns within one position while crossing all six strings; it's terrifying. Get your spoon ready.

While you can look at this first example as a sequence of arpeggios, it's easier to simply think of it as being derived from D minor pentatonic (D F G A C), with a couple of notes from D natural minor (E and Bb) thrown in. Observe:

The picking pattern is really simple and repetitive throughout the descending (down up up up down) and ascending (up down down down up) sections, but you'll want to watch out for the left hand. While everything's nice and close, keeping in position, the numerous instances of rolls (12th fret on one string to 12th fret on the next) can prove troublesome; it's real easy to lose articulation here. Practice those parts especially slow, aiming to have the initial note stop sounding before you hit the next.

Problem number two is that the example is all quintuplets; 5 notes per click on the metronome. If you aren't used to playing these, I recommend practicing the example as 16th notes grouped in fives (so, exactly what's written, but 4 notes per click). In fact, playing a more "normal" rhythm like 16th notes grouped in odd numbers will have a tremendous effect on your ability to play odd-tuplets, but I'll discuss that in more detail later. For now, so let it be written, so let it be done.

On to the next example, an idea I like to use based on flavor #2 from this dashing fellow's post. Check it:

Looks and sounds deadly, but it's just D minor pentatonic all the way through... with sweeping... and large legato stretches... grouped as septuplets...

Yeah, yeah, calm down... once you can get the first 7 notes ascending and descending, the rest is pretty easy. Use your index finger for all 10th fret notes, middle for 12, ring for 13, and pinky for 14 and 15. If you aren't used to playing septuplets, and no sane individual is, please practice the example as 16ths grouped in 7s, similar to before. Now, I did say please. Don't make me get all Mr. Grady and have to correct you.

Practice these ideas, and then see where else you can transplant them; for example, using the picking from pattern one in any of the 3 note per string mode shapes will yield interesting results. If you have any questions/comments, I wanna hear 'em!  Have fun!