The Step Up

This is an idea of an exercise that I have been using and reworking since I was a kid. I've always just called it the step-up and the inverted version would therefor be called the step-down.

It is a very neo-classical guitar exercise in structure, but has a wonderful sound to it. Again, with any guitar exercise, this one is fully customizable and can be rearranged.

As I have mentioned before, you can become insanely fast and clean with one pattern, but when you encounter something new, you most certainly have to start at the beginning, but I have also expressed that as you get better and better with your guitar skills, you pick things up much faster.

This guitar exercise is exquisite for training the coordination between the picking hand and the fretting hand. At first you will find that it is a real pain in the @$%, but if you take your time, you'll be nailing it every time there after.

This also should give you some great ideas on how you can break out of the "box" that most guitarists get trapped in, and it should also "shred" a little light on what can be done with a simple, linear series of notes.

This is why it is important to study the masters of classical music. Even if the classics aren't your bag, classical composers of years long forgotten, were masters of creative arrangement.

Remember, especially if you are fresh on the guitar scene, that you should think of yourself as a sponge and absorb all styles of music.

I was in a heavy metal band not too long ago and those guys were fantastic musicians, but they were also pretty limited. I would rip off riffs of death, and they would ask me about them. I would try to explain by comparing my passages to other forms of music, but it just didn't compute. It didn't even compute when I put it into heavy metal terms. Educate yourself and take pride in being a connoisseur of music.





Click To Enlarge