3
Shred Lessons
By
Will Schut
- Turning
Heads in a Music Store
C’mon,
we shredders are all alike aren’t we? We sometimes like
to show off in a crowed music store. You really only need a set
of strings, but you can’t resist plugging in and shred away,
because there are “people there” and we want to “turn
some heads”!
Well,
this next lick is tailor made to achieve just that. It’s
basically just one shape that you move across the neck, so this
thing is incredibly easy to memorize. But other than that is involves
a pedal tone, sliding, sweeping and right hand tapping, so technically
speaking it’s somewhat demanding. But most of all, it sounds
extremely hard and complicated, so have fun with this one.
- Tapping
Made Cool Again
Remember
the first time you heard Eddie play “Eruption” on
the first Van Halen album? For me this moment was in 1978, and
I instantly decided that I wanted to become a rock and roll guitar
player.
Unfortunately
this technique Eddie applies (off course I’m talking about
“tapping” here) has become somewhat of a lame guitar
cliché that even the guitarist who played at your grandparents
golden anniversary seemed to have in his vocabulary. What a shame,
every self-respecting shredder now refrains from single string
tapping.
But
wait, with a little change you can re-enter this technique into
you chops-library and get away with it. The only thing you have
to do is land the note that you hammer on with your left hand
(lefties think vice versa here) on a different string. By doing
so you can create very unusual sounding melody-lines that don’t
even sound like tapping. Just make sure you avoid all unwanted
noises, because too much of that can seriously fog up the overall
effect.
- Breaking
Out of the Box
Most
guitar-players approach the shapes in which they play solo’s
as boxes that usually include all six strings, but are narrowed
down to just 4 or 5 fret positions. It really pays off to broaden
your horizons by looking at the neck as one big group of endless
possibilities rather than a formation of a couple of boxes, where
you stay in one box, do your thing and then move one to the next
one. In this example I’ve written out a one of my solo-lines
in the key of F major. It starts on the 12th fret of the low E
string and ends at the 22nd fret of the high E string, so you
cover “lot of neck” in a fairly short amount of time.
Because the line starts at the 7th of the scale (an E) and ends
on a 6th (a D) it sounds perfect over a Fmaj7 cord (which consist
of a 1, a 3, a 5 and a majored 7, so in this case F, A, C and
E). So fast you want to play this one is up to you, because of
the beautiful note sequence it sounds good even at lower speeds.
Find
out more about Will Schut at his website www.willschut.com
