I took this from Children of Bodom's Everytime I die
A lot of metal bands do this kind of run to finish solos. I was just wondering what it is called. I find these real bitches for some reason, I guess it just takes patience and practise. My speed is fine just doesn't ever seem to sound as good as what it sounds like on cd. If anyone could give me tips I would be happy


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They are called ascending runs as you called them.

Hmmm, I always find this easy, its descending runs that are harder for me, its just the way the pick responds I geuss.

Make sure your picking correctly, don't alternate pick, pick in a way you alt pick, but when you change strings you sweep and do another downward pick.
PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE....no matter how cliche it sounds, its the best advice for anything you want to improve.

Hmmm, I'd alternate pick every note.

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I dunno, I guess it's different with everyone, but I find those to be one of the easiest things to do, because it follows a strict pattern. I used to be really lazy and just hit the first note and hammer on the other two, but I've now learned it by alternate picking. It varies with everyone, so choose the best fingerings for urself. Some people might play that with their 1st, 3rd, and 4th, fingers, but I play all of that with my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

actually, screw patterns. play whats easiest. if youre tripping yourself up trying to hit each first note on a down pick, srew it and do it the "incorrect" way

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i agree with Transient as long as you can play it...and it sounds right then why try to perfect it?

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Uggghhh........Your missing the point of what I said, it isn't about just doing it the more orthodox way, the way I'm talking about enables you do go faster, what you want to do is fine with me, but if you actually develope a picking like I mentioned then it enables you to play the notes faster.

Oh yeah, I forgot a vital thing as well, when you want to play something fast, always play it incredibly slowly as much as you can, then you will actually have muscle memory and it will bbe easier to play faster.

Dude, how the hell would you play it that fast w/ all downpicking? That's an obvious thing to do alternates.

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d u d d u d d u d d u d u

This looks the fastest way to me but it wouldn't matter for me I still have trouble playing 16th notes period. I would suggest learning it the right way instead of the easiest way long run you'll be super fast and correct. There is a easy path then there's the right path.

No, have you heard it before? It's too hard to play it with 2 up's or 2 downs or whatever, so I suggest just plain old down,up,down,up, etc.

guess it depends on the person, i play it with a little downstroke when going to the next string. then it feels like playing a single triplet on every string (DUH)and not like one motion as with alternate i guess.

maybe alternate will sound more as one motion, since the timing on the 'triplet' thing i said above will make it harder to make it sound nice smooth

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I find the descending runs a lot easier! Each to their own i guess

Strict alternate picking seems the best option as it means over time it will sound more fluid. I used to do the hammer on notes that Silent Night has talked about but beleive by learning to do this with Alternate picking will undoubtedly make me a better player even if takes time. Thanks for the help guys!

no. you will never be able to really shred and play anything you want if you don't have good picking habits.

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at the moment i can do it at 120 bpm comfortably - i know there will be varied answers to this but is there like a particular speed i should be trying to get to. I know I should be aiming to be as fast as I can but at the moment I just want to know if and at what speed does it take to make it sound so awesome

No, the point is that when you get to the next string, it takes more pick energy to reverse back to upward stroke (or downwstroke if your descending) than to just simply do a sweep down to the next string, it slows you down a hell of a lot always alt picking,trust me.

There's no trusting someone like you . I guess everyone uses their own techniques, that's the best.

I think if you master this thecnic d u dd u dd u dd (harder way) it will be a lot faster than dududud (easier way)

What I can't do in this song are the sweeps, like he does before the chorus, like near the 19th and 22nd fret area, I can't fit my damn fingers in those tiny ass frets, especially when I'm standing up and trying to play it, that's like impossible for me.

Yeah I tried it. It slows you down tremendously. Stick with alt. Is there any other ones besided alt and sweeps.

I am sticking with alt picking. With the sweep style picking I keep hitting a wall when i get to a particular speed while the alt speed is just forever getting faster. Is it worth learning both techniques?

You probably tried it like a couple times, the point is when you do so your hands get used to doing it after a while, and you end up being much faster and smoother. That's just like trying to practice a song and then after attempting it twice, you get up and say "Nope, im never gonna be able to play this if I can't play it now, might as well give up". You wanna practice it slowly, and keep doing it for 4 or more days, and then you will most likely have no trouble playing it like that.

Active corpse fucker, the nay sayers to the faster way are just saying this because it is harder than the other way, but guitar is about developing habits. Listen to me about this, because I used the strictly alt method for a long time, and then I took people's advice and worked to get me playing the other way and it is now much more effective than the way I was playing it before.

But if you just wanna keep doing the alt way, Im sure it's fine, but the double downpick will enable you to shred much better than you will be able to with strictly alt. picking.

Well I agree I'm still getting alt picking down which is pretty easy but I still suck at sweeping. I don't even know if I should be practicing sweeps I've only been playing about 7-8 months.

There's no harm in having a go, and if you feel you want to practice it then do so. As long as you've developed a solid alt. picking technique then there should be no reason for you to progress onto more complex picking techniques

I don't find alt picking that hard that might be because I'm really slow.

i find with alt picking it is mostly about being relaxed and just letting the pick do the work. Chromatic exercises are the best i find. At the moment i am learning both techniques for accending runs because i want to speed up my alt. picking and want the basis for starting to properly sweep. Do you think using legato to do it instead is the easy way out?

Don't do legato to improve your picking, thats just a contradiction You want to do pick exercises to do picking.

I think he meant using legato over picking is the easy way out. I know that's what I do, I'm a lazy fucker and can't be assed to pick all my notes