Several threads ago a good member stated a good practice technique invlolving the basic 1-2-3-4 up the neck run up and run down in 16th notes to boost your speed. I talked to my teacher about an embelished version of this practice technique, and he showed me his own rendition which could strenghten your alternate picking, upstroking, downstroking, and economy picking at high speeds and also when skipping strings. Now beware these techniques are not for the unpatient, itll take time and effort into building your speed, and dexterity with these excersie, but in the end it will make you very well rounded.

Technique From Hell

First lets start with 4 basic exercises that extend past the basic chromatic scale run up/down the board.



The numbers dont necessarily mean fret numbers, think of it as finger numbers and it can be played anywhere on the fretboard.

Now the key is to play each of these with differant picking styles, and in differant combonations. First choose one excersise then pick it all down picking, then Strict alternate Down-Up, then all Up strokes, then in triplet form like Down-Up-Down-Down-Up-Down or more simply D-U-D, then reverse that to U-D-U-U-D-U.

The next step makes it even more complicated with even more variables, after you know how to practice each technique with differant picking techniques you must now play each excersise in a differant order or fingering.

For example, instead of always pinky-ring-middle-index or 1-2-3-4 fingering each exercise try doing it in differant order.
1234
1243
1324
1423
1432
2134
2143
2431
and so on.....

EX

After you know all this get 5 pieces of paper, preferably graph paper. Now make a table with all the fingering possibilities on the Y Axis or the Vertical, and all 4 excercises on the X Axis. Its gonna be a pretty big graph with all the differant fingering combonations. Now make a huge table for each differant picking/stroking techniques using all 5 pieces of paper. Once you have the tables for every finger for each excerise on every picking technique you start recording your BPMs you can hit each one at cleanly with a metronome, take one exercise and take down the BPM's you can play it at cleanly and knock it down 2 clicks, or around 8 BPM.

EX- if you can play Excersise 1 with the upstroke picking on the 1243 fingering combonation at 60 BPM's cleanly without messing up, start practicing at 52 BPM's and work your way up recording your Current BPM's you can hit on your table.

You dont have to go to this extreme making all the tables for everything, but if you have some free time and or you are intent on playing better/faster and get good technique this IMO is a damn fucking good way to do it. Ill most likley eventually make some kind of powertab for these techniques.

Please leave feedback on what you think

and good luck to those who attempt, i salute you
Here is an HTML file that has a good table for the TfH
TfH Table

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im trying it now
that's one kickass lesson dude.
got anymore.

keep it up

agreed, i like getting new exercises, just keeps me focused on practicing, not just sitting there playing riffs, which of course i like doing, but i like training my fingers to do new stuff

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Awesome lesson, I printed it out and showed my former school guitar teacher and he said if his Guitar 1 class gets finished the curriculum, hes going to try to teach them this. I hope you dont mind me spreading the knowledge wealth.

go ahead man, spread the wealth, try and keep the name Technique from Hell

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thats a "Technique from Hell "??? that was one of the first things my guitar teacher taught me

another good one thats similar is to do
1-2-1-3-1-4 on all the strings then reverse it
4-3-4-2-4-1 <-- good to strengthen up your pinky

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Yea those are also nice exercises.

Its only from hell cause there so much shit you gotta do, and it takes lots of time and dedication, and hell is gr1m cvlt duh...

Alright i put an Html file up on the first post with a nice table you can print out.

Feel free to send it to your teacher and let his class use it.

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I like this little thing:

------------------- -------------2-3-4--- (etc, go down)
-------------- ----------2-3-4-------
------------ ------2-3-4--------------
----------- 2-3-4--------------------
-----2-3-4--------------------------
--1--------------------------------

You keep the index finger on at all times, and play the usual chromatic scale. It improves stretching and finger strength

Hopefully it isn't hard to figure out the rest from the above example.

yea my guitar teacher is all into jazz, so he likes exercises that build his felxability and will improve his more chordal jazz playing. He does the same stretch exercise except not chromatic, he just runs normal scales.

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Thanks alot man I'm sick of hearing the same chromatic excersizes being recycled over and over again as those can only take you so far. Thanks for switching it up.

This shit doesn't belong in here. It's a fucking sweep, and sweeps go in the sweep thread. I moved it there for you.

jackass.

haha same here man

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i can play it 200bpm so far.

play what at 200bpm? and why did you post all that sweeping and crap and all that tapping shit, that has nothing to do with this thread, then you had to qoute it so it shows up twice, noobs ..... please put it in another thread.

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I think he's on crack

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that is a nice one. the rest bores me, it's a nice practise, don't get me wrong but I can't play it for longer then a couple of minutes before I fall asleep.

same goes with learning chords and shit, took me ages because they bored me, I'de rather spend my time making kickass riffs, till I found out chords can come in handy for impressing chicks while playin an acoustic. . I allready have the spead I want but I'm still working on a lot of scales and sweeps. I love the way you can use arabic sounding scales for solo's and shit. I don't like learning chords but I know all the important ones from the top of my head now.

Haha, like what? Anything particulary interesting or worthy of mention? Or just the plain jane chords?

just the 'plain jane' chords work fine if you can sing a bit too.

on acoustic some chords just sound great even though they're simple, like A7, Am, Am6, Am7, Asus4, Amaj7, B7, F7m, Fmaj7... just link a couple together, put on your Barry White voice and you're getting pussy. I guarantee

yea no shit, i reported it as a bad post, it annoys me the fact that he qouted it, and put something non related in my thread... phff... this is my thread bitches god damn...jk.....

anyways yea def, i tried doin it last night and i got like 1/60th through recording all my metronome times down, it takes forever and yes it is boring, but itll help me in the long run.

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