shredding run

[flying_whale]

Hi steve and everyone from the board.
Could you guys recommend me (and post a tab please) of a shredding run, than i can practice to get my alternate picking technique toghether before i start the lessons with steve when he starts the program (I will PM you later, Steve about the lessons, as soon as i have my mother's blessing and money ).
Thanks,
Paul

P.S.
I'm sorry for not putting up the support banner yet. Imageshack and html are verry anal towards me today. I will have it up soon.

rock on everybody
P.P.s How are you feeling Steve?

 

[JBroll]

I can give two - first, just use scales (major, minor, harmonic, whatever you want to use) and chromatics (full scale or just the simpler 1-2-3-4 pattern) up and down anywhere you intend to play.

For example, two B harmonic minor shapes
E----------------------------------------9-10-12-14-12-10-------------------------------------------------
B--------------------------------8-11-12------------------14-12-11----------------------------------------
G------------------------7-9-11------------------------------------12-11-9--------------------------------
D----------------8-9-11-----------------------------------------------------12-11-9-----------------------
A--------7-9-10----------------------------------------------------------------------13-10-9--------------
E-7-9-10--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------12-10-9-7-6...

E---------------------------------------------12-14-15-14-12--------------------------------------------
B---------------------------------11-12-14-15----------------15-14-12-11-------------------------------
G-------------------------9-11-12-----------------------------------------12-11-9-----------------------
D----------------8-9-11-12----------------------------------------------------12-11-9-8-----------------
A--------7-9-10-------------------------------------------------------------------------10-9-7-----------
E-7-9-10---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------10-9-7-6--

and a 1-2-3-4 thing

E---------------------------------------------1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2--------------------------------------------
B------------------------------------1-2-3-4-------------------5-4-3-2-----------------------------------
G---------------------------1-2-3-4------------------------------------5-4-3-2---------------------------
D------------------1-2-3-4------------------------------------------------------5-4-3-2------------------
A---------1-2-3-4------------------------------------------------------------------------5-4-3-2---------
E-1-2-3-4-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5-4-3-2

for your shredding pleasure. Get a metronome ( metronomeonline.com works if you can be by the computer when you practice), practice four notes to a click, make the metronome go faster, practice some more, et cetera, until you're where you want to be.

Jeff

 

[flying_whale]

the scales i've practiced them hell, and i realized just playing scales at 4million bpms doesn't really help in a somewhat real solo like playing situation. The chromatic thing i knew, and i still practice it for finger strenghtening on my acoustic.
Thanks anyway!

Any other more shredding run ideas?
gracias,
Paul

 

[JBroll]

If you have that already, then, just use fragments to make your own lines - set a metronome to about 100 and don't stop playing sixteenth notes, and if you get bored or start repeating yourself try to break out of 'the box'. As for specific examples, groups of five and seven work well on their own or incorporated into runs with each other, as shown by Rusty Cooley (who Jeff Loomis recommends quite strongly as far as instructional videos go, if memory serves). For example, to identify fives and sevens in a short sequence in Bm (play as sixteenth notes for easiest counting), eliminating the dreaded 'help! My playing sounds sterilized and the gear shift is stuck on triplets!' bug that hit the eighties way too hard;

---f....i....v...e......-----------s...e...v...e...n.........--repeat
e--19-17-15-17-19-20-19-17------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------
b------------------------------------20-19-17-19-20-19-17-----|------------------------------------------------------
g------------------------------------------------------------------19|-18-16-14-16-18-19-18-16------------------------------
d---------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------19-17-16-17-19-17-16-14----

et cetera. Using patterns like these (don't use the same thing over and over again, learn to think on your feet) will make you sound much more flowing and non-mechanical. Scale patterns build the machines, learning to construct sequences like these (which took me longer to type out than to pick out on the guitar) at a moment's notice will actually put them to work. Think about odd note groupings, don't blaze tastelessly, and remember dynamics - if you slow down by three notes per second but use dynamic control so the notes you do play stand out, you'll sound faster than you would have if you kept playing robotically even at higher tempos. Will provide clips of this and other sequence stuff if asked, so if it doesn't make much sense from the tab...

Jeff

 

[flying_whale]

Thank you verry much Jeff! I will practice that lick later the day. If you can please post a clip.
Thanks,
Paul

 

[JBroll]

Ok, I couldn't figure out how to evenly space the tab, as the fonts weren't working - but you play all the notes on one string before doing the ones on the next, as my now over-spaced tab shows, just no gaps and all sixteenth notes.

Here's the thing slow, then a bit faster (but sloppy as it was the only take I could do), and then another sequence that sounds a hell of a lot faster than it really is and that I'll tab out when I'm not so pissed off at the text editor.

I hope there's not too much beeping bled in from the metronome, I only used one on the first one so if the beeps are there... ignore them! I'll do a better sample-like thing over a backing track when I have some free time.

Click here to watch Sample-17-58

Jeff

 

[Nebulous]

!! Nice playing man!

 

[JBroll]

I think it's a mess, but if it gets the point across, that's all I can ask for.

Now, this brings us to another pair of points - (1), recording yourself playing is a great way of hearing mistakes and things to improve, as I rediscover every time I look over this because I think I dropped a note, and (2), if you're going to judge your playing based on a recording, make sure you space the timing out so that parents/significant others/any other kind of high-gain-shred-unfriendly-beings won't be coming in at inopportune times giving you about a minute to actually put something on disk. That said, practice just making these up - I didn't actually practice the first sequence on there, it just came out as I was typing it (but is similar to a lot of other things I do, like the third run I did in that recording) and so that was recording it at basically the second time I had spent trying to play it. If you get to the point where you're at 80% of the speed you think you need as far as improvising sequences, you may not think you're doing much but (unless you consider six notes a second to be really pumping it) chances are that you'll sound like you're burning to the audience. Get your sixteenth notes on scales up to around 180-220 bpm territory and the sequences will be a breeze.

Jeff

 

[flying_whale]

Jeff, is by any chance your last name "Loomis"?

thank you verry much for the recording, i will practice then more scale and modes and crap like that just for the sake of alternate picking. Thank you verry much for the advice.
Anyway, i will try jeff's first psalm of lydia solo (tabbed in guitarworld) to practice as a lick too, after i get bored of scales and modes.

Muchas gracias amigos. i won't fail spanish this year

 

[JBroll]

I wish, but I'm not quite as Swedish (brown-haired Polish/German) and I seem to have a bit of trouble remembering the licks I'm trying to play while right in the middle of them, so I think I have some work to do.

Jeff

 

[flying_whale]

and i still suck at alternate picking... I'm getting better at the lick you posted jeff, i'm now stuck at 16ths on scales at 80bpm (yep i suck), but that will change when i will had taken lessons with teh master, steve

 

[JBroll]

Metronomes are your friend. Metrosexual gnomes, not quite so much, unless you happen to be into that sort of thing, but fortunately there's no real connection between little boxes that click a gazillion times a minute and two-foot-tall people who make clicking sounds when people recite poetry.

That third bit will finally be bloody tabbed, hopefully this looks less nonsensical - just the first part will be posted, it's just moving down sequentially in fifths to the bottom of the neck (a 7 string, yes, in case you were wondering where all those frets came from) so you can fill in the rest of this:


E-17-15-13-15-17-15-13-----------------------------13----
B--------------------------------17-15-13-15-17---------------17-15-13


EDIT: I completely overspaced them on purpose because they still don't look right with these fonts; you play seven notes on E, then five notes on B, then one on E, and then three more on B, all evenly spaced time-wise. END EDIT:

and that's in A minor (technically Ab, because I'm also down a half step, but as it's tabbed out it would be in A minor if you were to play it in standard tuning). What's nice about that one and the other one is that they sound very seamless because there are no intervals larger than a second - so if you move it down by a third or a fifth, it will keep this seamless sound. That said, it may be easier to learn it by practicing it down fourths or just down a step at a time, but you'll get the most out of it in a soloing context by (1) sticking to this 'seamless' interval selection and (2) not playing it four to a beat and at the same level all the time - if you squeeze the notes in differently, say six sequences to four beats (so it would be a triplet run without the typical sterilized triplet sound), and accentuate the down beats (which in this case happen to be an arpeggio, in this example A A D F - a D minor arpeggio) it'll sound like you're doing a hell of a lot more than you really are. Good luck with that - and remember, metronome all you can ( metronomeonline.com if you have no other option... use it! and if you don't know how to use them effectively, PM me!) and learn how to do this over backing tracks and chord progressions as much as you can.

Jeff

 

[Noumenon]

hey JBroll. wrap the tabs in [-code-] [-/code-] (without the -) and they will be displayed with courier new, a fixed font witdh face

like this

-0-
-6-
-7-
-7-
-5-
-x-

 

[JBroll]

I'm using FixedSys because Linux should have a font equivalent to that, but (1) it never shows up right when it's posted and (2) it remains in the default non-fixed font when I'm editing it, and I can't count all of those bloody dashes.

Jeff

 

[flying_whale]

jeff, are you using linux too? i just switched back to windows, because i got pissed on ubuntu, after using 2 years of gentoo and slackware.
jeff, what gear did you use to record that clip? (gear as in guitar amp and pickups)

 

[JBroll]

I'm using Ubuntu right now, on my laptop - would love to use Fedora 5 but it doesn't like my ACPI. I love not having to reboot every twenty minutes but I have to use the other computer for recording as the laptop doesn't have a half-decent input and I have Windows on this one too for Half Life.

That was a Schecter C-7 Blackjack (can't recall if it was the bridge JB or the neck 59, I think it was the neck but I'll have to check) through a TS7 into a Crate XT120 Lead channel, with moderate gain and no effects into a transformerless SM57. I don't like the sound on its own very much but that fits extremely well in mixes.

As far as gain goes, there will be a point in your amp's gain travel where you get that kind of smooth, compressed, liquid sound rather than a note and fuzz. That's not a whole lot of gain in either the TS or the amp, but that amp channel is pretty compressed so that liquid territory is easy to get to. Playing cleanly is key because open string noise is so easy to pull out (you may hear an open note or two for a split second, that's coming through full muting with both hands so you really have to be precise) and picking is very noticeable so that has to be very precise. I'd recommend practicing with both a clean sound, so you know you're hitting things right, and too much gain, so your muting and picking problems are brought out. As far as EQ, I don't consider it to be that important because once you reach that liquid-y kind of stage the EQ doesn't shape the sound so much as fit it into the proper mix, but if you're just looking for basic gear - high-gain solo channel, tube screamer, and I'm now thinking that was probably my neck pickup for a rounder sound.

Jeff

 

[Liverslapper]

JBroll for a "messy" clip though i dont think it was that messy, i am VERY curious to know what else you have...can you post some of your work i was impressed by that run you did,

and from the way your guitar sounds, definatly the C-7

 

[Noumenon]

hey jeff. I couldn't follow you on that groups of five and seven.
do you play a sequence of like 19 17 15 14 12 and then start over at like 17 15 14 12 10 ? or do you mean just five notes on one string then change string and do another set of notes?

 

[JBroll]

This is from a ton of people I've studied but the best explanation was from Rusty Cooley's videos. A 'five' in this case would be 19 17 15 17 19 or 15 17 19 17 15 and a seven would be 19 17 15 17 19 17 15 or 15 17 19 17 15 17 19. In the last lick I posted you can see the first set of notes, on the E string, is a seven of this kind (but down a whole step, in A minor) and the second set, on the B string, is a group of five in this manner. Rusty uses them independently and in five or seven notes per beat, I'll use them like that sometimes but more often incorporate them into other rhythmic groups - instead of playing just sevens and fives, I'll mix them and match them into a sixteenth-note measure like the one above, use them as part of a triplet or sextuplet run, something like that. This is just giving other prime numbers the same chance we've all given twos and threes, rather than just doing sequences in two, three, four, or six note bits this practice of fives and sevens adds on groups of... five and seven, ta-da!, so you won't sound as robotic.

Long story short, if you have notes A B and C, fives would be ABCBA or CBABC and sevens would be ABCBABC or CBABCBA (the second ones are just upside down), use unusual note groupings and rhythmic sequences (Loomis' solo on The Final Product - the pedal tone diminished bit - uses a six-note sequence grouped into four-note spacing, called a hemiola), and however you want to throw these things into one piece is your call (it's really not that complicated). The clip shows fives and sevens incorporated into a pair of runs, using those groups but still in sixteenth-note time, and how much more interesting and tonal they can sound than the typical 1234-2345-3456 bit. You can cross strings, you can do them up and down, sideways, backwards, with your teeth, whatever, it's just using a different note grouping.

Jeff

 

[Noumenon]

got it!