1. Alternate Picking – Play ANYTHING starting with either a down or up stroke.

2. Rhythm - Playing in groups of 3′s, 4′s, 5′s, 7′s, 9′s, 10′s ect. in any given situation.

3. Legato - Control, power, and volume when playing with hammers and pulls.

4. Sweep Picking - 2,3,4,5,6, and 7 string sweeps(major, minor, dim., arpeggios, sequenced pentatonics ect.),  clean and accurate, loud and proud.

Obviously there are a lot of other factors to consider, things like muting, combining techniques, stylistic elements, phrasing, vibrato ect., but this is my basic “Where I want to be at the end of all this” statement. I am still gathering my exercises and my resources for this project so please be patient until I can post my actual practice schedule. What I can say as of now is that I will be focusing my study on Guthrie Govan, Rusty Cooley, Martin Goulding, and Jeff Loomis. I am going to be pulling exercises from Guthrie’s Creative Techniques 2 book, Rusty’s Basic Training video, basically everything Martin writes for Guitar Techniques, and Jeff’s instructional. Additional material will probably come from songs by all of those guys and more than likely some Dream Theater, Protest the Hero, Kiko Louierio and that sort of stuff. I should have a good update within a week.

Looking forward to the journey

Ty

5.) Mike Campese – GIT honors grad and solo artist Mike Campese is guy that not too many people have really heard of. Some of what the things I feel are pretty unique about him are his intervallic lines and his melodies in general. He has released his music ranging from pop instruments, neoclassical metal, fusion, acoustic instrumentals, and now Christmas music. I can’t even imagine what’s next.

 4.) Shawn Lane – The late Shawn Lane brought a lot to the table as a musician. He could throw down some great rock guitar, amazing jazz and fusion guitar, and play authentic Indian classical music. Overall he had a very unique phrasing and style. Oh, did I mention on his first album he played all of the instruments? That’s guitars, keyboards, bass and drums, the whole nine yards.

3.) Alex Skolnick – Veteran guitarist Alex Skolnick is an absolutely amazingly driven musician. He hit it big with his thrash band Testament in the 80’s, left them to study jazz and started his jazz project, Alex Skolnic Trio, and the joined the Christmas metal project that is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. His diversity alone is so amazingly impressive I couldn’t have kept him off this list.

2.) Marty Friedman – Most people know Marty Friedman from his days in Megadeth. A few years back he left to pursue his love of J-Pop, which is Japanese pop music. As strange as this may sound, when you consider the exotic flavor and fantastic phrasing and melody of Friedman’s playing, it was an obvious route. If you thought he had some amazing exotic shred and unique solo’s in Megadeth, you should check out how far he has come in Japan.

1.) Steve Vai – Does this even require explanation? Steve Vai is the master of guitar. He used to be a transcriber for Frank Zappa, then he played with Zappa, did a stint in Whitesnake, plays on tons of records, and releases solo albums. He writes the most interesting music you’d ever want to hear, shreds like hell, writes killer melodies and very complex harmonies, and composes modern classical music. Vai is truly a master musician.

5.)  Paul Gilbert – Amazing technical rock  guitarist. He can throw down some of the most insane string skipping licks I’ve ever come across, has insane picking chops, legato and tapping are great. An all around great guitar player. Ranked at number 5 simply because he doesn’t write in my style of choice, and I do like his writing style alot, but I don’t love it.

4.) Synyster Gates – The youngest guy here by a long shot. I know alot of people hate Avenged Sevenfold for reasons I can’t seem to comprehend, so we wont even go there. Fact of the matter is, he can fucking play. Great sweeping and alternate picking chops. What really impresses me about him is the fact that everything he does is so tasteful and out of the ordinary. When he plays fast it’s rarely a typical shred pattern and his jazz influence comes through, which is awesome.

3.) Chris Broderick – Most of you have probably heard of him now since he is the new guitarist in Megadeth, so you probably know that he is one badass shredder. Broderick plays 7-string guitars exclusively, which is fantastic. He can play everything from metal to jazz to classical (true classical guitar) and everything else under the sun it seems. Most impressive is his 8-finger tapping, although he does have some serious chops all around the board. The thing that most stands out to me is his amazing versatility.

2.) John Petrucci – Dream Theater is one of my favorite bands. and I think every guitarist out there has heard of John Petrucci. The fact that he does all of the crazy odd meters and unisions with keyboard in Dream Theater are a really unique part of his sound. He is a great alternate picker, and what I love about his picking is that he picks with authority. He really pounds his strings, and his tone is better because of it. He is also a guy that is always learning new things as you can hear throughout his career with Dream Theater. Truly one of the greats.

1.) Rusty Cooley – Probably the fastest shredder out there today, by alot. He can alternate pick like a motherfucker, has the most insane sweeping chops I’ve ever seen, has a very unique tapping style and has, in my opinion, more impressive legato technique that Allan Holdsworth. Other things Cooley excels are his wide stretch licks and odd rhythms that were inspired by Shawn Lane, four finger per string licks, and just generally pwning everyone that has ever picked up a guitar at everything. He also has great phrasing and is incredibly melodic, what could be better?

Now the things to watch here is the rythm and swtiching strings. The one note on the other string will help your string switching while retaining a smooth tempo. Learn the phrase first and then do it tremolo picking. This will help your tremolo picking agility. Make sure to use your pinky on this exercise. It will make it tricky at first, but will help build up your pinky strength.When switching strings, move your picking hand with your elbow. Your wrist should be doing the picking motion and your elbow should be moving your picking hand to the string needing to be picked.

Take these phrases and use them in different keys, change some notes, whatever.

Well, it’s offical. After losing two singers and a keyboard player, Outworld is broken up for good. This comes as particularly sad news for me, as Outwolrd was one of my favorite bands. It’s a real shame considering that they only released one album and had their followup in the works. It may be fore the best though, as they were changing directions to a more “Meshugga” kind of a sound, which for me would probably be enough that I wouldn’t listen to them anymore as I can’t stand the cookie-monster vocals. For those of you who are interested in that sort of thing, there is good news on the horizon.

Cooley has started a new project with former Dream Theater and successful solo artist Derek Sherinian. They are already signed and are currently looking for a vocalist. They want someone who is “James Hetfield and Meshugga”, with no operatic vocals allowed. This sucks for me but might be good for some of you and will probably make it more approachable to the underground metal scene. I suppose if it’s more Hetfield, I’ll be happy, but it doesn’t look good to me at this point. Well, here’s hoping we didn’t lose a great prog band just to get a new cookie monster scream band.

Following in the footsteps of my last review, I will be staying the progressive metal realm. Dream Theater are quite possibly the best progressive metal band out there today, they helped to define this genre in the late 1980’s and found their success in the 1990’s which continues today. For this review I chose the 1999 album “Metropolis pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory”, as it is a standout among the Dream Theater discography.

The first important thing to note is that this is a concept album, so all of the songs are related and tell a story over the course of the album. I don’t want to get in to any details and ruin the fun of figuring it out yourself, but I will say that it is complex but very interesting. Next, this is a fairly heavy Dream Theater album; this is apparent songs like Strange Déjà Vu, Fatal Tragedy, and Home. The album also features some great ballads and softer songs, like One Last Time and The Spirit Carries On. As is typical with Dream Theater, it’s got loads of shred from all sides. Both guitarist John Petrucci and keyboardist Jordan Rudess show their insane chops on Fatal Tragedy and Home during the extended solo sections and trade-off leads. Mike Portnoy shows off his drumming throughout the album, but what do you expect from arguably the best drummer of all time? Bassist John Myung sticks to his typical tasteful and subtle bass style throughout, always adding to the songs and never getting too “shredy”. My highlight on this album is the same as what initially attracted me to the band, the amazing vocals of singer James Labrie. He does such an amazing job of adapting his voice to the characters and shows such control and beauty in his voice.

Overall, this is a great Dream Theater album, and a great concept album to boot. It’s heavy, it’s soft, it’s melodic, it’s shred, and it’s just the total package. If you’ve never listened to Dream Theater or progressive metal before, this is a fantastic place to start. This is also one of very few albums that I can sit and listen to start to finish, and never get bored or sick of it. This is a must have.

Overall rating – 5/5

Sweep Picking Exercise 2

Things to watch out for are the slides and hammer on and pull offs. Make sure to keep in time and keep the dynamics relatively the same as the rest of the lick.

For this exercise we will be looking at a technique I learned from Frank Gambale. When economy picking, one gets in trouble when changing direction sometimes. If you do 3 note per string runs and try to turn descend, you will have to do something to get your picking back on track. Watching which direction you start on each string, and how many notes you play per string is very important. Whatever direction you started with, if you pick an odd amount of notes and change strings, you will start the next string with the same directional pick you started off with. When turning around all one simply must do, is do an even amount of notes per string to change direction.

Economy Picking Exercise 1

Here we have a G Major scale. When economy picking it, we almost run into trouble on the high E string. If we were to do a third note, it would be down picked. To move back up and keep economy picking, we would need to put in one note alt picked, which isn’t a problem, but to keep the smooth flow of an economy picked run, it is better to do an even amount of notes like in this exercise. The second note is then an upstroke and you can now descend the scale economy picking everything.

Versailles - Noble - 2008

J-rock is an odd genre to look into. It is filled with many bands who would be categorized as Visual Kai. This sub-genre was popularized by the band X-Japan in the late80′s to early 90′s. The main aspect of it is the emphasis of the visual side of the band. Outrageous clothes and stage performances along with vibrant videos and album covers are some of what one will encounter in this sub-genre. The cool thing about it, is that it is not confined to one genre. Visual Kai artists come from all areas of rock and even some pop (see newer Miyavi). One of the newer artists is a neo-classical metal band by the name of Versailles, known as Versailles -Philharmonic Quintet- in America. The brainchild of Japanese guitarist Hizaki, they released their first full length, “Nobel” in 2008.Clocking in at a lengthy 66:01, this album is a nonstop onslaught of neo-classical shredding, brilliant operatic vocals, and beautifully crafted songs. To say neo-classical metal has been done to death is no longer a true statement. Versailles shows that you only need another countries take on the genre to freshen it up to be appealing again. Starting off with an intense, classical barouqe piece, the album kicks off well. The dynamics are great at the opening, starting out pretty quiet with some piano and the escalating to a full orchestra and choir. The song leads perfectly into the first real track “Aristocrat’s Symphony”. Here you get a perfect taste of what you are in for throughout the whole album. Blazing lead work throughout with a section for solo’s in between and great dynamic range throughout as well.

The next song has more of a 80′s glam metal feel to it at first, but that fades away as everything comes together. The bridge here is beautiful; syncopated guitar riff over a nice orchestrated piece that leads into a classical guitar solo. The song as a whole has pretty many parts but never gets too progressive nor too repetitive.

The main single off of the album, “The Revenant Choir”, is one of the best songs on the album. Lengthy, but not boring in the least bit. Two versions exist on the album, one from their previous EP and a new version recorded for “Noble”. As with most of the songs, the lyrics are mainly in Japanese, so I can’t comment on the meaning of them, but the video is still awesome. The song has a straightforward structure but has plenty of riff’s between parts to keep it interesting, the part before the second verse is one of my fav’s in the song. Soon a short piano solo comes in, and then the song changes feel a little right before the guitar solo’s come in and melt your face off, but in a beautiful way you could never hate.

-Video is not the album version but a previous version from their first DVD single “The Revenant Choir”.

Overall this album is brilliant. Versailles has a distinct sound to them that you will instantly fall in love with. As a whole the album fits together great, but as a downside some of the songs do retain similar feels. This is not a huge issue though as most of the songs are unique in themselves. The vocals are astoundingly brilliant, though some may feel them to be a little over the top at times. The orchestrated pieces behind the music fits well and never over shadows the other instruments. As in “The Revenant Choir”, sometimes piano may be the only orchestrated peice still playing, which shows the parts are put in only to add to the song, and never take away. My only complaint would be the drums sound a little light and not as tight or full as one may like on a metal album. Other than that everything else is superbly produced. Versailles has a unique baroque neo-classical metal sound that fans of most styles of metal can enjoy. There is plenty of heavy riffs and beautiful songs, along with shredtastic solo’s and astounding leads. In a genre that is full of terrible, cliche music, that has been done to death; Versailles brings about a near refreshing air.

Overall Rating – 4.5/5

This is a lick that I got from Paul Gilbert that I changed by simply keeping it in one position. It is featured in the solo of “Wasting Away” by my band Lateral. There are some things to keep in mind when practicing this lick. First off, the fingering is 4-3-1-4-1-4-3-1 throughout the entire lick. Don’t cheat and play it using 3-2-1, it’s just going to hinder you later, and this is really designed to strengthen that finger combination and your pinky. Next, use alternate picking throughout. It works as a great exercise for changing strings if alternate picked, so why not kill two birds with one stone, right? Last, as this is a strength builder, take it easy. You’ll develop your endurance over time, and pushing after you get tense and sore is only going to hurt your progress. In the coming weeks I’ll be filming a video to accompany this lesson where you can hear the lick in context of a song and get further instruction on playing and application.

Ty17983