How To Become A Great Neoclassical Guitarist - FREE 14 Day Neoclassical Guitar Lessons Mini Course - Part 5
Listen to “Labyrinth of Madness”
MP3 of Lesson 5 (Arpeggios) played slowly
MP3 of Lesson 5 (Melody)
Welcome to the 5th part of the mini course on how to become a great neoclassical guitarist! Today, I want to teach you another part of the Labyrinth of Madness instrumental and show you how arpeggios and the sweep picking technique are being used here.
If you want to listen to the song again, you can do so by clicking here: "Labyrinth of Madness"
We will focus on the intro section of the music (0:00-0:36). There are two guitar parts that I want you to practice here: the first lead guitar part is playing very dark sounding arpeggios, and the second one is playing a very exotic sounding melody (over the arpeggio section).
Both of the guitar parts in this section here sound very similar to the style of Jason Becker and his playing on the Perpetual Burn CD (filled with many neoclassical guitar masterpieces!) The first part of the song I want you to learn uses a variety of dark sounding arpeggios.
To listen to the slow version of the arpeggio section, click here.
As you are practicing this section of the song, keep the following tips in mind:
To make it easier to learn the arpeggios, practice playing just a few notes at a time, beginning at a very slow speed. When practicing slowly, you will give your hands time to learn the motions they need to make in order to play the notes cleanly. It’s easy to play the notes perfectly if you play them slowly enough and if you only play a few notes at a time. Also, during your slow practice, make sure to pay attention to the fingering and the picking markings shown in the tab. There are several combinations of hammer ons, pull offs and picked notes used here and it is important for you to play them as shown in the notation so that you can learn this section faster and with less effort.
Because these arpeggios need to be played relatively slowly in this song, this exercise will really test accuracy and control of your sweep picking. Playing arpeggios slowly (and CLEANLY!) is actually more difficult than it seems and you will probably discover some new flaws in your playing that you didn’t notice before. However, the good news is that if you make mistakes while playing arpeggios slowly, it becomes easy to hear right away what you need to improve on! Likewise, if you can play this exercise cleanly, this means that you are on your way to mastering this technique.
All of the practicing tips for arpeggios that were discussed in Lesson 3 of this free mini course apply here as well. Make sure to work on playing very cleanly so that only one note is sounding at a time (this is extremely important!).
Notice also that there is a pedal point being played here in the second half of measure 11 through the first half of measure 12 (the note on the 18th fret of the 1st string is being repeated while the other notes are changing and that note is the “pedal point” in this case). As discussed earlier, there is a huge number of possible pedal point variations, and this is another one that you get to see in this mini course :)
As you can see, the most economical way of playing this pedal point is to use the string skipping technique. As you are skipping over strings while playing, make sure that your pick doesn’t accidentally knock into the string it needs to skip. Look at your pick while practicing!
Below you see the tab for the melody from this excerpt:
As you are learning the slow/exotic melody from this excerpt, pay very close attention to vibrato and slides that are applied to many of the notes. They are very important for achieving proper feel. The wave symbol which is shown above many of the notes in the tab means to apply vibrato to those notes. Here is what that symbol looks like:
The practice tips and strategies I share with you in this mini course will set you on the right path to becoming a great neoclassical guitar player. However, to help you fully master all of the skills needed for you to become the guitarist you want to be, I want to work with you directly in my Neoclassical Revelation program. In my course I teach guitarists just like you how to develop all the skills necessary to become a neoclassical guitar maestro. If you want me to train you how to become a great player in this style, let’s get started today! Get started now at www.neoclassicalrevelation.com. I will see you in a couple of days with your next lesson!
Go here to review Lesson 1 of this mini course.
Go here to review Lesson 2.
Review Lesson 3 here.
Review Lesson 4 here.