Well this is the first one. My practice schedule currently includes too much stuff to write about in one post. So I'm going to break it down 1 thing at a time. I stole this lick from Kirk Hammett on the song "Sad But True." It's a good one for a couple reasons: It works strict Alternate Picking, its great for vertical movement on the fretboard, and it can be transposed from any position on the neck. I don't want to get too involved in theory on here, because I'm no theory master, but what I mean by transpose is that this lick in the format its in now is in the D minor pentatonic scale. If you were to move it up the neck so that it would read 12-10-12 instead of 14-12-14 that would be the C minor pentatonic scale.
Let me break down how I practice this. First of all... if you listen to anyone around they say "YOU MUST PRACTICE WITH METRONOME OMG !@11ELEVEN!!!" Well, they are kind of right in my opinion. However, I fucking hate metronomes. They drive me crazy. I do believe its important to get build speed slowly and surely with some sort of beat you can change. This is why I use the program Guitar Pro. That picture up there is actually a screen shot of guitar pro. I take the song "Sad But True" and turn the tempo down and slowly increase until I fuck up. Then I practice the fastest I can do the lick cleanly and accurately. Rinse and Repeat until one day I can say... damn I moved up 5 beats per minute from last week! So if you hate metronomes like me, get guitar pro and use the drums in the song... The only thing I stress is turning off the guitar thats playing that lick so you hear YOURSELF playing it, and not the computer. Once I get a video camera I'll illustrate this better, but for now text will have to do.
On to the lick itself. This is done with strictly alternate picking. This means that after EVERY downstroke there is a following up stroke. Down-Up-Down-Up-Down-Up. It may seem more convienent if you move down a string to use 2 down strokes, but that is another technique called "Economy picking." This may take a while going really slow to get used to. It took me fucking forever just to learn the lick before I could even play it with the backing track.
Personally I start this with an upstroke. John Petrucci would say practice everything starting with both ups and downs, but frankly I don't have that much time. Starting on the upstroke with my ring finger for the 14th fretted notes, and index for the 12th fretted notes until the fragment that is 12-12-13-12-13-15-15-15. I switch that to Index for the 12's, Middle for the 13's, and pinky for the 15's. As far as the bend in there... I bend it up with my ring finger and move on to that next fragment.
Currently. I am stuck on 75 beats per minute on this lick. The song is played at a 93 beats per minute tempo, so I am about 3/4 the way there. Honestly the first time I played this I could do 65 pretty cleanly, and after 3 weeks i've moved up to 70-75 cleanly... slow progress, but I see no other way of accomplishing shred level speed without going through this.
Next time I will share one of my sweep picking exercises.
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