[spilly]

I never thought I'd see the day, but in my quest to be the best guitar player i can possibly be I've started working on some metal techniques, and it's greatly improving every aspect of my playing. Now I know you guys don't listen to metal but bear with me hear.

I've been working on sweep picking for about a month now. I HIGHLY recommend it to any and all lead guitar players. It's best to learn the classic metal form of sweeping then translate it to your normal playing. Warren Haynes and John Scolfield use sweeps as connector peices between licks quit often.
Sweep picking has many benifits besides playing fast.

mainly the style has greatly improved my entire right handed technique. My individual string picking is much tighter and more accurate these days. Also as most metal is based on classic music, it can help with your understanding of solo composition. Another thing sweeping can be used for is recreating organ parts (i.e. babba o'riely, the great gig in the sky)
sweep picking is also highly used in flamenco guitar, which is a must learn for acoustic players who enjoy minor keys.

I've also been working on tapping. I wasn't really interested in it before, but my bass player has been studying Stu hamm's style and wanted me to try it out. My bass player is only 19 years old, he was my student about 5 or 6 years ago and has since gone far beyond my capabilities with a bass. So I started the tapping becuase i wasn't having that little bastard show me up. I've been working on "Hot for teacher" (all hail Eddy VanHalen)
the benifits of tapping (besides playing a shit-ton of notes in a single measure) related to "jam-guitar"
are also numerable. For one Trey and Warren use right hand taps on top of chords all the time to add extra high notes to the arrangement. It also greatly strengthens your left wrist and fingers, I can bend full chords a half step accuratly without using my vibrato bar.

I know it's not in your style (because it was never my style) but you guys should really look into some of these techniques, they will greatly improve you slow playing as well as your fast scale work.

here is and exellent example of sweep picking mixed with some flamenco scales and a flawless bend technique preformed by Paul Waggoner of Between the buried and me check it out, this is big kid stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0cFsu-eI7k

[Pete B.]

You'll love this guy (once you get used to navigating the website... it's kind of interactive):

http://www.guitarshredshow.com/

[Tennessee Jedi]

This guy rips...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7vYrq0z2DY

[Django]

Jerry stated in a Guitar Player article that the technique he was most interested in and spending the time to work on was sweep picking. You really don't have to perform the metal catalog to sweep do you?

[Pete B.]

fwiw, You could extend the ascending diminished runs in Slipknot to 2 or 3 octaves (all 6 strings) and sweep that up and down the neck.
It'd make a fun exersize if nothing else.
~pb

[spilly]

no you don't have to run the metal catalog to sweep, it's an independent technique. It just so happens that the best sweppers around are metal players, so when learning the style it would definatly help to at least youtube some shedders to watch, but the idea can be mastered without playing metal.
I've been working on it on my acoustic. It's really more of a classic music thing, which is what most shedders do. They play classical music structures extremly fast

[spilly]

I like the slipknot idea, i think i will mess around with that. Here's a diminished warm up exercize I do that's very good for your pinky. you go down one diminished arrpegio the up the chord 3 fretts down the line, so the notes are all in a different order.
looks like this on paper

E--------9--12-----------------
B------8-------11--------------
G----9------------12----------
D--8-----------------11---------
A-----------------------------

do not play it as a chord. pick each note seperatly. use you pointer for the 8's your middle finger for the 9's your ring finger for the 11's and your pinky for the 12's,
when you get that going reverse it, you should feel the burn in your pinky pretty soon, and this will help you use your pinky independantly without moving any other part of your hand
E-----------------------------