Recommended Song : “ Technical Difficulties “

This is one of my all time favourite song by Racer-x called “ Technical Difficulties” played by Paul Gilbert.

This song was first featured in his 3rd Instructional video call Terrifying Guitar Trip and later a full version of the song came out in their album also entitled “ Technical Difficulties”. You might want to check that album out.

Indeed a very technically challenging song and difficult to play and if you practice to play this song it will undoubtedly improve your alternate picking as well as your fingering.

Try this one out and have fun.

Guitar Rules!!

Guitar Picks (Plectrum)

I guess every guitar player knows what a pick is right? Well maybe not all.

Maybe those that have just started out playing the guitar may want to know what a pick is. Well, it is a kind of tool or thing? that you hold between you fingers that are used to “pick” the strings of the guitar.

Ahhh….just look at the pictures below and you will understand.

Here is a picture of me holding a pick between my fingers.

Got it? That is what we call a ‘Pick’

Ok….there are many types of picks out there. Different guitar players will use different guitar picks to suit their needs or should I say their playing. Normally it varies in thickness and usually categorized as ‘Thin’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Hard’.

The thickness of the pick will produce different sound character when used to play on the guitar. Some people like to use the ‘Thin' pick to strum when playing chords. Others like to use ‘Hard’ picks to play solos on the guitar especially guitar shredders.

For me I have tried a lot of different picks over the years and have collected a lot of them. But since nearly a decade ago I began to use only my favourite signature “Paul Gilbert Picks”. It’s not really hard. I guess it’s about 1mm in thickness and it’s really good for playing both chords and solos.

It is small/medium size and very light. It has also got humorous picture drawn on it on one side and a Paul Gilbert signature on the other. I guess the graphics are the work of Mr. Gilbert himself.

Many people ask me how to hold a pick. Which is the correct way to hold a pick?

Well, this is very subjective and depends on the person themselves. How do you hold a pencil? Is there any correct way of holding it? In my opinion, it doest matter how you hold a pencil as long as you feel comfortable and can use it to write or draw or whatever purpose it may give you. That is the same for picks as well. It doesn’t matter how you hold it as long as you feel comfortable and can use it to play the guitar for playing chords, solos or whatever you want. Just make sure that you try different ways or positions of holding the pick until you get the best one that you feel easy and comfortable with.

Now go and grab that pick!!

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Arpeggios

One of the most used techniques played on the guitar is the arpeggios. Arpeggio is a musical term and technique not only used by guitar players but also used by other musicians on different instruments.

When played on the guitar, it produces a very unique sound and shredders tend to use this technique a lot. Arpeggios are normally associated with sweep picking technique because you tend to sweep the notes when playing arpeggios. But arpeggios can also be played using alternate picking technique which is a little bit harder than the sweep picking.

Arpeggios can played on several strings and can be played on two, three, four, five and six strings. The easiest would be playing an arpeggio with just two strings and as you go further with using more strings on the guitar the technique becomes harder.

For beginners I would advice to try out two or three strings arpeggios. There are a few examples of three strings arpeggios and I recommend you guys to try out the three string diminished arpeggio that Yngwie Malmsteen often uses. The three string diminished arpeggio is not that difficult and it is commonly used by players around the world. I even see a lot of our local guitar players use that three string diminished arpeggio in their playing. It gets kinda cliché at times but for beginners to intermediate level its okay I guess.

To master playing arpeggio will take a lot of practice. I see a lot of our local guitar players trying to incorporate arpeggios in their playing and I also see a lot have not mastered the technique yet. Of course it’s easy to play the three string arpeggios but when they tried to play five or six string arpeggios they often get it to sound sloppy. You can’t clearly hear the notes they are playing because they can’t place their fingers properly to make it sound clean and clear. The goal of playing arpeggio is that the listeners can listen to every note of the arpeggios clean and clearly. Most guitar players tend to just try and play five or six string arpeggios to look cool and flashy on the fingers and ignore the importance of the clarity of notes when playing arpeggios. What’s the point of playing a six string arpeggio when you can only hear the first note he hits and the last note he hits? Where are all the notes in the middle?

Therefore playing arpeggio is not a technique to be taken lightly. I have seen a lot of guitar players who often tried to look cool playing the arpeggios when they don’t realise that their playing is actually lintang-pukang nya orang brunei. Its either they fail to understand the importance of playing arpeggios clearly or they are just being ignorant. What’s important to them is how flashy the fingers look when playing the arpeggios and what sound comes from playing it is of no importance.

That being said, I have also seen and met a few local guitar players who can really play the arpeggio that well. They really make it an important issue to play arpeggios as clean and clear as possible and they have achieved that goal.

It is very enjoyable to watch people play arpeggios with their flashy fingers and at the same time you can hear the clarity of every note they play.

So for you guys out there who are trying to learn on how to play arpeggios, I really recommend you guys to try and play it as clean and clear as possible so that the purpose of playing arpeggio would be used to the fullest effect.

See Ya

Guitar Rules!!

Featured Writer

I am thinking of asking one of my good friend to write something in this blog. I will put it under "Featured Writer" and hopefully it will be more interesting for all of us. I will also invite a few others who can submit to me good articles about guitars in general.

Guitar Rules!!

Practice Routine

Let’s talk about your practice routine. How do you practice?

Well, different people have different practice routine and it’s hard to say which one is the correct one.

For me, I started out the wrong way I guess. I have no one to teach me the basic fundamentals of playing the guitar. During the early years of my playing, I only used to learn from the chord book. But I guess learning to play the chords first is the basics of guitar playing. Almost everyone I know started out by learning to play the chords.

There are a lot of different chords that you can play on the guitar, but for a beginner maybe the basic chord shape would suffice. I remember when I was starting out; I never had the knowledge of how to play solos.

I learned to play solos from Malay rock songs and didn’t even know what scales are. During my early teens in the early 90s, I listened mostly to rock songs and tried to play the solos only by ear. I must admit that my ability to copy solos by listening is not 100% accurate, but at least it was a part of ear training which is invaluable until today. During those years there were no GuitarPro or Powertab because there were no internet for us to look for transcriptions and resources. All we had were just guitar magazines with some transcription in it.

When I was in school, I had a good friend who plays the guitar with me. He is still my good friend until today and for me he is one of the best rhythm and chord melody player locally. His knowledge on the instrument and music theory is one of the best in Brunei.

We often played together during those years and it’s was like a competition for me personally because his playing was that good. I had to work on my solos so that I would not be left behind. But until today my rhythm and chord melody playing is way far behind him and I think I need to catch up on that....haha!! It was good times during the school days and I remembered we even brought our amps and Ibanez guitar to school to jam together.

There was one local guitar player who to me was one of the best in Brunei. He was in a band called ‘Potensi’ and they had their album came out during the early 90s. This guitar player was only a kid during that time, I guess he was about 16 yrs old and was the youngest member in that band which comprises of musicians and their late 20s and early 30s. When their album came out I remember I bought a cassette. I didn’t have money to buy their CD!! When I played the album I was shocked and inspired. The guitar playing of this kid was sooooooooo good that it was really melodic, mature and inspiring. I was then motivated to practice harder and almost everyday play their songs on my “Hi-Fi”. I think I learned to play all their songs in that album and until today I think I can still remember every part of the guitar solos on that album. Maybe the new generation of today never heard of ‘Potensi’ but if you ever had the chance to get hold of that album, I recommend you guys to have a listen to the guitar playing of then a 16 yrs old kid and buckle up your seats as you might be blown away. He is one of my good guitar friend today and still one of my favourite local guitar player.

I remembered the first instructional videos I bought were a Richie Kotzen Rock Chops video. Oh man this guy was just incredible. His guitar playing was just flawless and it made me wonder when I can play like that. But then I was just only around 14 yrs old when I bought that video lesson. After that I bought some more video lessons from other guitar players and I guess during which time I was more into the shredding stuffs. I listen to a lot of Yngwie Malmsteen....alot!!

I guess Yngwie Malmsteen was one guitar player who really inspired me to be more interested in the guitar shredding. I listened and tried to play like him but I was unable to because I did not have the right basics and scale knowledge to be able to shred. I only knew how to play the simple basic shred stuffs like the 3 note arpeggio and some Yngwie pedal tones, and other than that I just tried to play solos as fast as I can.

Then I was introduced to Paul Gilbert and began to listen and watch his instructional videos. Paul Gilbert was the one guitar player who can really teach the right way of guitar shredding and I really progressed alot by watching his instructional video. I also began to understand the correct way of picking and scale playing and was much more systematic in my practice routine.

I began to use the metronome and it did help alot for accuracy especially when you are practicing alternate picking. Until today if I ever wanted to nail a particular lick I often used a metronome to get it right.

So my practice routine nowadays is just playing scales up and down the neck. I have not got much practice time due to other responsibilities. So just to keep my fingers warm I will play for maybe half an hour just noodling on my guitar to just keep in shape (I mean my fingers).

My practice routine has evolved and now I concentrate not so much on physical training of the fingers due to time restraint and alot of other responsibilities, but much more to listening to music and analysing the theory behind it which is something that you can do whilst driving and listening to music or just anywhere you go where you hear music.

There is so much more to learn on the guitar and it’s a never ending process no matter how good you are. I guess I better go get my guitar now and try to figure out that Gilbert lick for my next practice routine.

See Ya

Guitar Rules!!

The Shred Era

What is shred?

I guess it could be termed as playing the guitar with a lot of notes at a high speed. Technical proficiency is needed to shred and if you have not got the right technique you may not be able to shred.

The term shred came about during the 80s guitar era where playing a lot of notes is considered the epitomy of guitar playing. It was an interesting era for guitar playing as guitar players began to push the limits and bounderies of technical proficiencies.

Eddie Van Halen set the standards of guitar playing when his all time great ‘Eruption’ solo came out in 1978. Everyone during that time tried to emulate him and the ‘Tapping’ technique became a worldwide phenomenon.

But then another young guitarist named Yngwie Malmsteen changed the whole guitar scene of the 80s when he pioneered the neo-classical movement. It was Yngwie who made famous the neo-classical style of guitar playing and he pushed the technical bounderies up a notch after Eddie Van Halen. It was during this era that produced some of the world’s great guitar players until today.

It was also during the 80s that Mike Varney of the Shrapnel Records recruited alot of aspiring young guitar players who later became legends in their own right. Players like Paul Gilbert (Racer-x), Richie Kotzen, Marty Friedman and Jason Becker (Cacophony), Gerg Howe, Tony MacAlpine, Vinnie Moore and others are just a few of those Shrapnel Army of guitar shredders during the 80s.

The guitar players of the 80s deserves alot of respect because without them there would not be guitarists like John Petrucci, Kiko Loureiro, Rusty Cooley, Guthrie Govan, Buckethead, Michael Romeo and many others who were heavily influenced by the greats of the 80s.

In my opinion, for those of you who wants to be technically proficient in guitar playing you should at least listen to some of the players mentioned above because most of them are the pioneers of guitar shredding. Although technical playing is not a must to become a great guitar player but it is an advantage to have a good technical skill than those without the technical abilities. This is because your musical ideas will not be limited by your lack of technical abilities.

I will link some videos of these great guitar players and you can learn alot from them. See you in my next post.

Guitar Rules!!

Beginner Lesson Part 1

Ok,

For the first lesson, we should first look at the anatomy of the guitar.

Before we start to learn playing the basics, we should at least know our instrument and then learn how to play it. I surf through the internet and found plenty of pictures of guitar anatomy and i took some of it and attached it here. Hope they dont mind.

This is an electric guitar anatomy.

See you in the next lesson.

Guitar Rules!!