Guitar Column and Semi-Blog

Hello everyone, if you haven't figured it out yet I'm not Matt. Him and I have been talking for a bit and I got the luxury to be invited to contribute to this blog in a not-so-standard way. I'm not much of an interviewer so he had the idea that I could track my guitar progress over the Summer (as I'm starting to really get heavy into the technique side of things during my 5th year of playing), give mini-lessons, and generally run a "Guitar Column" on the site (and sometimes album reviews). So time to get down to business... hi, I'm Nicholas Nicoletti and you'll probably be seeing more of me in the coming months!

May 14th, 2012

I mainly worked on my picking speed and 7-finger tapping today, adding the 8th every now and then.

As per Matt's recommendation I downloaded the tab for Yngwie Malmsteen's Trilogy Suite Opus 5 No. 2 and, well, I'm having a hell of a time learning it. I know I could do the main themes pretty easily, but the intro is killing me. Far too fast for me right now, but I can play it at about 60% speed (about 90 bpm as opposed to 140). That's going well and there's really not much I can talk about with it. Economy picking: work on it guys. And alternate picking...

After that I worked on 7-finger tapping. Here I can talk a little bit about technique that doesn't JUST require sitting in front of a metronome playing scales over and over again. I'm figuring out that the trick to 7-finger isn't just getting the right hand working... it's getting the left and right working in tandem. And, in my experience, the left is harder to get synchronized than the right, since the right is oftentimes leading the melodic phrase and the focal point of the contour of the melody. I will give you guys the phrase I'm using to practice it for now, it's a simple one based on a Dominant 7th chord, but altering it to a Major 7th or Minor 7th is pretty easy. Alright, here it is, at 120 bpm:

(I would show you more, but I plan on using some variations of it in a metal song at some point ;) )

The trick to this lick is to not have everything ring out at the same time. I personally like to do it on a clean channel, but to each his own. Learn to mute with your right arm and your left fingers that aren't being used. And I literally mean your right arm. Like your under-forearm. It works I swear.

NOTE: To make it a little harder, make every F# an F natural (essentially making it an Ealt/E7b9 chord). It makes your arm and fingers have to hit a harder angle and it changes what fingers your right hand needs to use on the way up (for me I have to use the pinky to go from the F to the B) and on the way down (jsut the normal ones). Essentially changing the exercise to an 8-finger tapping exercise.

So, enjoy it... tell how it goes! And I'm glad to be here.