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The Workout Part 2
(19 Dec 03)
Etudes
This is another thing I have talked about at the forums. I'm bringing it up now because... I recently had another conversation with Steve Morse, and I asked him (Tommy, you see? I did ask :)) how he manages to practice without getting distracted.
He said "Well, if you do a static, boring exercise" (he said this while playing an E minor arp, arpeggiating it with all alternate picking at about light-speed), "... you're bound to get distracted".
Instead, Steve likes to make up etudes, and so do I. You know... etudes... little pieces of music that are supposed to help you work on a certain aspects of playing... in a musical context. You could i.e. consider the "Moto Perpetuo" (aka. "Perpetual Motion") an alternate-picking etude. It's musical and it might need some time to memorize and play with some conviction. At the same time, it will help you to work on your picking chops. Fire up the metronome, get to work. You're most likely to pay a bit more attention to such an etude than you would playing some static, basic picking exercise.
In the forums, I posted an "inside picking etude" I once came up with. (Try and use the search engine to find it). I was bored of playing the same two notes over and over on adjacent strings, so I made up a little melody with a pedal-tone, and voilá... to me, it was way more fun to learn and play that little etude, than it was playing one repetitive inside picking-exercise over and over and...
Making up an etude, and playing it will help you to focus on the specific aspect of playing (like in the inside-picking etude), but it will also require some theory knowledge and / or creativity, cuz you wanna make up a little piece of music.
So... go ahead, make up your etudes (ForgottenKing / Jorge recently posted a really cool little alternate-picking etude.. that's the kinda stuff I am talking about, people!), play them, and maybe share them with the people in the ibreathe-forums!!!
Etudes Pt.2
This is some kind of an after-thought to the etudes-part. You can also extract little pieces from songs you like, if you think that they're good exercises. Remember when I wrote about the "folder-method" that John Petrucci uses? Gathering lots of exercises, columns and transcriptions in a folder in order to have plenty of exercise-material?
Well, this will require you to pick whatever you wanna use, transcribe it (let's ignore all the TAB-sources on the net for now, shall we?), file them and work on them whenever you feel like it.
Examples? OK, let's say you wanna work on alternate picking on adjacent strings (i.e. alternate-picking arpeggios, Steve Morse-style). Well, you could e.g. work on the intro or the clean arp-parts of "Tumeni Notes", the intro of "User Friendly", that fast Dmaj-Amaj-lick at the end of "Simple Simon", the riff of "The Well-Dressed Guitar", the solo of "Cascades- I'm Not Your Lover" (you guessed it... all these songs are by Morse, the SMB or Deep Purple).
Or... if ya wanna work on fast, alternate-picked runs utilizing 3NPS-scales... well, check out "Frenzy" by Racer X, some Yngwie-tunes etc.
Fast runs using the stretch-pentatonic? Check out Todd Duane's songs, or some stuff by Marcel Coenen.
Sweeps? Try "Serrana" by Jason Becker, or "Go Off!" by Cacophony, or, for fusion-stuff, check out some solos by Frank Gambale.
The list is endless. It depends on what you wanna work on. It's so much fun to work on an actual piece of music, transcribing it, working it up to tempo, being able to play it at nearly the original tempo.
Sure, you don't wanna rip off anyone (well, maybe you want to, but anyway...), so you don't wanna use those excerpts in any of your songs. But they'll help to improve your technique, and hopefully, they'll give ya some cool ideas to come up with your own parts.
Conclusion
So make up some etudes, or transcribe some licks off of records, write them down and file them so you can access them whenever you need to…
OK… those were some more thoughts on the whole workout-thing… there'll be a third, concluding part which will have lots and lots of exercises and permutations of those exercises… kinda like a compendium…
See ya next time
(Gosh, so much to read and no lick, pic or diagram... I'll make up for that next time =))
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Eric started playing the guitar at age 10. He attended GIT and studied with Scott Henderson, Brett Garsed, Dan Gilbert amo. Eric is involved in several bands and recording projects and his instrumental debut - Hidden Creek - plus his instructional book Talking Hands - A Guide To Contemporary Lead Guitar Techniques is available HERE
Visit his website at www.ericvandenberg.net
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