One thing I realised is the importance of being able to co-ordinate your two hands together to work in harmony. I expect there are a lot of you out there who are not doing this. If you have your guitar with you now, then play something as fast as you can, (if you don’t then just close your eyes and imagine you are for a second) it doesn’t matter what, just play something really fast NOW…
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Now think about what you just did – were your hands co-ordinated? Or was your picking hand just picking furiously away, as fast as you could, while your fretting hand hopped from one note to another in a slightly slower pace? One of the things I realised I was doing wrong when trying to play fast is that, when I was trying to play a lot of different notes, I wouldn’t be picking the string once for each note, it would be more like a 2:3 ratio, every 3 picks my fretting hand moved only twice. It may be annoying and even insulting, but you really have to re-learn this very slowly:
Get a metronome and set it to something slow (between 40-60bpm) and just practice improvising over it in something simple like the E minor pentatonic or blues scale, just to get to grips with the co-ordination. Once you have done this for a few minutes start increasing the metronome speed and see how well you cope. You will probably find that the point at which you can barely keep up, is far slower than you may have been previously attempting to play. Try and make a conscious effort to make sure your hands and fingers are co-ordinated next time you are letting rip, and if you notice a problem then work on it!
Now try this exercise:
Use all 4 fingers so your hand stays in a fixed position – all you need to worry about is making sure you are picking the string at the same time you are placing your finger on a fret (or pulling off to sound the open string). Focus on trying to avoid fretting the note before or after you actually pick the string – it should be at the same time. You may be doing it 0.5 seconds before/after, it may only be 0.1 second, but the aim is to get this down as close to 0.0 as possible. If you are picking and fretting at the same time then you have good co-ordination and your soloing won’t sound sloppy!
It is a proven fact – every lead guitarist in the world likes to show off. It’s just what we do, if we didn’t do it we would be letting the audience down!
So, it’s time to cover some basic tricks that will help to make you sound like an awesome guitarist, even if you are not all that great yet! (you will be soon if you stick to the exercises!)
As this section is relatively new it is still quite short with just a few tricks and licks that I like to use myself, so I want your help – email me –[email protected]
and let me know any tricks and licks you like to use and I might include them in the next update! It’s nice to help people so if you do something a lot that you don’t see here then please let me know, thanks!
Pinch Harmonics/Artificial Harmonics
This is one of the best ways to make your guitar sound like a squealing banshee, and is used a lot especially in the metal genres. I find the best way to achieve this result is to pick the strings in such a way that your thumb makes a very slight contact with the string as well as the pick – if you have not done this before, put your finger on the 4th fret of the G string and repeatedly pick the string, each time slightly rotating your picking hand so that your thumb makes more and more contact with the string. Experiment with this, and find the ‘bite’ point where it works the best. You will also find that you get a better sound depending on what part of the string you strike, so try moving your picking hand into different positions, start by the bridge and move it up towards the neck until you hear/find the best places to use pinch harmonics. Once you can do this to a reasonable standard you will find it is an EXCELLENT touch to add into your playing when used sparingly (too much can just sound painful)
Natural Harmonics
If you don’t know what a natural harmonic is then let me show you – play any open string, and then touch (just quickly) the string right above the 12th fret (make sure it is directly above the fret, not to the left as you would if you were going to press the string down). You don’t have to press the string down at all just gently make contact with the string and then let go – you will hear the same note only an octave higher. This is a natural harmonic!
You don’t really need to know why they work, and if you are interested then I am sure it won’t take you long to find it on the internet, so I won’t waste any more time talking about it. I want to talk about how you can use them!
Now that you know how to sound a harmonic properly, you will see that if you run your finger gently along the string while constantly picking at the same time you will hear all sorts of different harmonic notes. There are lots of things you can do with them, but here is a cool one for you:
o Strike the G string and quickly move your finger away from the string, sounding the G harmonic 2 octaves higher. If you have a tremolo/whammy bar/Floyd rose system then now is the time to use it!
o Bring the tremolo arm around and plunge down for a slow dive (push the tremolo arm down towards the pickups), then bring it back up again, followed by a bit of ‘tremolo vibrato’.
o Now, silence the harmonic from ringing as you shoot straight up to the 18th fret
on the B string, and bend up to the 20th (the same note as the harmonic was making), followed by a simple descending minor pentatonic run to finish off – (the ‘1’s in the diagram would be on the 15th fret)
Harp Harmonics
This is where you make use of a natural harmonic while fretting a note, via your picking hand. As you are fretting a note the actual position of the harmonic is shifted accordingly. IE. There is a harmonic at the 12th fret, that sounds an octave, so if you play the 5th fret normally and then touch the 17th lightly with a finger on your picking
hand while the 5th fret is still pressed, you get the octave again. You need to touch it right above the fret just like a natural harmonic, but shifted to compensate the fretted note instead of open string.
The “Cheeky Tap”
I call this the cheeky tap because it comes when you least expect it! You may have seen some shred guitarists doing this in the middle of some sweep picking, where they will sweep an arpeggio and as they get to the top E string they will stick in a finger-tap to hit an extra-high note. Well that’s what I would call a cheeky tap.
The cheeky tap is pretty easy to pull off when you aren’t doing any sweeping, and as such it doesn’t really need much explanation. To try it, go to the 15th fret on the B string, bend up to the 17th (E) and then with your picking hand tap the 19th fret – although because the string is still being bent this should sound more like the 21st fret (will sound ever-so-slightly flat because of the angle the string is at). So, that’s the cheeky tap! Best used when mucking about with some fast paced shredding, as it momentarily slows the flurry down, before going off again!
Tap the 19th fret and make sure you ‘dismount’ properly – you can pull off the 16th fret to the 12th to give you some time to get your picking hand back into position, ready to sweep the 12th back down to the 14th.
Left-hand muting/Rakes
Resting your fretting-hand fingers on the string gently can create a harmonic, we already know that, but press a little harder and the string will be silent. This is muting with the fretting hand, and is often used in chords. This can also be used to ‘rake’ the strings, which creates an interested effect. It is simply the act of muting a number of strings in quick succession, much like a sweep picking arpeggio but without hearing the notes! More pressure is required to get the strings muted properly to avoid harmonics. As with most things in guitar you just have to mess about with it to see where you could use it or if you would even WANT to use it.
Dive-bombing
This is the act of using your Floyd-rose tremolo arm to make a note ‘dive’ right down to the point where the strings go slack. Best used (in my opinion) when entering a solo – playing the note (sustained) of the key you are in, followed by a nice big dive-bomb, then coming back up with some furious shredding!
Chopping
What I call chopping, is the act of using your picking hand to chop the tremolo arm in a swift motion (not too hard, don’t want to chop it in half!) repeatedly, to make the sustained note jump either up or down very quickly, depending on which direction your tremolo arm is pointing. Best used when messing about!
Dive Chopping
This is when you employ the use of ‘chopping’ your tremolo arm in the middle of a dive- bomb. But how do you push the bar down and chop it?!?! Well, you push down with your fretting hand, and as you are diving, chop your fretting hand with your picking hand! No I’m not crazy I didn’t make this up myself
Sliding Harmonics
This is when you repeatedly pick an open string, while running your middle finger on your fretting hand along the string, up and down, sounding all the different harmonics as you go. Sounds great!
Fret Picking
This is the act of using your pick to sound a note on the fretboard instead of around the pickups – resulting in the string sound the note where the pick is striking it. Combine this with tremolo picking (the act of picking the same note very fast) and you might find a use for this in your solos to mix things up.
Picking-hand dampening at the nut
For use with ultra slick legato, if you use your picking hand to dampen the strings at the nut by resting the palm on the top of the strings by the headstock this will mute the string noise – now you can use legato all over the place with ease! This is a somewhat ‘cheat’ method, although loads of professionals do it (some even use special devices to free up both hands) but I wouldn’t recommend doing this to practice your legato, it should be reserved for when you are can do it properly, to make it sound even better.
Scalloping the fretboard is the act of hollowing-out the wood between the frets, so that when you place your fingers on the strings they do not make contact with the wood of the fretboard.
There is some debate as to the exact benefits of committing such an act to your prized possession, but the most obvious benefit is that it gives your fingers the freedom and lack of friction to bend the strings without restraint. Some people scallop the top frets only, some scallop the whole lot, most choose not to at all. I have scalloped one of my guitars from the 20th fret up to the 27th(yes I have 27!) and the difference in playing is fantastic. The only reason I haven’t scalloped the entire fretboard (or indeed any of my other guitars) is because it changes the way you play guitar. If you are going to play on scalloped frets you have to learn to touch the strings with your fretting hand much lighter than you may normally, as too much pressure can cause the string to bend down too far (past where the wood would normally ‘catch’ it) and cause the string to go out of tune. Whether you want to scallop your fretboard or not is up to you, and not something you should do on a whim, so if you DO decide to give it a go, I strongly advise you to try it out on a cheap guitar that you don’t mind experimenting on – so if you don’t own any cheap guitars, you should probably get the cheapest thing you can find on eBay and have a go.
Now, how do you do it? The process is long and difficult to carry out to a high standard, so you may want to pay for a trained professional to do it for you. If however you cannot afford to do this, or you fancy a bit of DIY, then there is a detailed explanation of how best to scallop your fretboard, on ProjectGuitar.com (www.ProjectGuitar.com) as kindly described by Brian Calvert – check this site out it has everything you could want to know about maintaining your guitar. The full page with pictures on how to scallop the top few frets is at http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/scalloped.htm and details on how to scallop your entire fretboard is located at http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/scal1.htm
Good luck!