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Posted by: Retribution Jun 18 2008, 01:36 AM

I seem to have a much harder time playing speed licks that are constantly changing between several strings as opposed to ones that tend to stay on two or three strings. I don't really feel that alternate picking is the problem, I just seem to fumble around a bit too much to make great accuracy with that kind of speed.

Does anyone have any warm-up or lesson suggestions to help with this? As of now, I warm up with scales and play them slowly at first and try to build on the speed until I feel that I can't play it accurately. As for learning the songs, I've just been slowing them down and learning the licks by muscle memory and trying to improve the speed.

Any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Posted by: Daniel Robinson Jun 18 2008, 02:23 AM

I find the easiest way to approach this difficulty is to slowly build up to the amount of notes you want.

For example, take a lick you know that is on 2 strings, and just add 1 note on another string, keep doing it till you have it commited to muscle memory, then add another note when you are comfortable, keep adding notes until you can do all that you want to do with the lick.

Paul Gilbert also does this, he started with just a basic riff with 4 or 5 notes, and slowly added 1 note at a time until he developed licks that are 12 to 15 notes, i find this approach works really well, it allows you to assimilate new licks in a moderate amount of time, and also improves your improv as well because you are learning different note groupings.

Daniel

Posted by: Retribution Jun 18 2008, 02:41 AM

Cool, great advice! I'll try doing something like this... probably taking 3nps scales and doing something along the lines of what you've suggested.

Thanks for the insight, Daniel.

Posted by: -Zion- Jun 18 2008, 08:16 AM

hmm.. thats very interesting..
i'm going to give that a try..

Thanks daniel

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Jun 18 2008, 04:20 PM

Interesting tip Daniel