Thread: Ask me about how to play guitar FAST!.

What were your first steps to shredding?

ANd how do you build up a calus? (sp?)

To build up a calous, slide your fingers up and down the 1st E string. then dip the tips in rubbing alcohol.

Originally Posted by CoLd BlooDed

What were your first steps to shredding?

Learn a scale. Play it slowly, then when you can play it at a steady speed without any mistakes, begin to increase it. This is how you will practice and improv a scale, or practice a solo.

Originally Posted by guitarboy

To build up a calous, slide your fingers up and down the 1st E string. then dip the tips in rubbing alcohol.

Originally Posted by guitarboy

Learn a scale. Play it slowly, then when you can play it at a steady speed without any mistakes, begin to increase it. This is how you will practice and improv a scale, or practice a solo.

Hi Man of Shred, I see this is your thread. And you are answering questions.


What's the main difference between playing bass and main guitar? Besides the obvious 4-6 string difference.
I don't know much about guitars at all, just fooling around on friends's'z. :]

Man of Shred just got his 'students' pwnd by Guitarboy.

Thanks, GB.

Any good songs or solos for beginers to start with? I don't need to know theory, but knowing how to play well instead.

First steps to shredding? well I learned the wrong way first. I tried to memorise solo's and just played them as fast as i could. It sounded like shit.

That isn't to say memorizing isn't good. Which it is. I have a natural ability to memorize long sequences of notes quickly. What i do is take a few bars. Play them over and over again until i can play them without looking at the page. Then, i Learn the next few bars, while practicing the first few over again and then adding the next few bars. I play it over and over again until i got it. I wash rinse and repeat until i have the song memorized. That is how i memorize songs. It's not hard. My rule is 21 repetitions and it will stay within you for a long time. Our unconcious minds don't respond to our desires, what it responds too is repetition.

After i have a piece momorized. I then break it into groups. There are usually sections i have trouble with so i work on those. I work on them with the metronome or a loop trainer in guitar pro. If you want me to explain how i use the metronome I will explain it if you ask. I like the guitar pro loop trainer because it trains me to play the notes on the beat. When i play slow whie I'm learning, I immediately mute the note i just played, not with palm muting. but i lift my finger off slightly just after i played the note. This puts distance in the between the notes. and cleans up your fast picking somewhat.

for callouses... get an acoustic guitar with thick strings. and play lots of large chords. Do lots of bends! bending strings really puts the pressure on your fingers so learn songs with lots of bends. Or add bends into a piece you already know.

Another great way to develop speed is to find a long piece of music. There are a few classical songs i use as warmups. They are kind of long and they are an endurance test. If your hand cramps a bit while playing them you're getting stronger.

That's it for today. If you want me to post a video on anything i ahve said. i can do that. If you want tabs for an endurance piece. i have that too!

Originally Posted by Reality_is_a_Dream

Man of Shred just got his 'students' pwnd by Guitarboy.

Thanks, GB.

Any good songs or solos for beginers to start with? I don't need to know theory, but knowing how to play well instead.

actually i changed this thread to "Ask me how I Play guitar fast."

Well... to Begin take patterns from your favorite players. Just small patterns and practice them all over the neck in every key.

a good solo i began with was Hotel california.

Originally Posted by no-name

Hi Man of Shred, I see this is your thread. And you are answering questions.


What's the main difference between playing bass and main guitar? Besides the obvious 4-6 string difference.
I don't know much about guitars at all, just fooling around on friends's'z. :]

Hehe, he didn't answer your question.

Any good songs or solos for beginners to start with? I don't need to know theory, but knowing how to play well instead.

Learning theory makes it twenty times easier.
As MoShred said, classical pieces are good to learn with. I would suggest to look at Bach's lute suites, arranged for guitar. They might be a bit too hard, though.
Start with a Beatle's solo, like And I Love Her or Let It Be. If you know any tapping, look in to Crazy Train, and then when you get better, Some Metallica.
I will compile a more coherent list tomorrow, as I am also off to bed.

Originally Posted by guitarboy

Learn a scale. Play it slowly, then when you can play it at a steady speed without any mistakes, begin to increase it. This is how you will practice and improv a scale, or practice a solo.

That's not what I meant by shredding... I was looking for a more detailed answer like MoShred provided, but thank you regardless.

well guitar boy. I will upload a tab here. It's one I've just learned. What I suggest to anyone is: us what i said about memorizing a piece. Even if you memorise a small section and play it over and over again will help. A beginner can even do this.

this is a bach prelude. It's mostly alternate picking. there's lots of technique here, a bit of string skipping and juumping your left hand to different parts of the neck.

http://www.filedropper.com/bachsprel...gueno5indmajor

Even if you are new. you can memorise a small section and work on it. put out of your mind how hard it is. BTW i put the ending more close to the prelude, instead of PG's kind of improvised ending.

this is what it sounds like BTW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzQDxGvuLR4

What does music theory mean, and how can I learn it?

I have to write an amazing superhero theme song for my friend's indie film. The hero jumps from a window at the beginning of the movie, and an epic, edgy riff cuts in while the glass shatters and then it shifts to playing the hero's theme, which my friend already wrote, the bad guy's theme works in as a bassline, then I reprise the riff from the beginning, with some variation. I need to write that riff. Scales, techniques, random advice?

I know the lidian mode, but what other scales and modes would be good to learn? Also, how do I do anything with these scales? I can't do anything with the lidian mode other than just doing the lidian mode (if that makes any sense, I couldn't think of a way to type it).

Originally Posted by capoopy

What does music theory mean, and how can I learn it?

Music theory, broadly construed, is concerned with how music works. Which combinations of notes will sound consonant and which will sound dissonant? What effect will various rhythms have on the feel of a piece? How does one achieve a joyous vs. a dreary sound? How can I communicate musical ideas to other musicians? These are the kinds of questions that music theory addresses.

A good introduction for guitarists that I've recommended to a few players is this:
Music Theory for Guitarists: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask
There are many other (admittedly better) books which introduce music theory in both more breadth and more depth, but this book is particularly good about making concepts immediately applicable to guitar. Tom Kolb is a good author of guitar instruction books.

Originally Posted by CatBus

I know the lidian mode, but what other scales and modes would be good to learn? Also, how do I do anything with these scales? I can't do anything with the lidian mode other than just doing the lidian mode (if that makes any sense, I couldn't think of a way to type it).

Modes are highly overrated. While they sometimes occur in their pure form in certain styles of music, they are largely absent from the vast majority of music that you're likely to come across. I've found that, for most situations, it's far more useful to think in terms of major/minor with accidentals. So rather than thinking "this is C Lydian," you'd be thinking "this is C major with a #4." This also applies to pentatonic scales; rather than "A minor pentatonic," it would be "A minor, avoiding the 2nd (B) and b6th (F)." It's also important to note that most music doesn't even require these extra stipulations; it will simply be either major or minor (i.e., tonal rather than modal).

Approaching musical scales in this way helps to tie them together and illuminates the inherent connections between them. I refer to the traditional view (traditional for rock guitarists, that is) as the cookbook approach. The most important point here is that you really need to tackle music theory in its entirety, from the ground up, if you hope to make good sense and good use of musical concepts. Learning assorted scale patterns and whatnot might allow you to "get by" in some musical situations, but it won't confer the deep understanding of music that you really need to be a capable and versatile musician.