These 5 Pedal Point Guitar Licks Will Level-Up Your Neoclassical Guitar Chops
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If you want to play neoclassical guitar solos like a pro...
You ought to practice pedal point guitar licks.
(Like the ones used by Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Stump, Vinnie Moore and other awesome neoclassical guitar players.)
And don't worry...
Pedal point guitar licks not only sound cool...
... they are much easier to play than you may think.
Knowing how to practice them correctly and understanding what to focus on is all it takes.
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By submitting your info, you agree to send it to Tom Hess Music Corporation who will process and use it according to their privacy policy.
And in this neoclassical guitar article...
I show you how to play these licks like a pro.
This will help you level-up your neoclassical guitar playing and have a ton of fun.
(Without practicing more.)
To begin...
Watch this video that shows 5 pedal point guitar licks every fan of neoclassical guitar playing must know:
Now, let’s go deeper.
Here are 5 tips that help you level up your neoclassical guitar playing of these pedal point licks (and all other guitar licks you find in this style of guitar playing).
Neoclassical Guitar Playing Tip #1: Use Directional Picking
Directional picking makes it easy to play fast neoclassical guitar licks (including pedal point licks) cleanly and accurately.
How do you do directional picking?
The idea is to pick in the direction of the next note at all times.
It works like this:
When you play on a single string, you use strict alternate picking (as alternating your pick strokes allows the pick to move directly to the next note).
But when you change strings?
Pick in the direction of the new string.
Meaning: when you ascend in pitch (i.e. move towards the thinner string that’s higher in pitch), you pick the first note on the higher string with a downstroke all the time.
And when descending in pitch (i.e. move towards the thicker string that’s lower in pitch), pick the first note on the lower string with an upstroke.
Follow this picking pattern in all neoclassical guitar licks (pedal point licks or not).
Directional picking is the main lead guitar picking technique I teach to my guitar students (and it unlocks fast guitar playing for them much more easily than alternate picking).
Question: “But Tom Hess, doesn't directional picking create weaker pick attack than alternate picking?”
Answer: No. Directional picking actually makes your pick attack better, stronger and more deliberate than alternate picking. When you alternate pick, the accents naturally fall on downstrokes. And this – for some reason – is thought to be a ‘good’ thing by many.
But what this often does is make your upstrokes naturally softer in comparison.
Directional picking, on the other hand, has no natural accents. This means, you have to: A. decide where the accents have to fall in the lead guitar licks you’re playing. And B. practice to make those accents happen where you want them to happen.
This makes directional picking a more universal and versatile lead guitar technique than alternate picking.
Question: “But Tom Hess, doesn't directional picking limit you to playing certain licks using a specific number of notes per string?”
Answer: No. This is what ‘economy’ picking is and many guitar players confuse directional picking with economy picking.
The 2 techniques are different.
Economy picking requires you to play guitar licks where you must sweep pick on every string change. This ‘does’ limit what guitar licks you can and cannot play and forces you to preplan your guitar licks in advance.
Directional picking has no such limitation in your guitar playing.
It allows you to play anything you want, with zero pre-planning.
The only “rule” is – you move in the direction of the next note (or the next string on a string change). This makes your guitar playing much more efficient, helping you achieve the guitar speed you want a lot faster.
To see more reasons why directional picking is superior to alternate (and economy) picking, watch this lead guitar playing lesson video:
Neoclassical Guitar Playing Tip #2: Practice Sweep Picking
Sweep picking is very often used in neoclassical guitar playing to play lead guitar arpeggios at high speeds.
And, in combination with pedal point guitar licks, sweep picking (when done correctly) can help you play neoclassical guitar licks and solos that are out of reach of most guitar players.
Watch this video to see how to do sweep picking the right way:
And as you practice guitar, here are the key elements of sweep picking to focus on:
1. Picking motions. To do sweep picking motions the right way, push your pick through the strings in a single movement (when ascending an arpeggio) and pull the hand back in a single motion (when descending an arpeggio).
Do not pause the picking movement between notes. Doing so makes your picking hand lose momentum and makes it very hard to build speed.
Your pick should move in a single motion down (when ascending in pitch) and a single motion up (when descending in pitch).
When you get this part right, doing sweep picking (and playing neoclassical guitar licks with this technique) becomes very easy.
2. Fretting hand motions. The secret to fast and clean sweep picking is to only allow one note to sound at a time.
To achieve this, make sure to release each note you played the moment you fret a new note of the arpeggio. Don’t allow any 2 notes to ring together. This sounds horribly noisy (especially when you are playing neoclassical sweep picking guitar licks with distortion).
3. Finger Rolling. Finger rolling occurs when you fret notes on the same fret across several strings with the same finger. This motion happens often in many neoclassical guitar licks, arpeggios and pedal point passages.
And here is how to do it correctly without the notes bleeding together, creating sloppy noise:
Note: beware this common sweep picking mistakes:
When you play neoclassical guitar arpeggios that have pull offs (and hammer ons) in them, don’t make the pull offs (and hammer ons) faster than the other notes.
When this happens, your guitar playing sounds amateur. Watch this sweep picking video to see how to avoid this problem.
To be clear:
Sweep picking is not style-specific, just like using ‘arpeggios’ in your lead guitar playing is not style-specific. Arpeggios are simply chords (found in every genre of music, from neoclassical guitar to jazz and country). And sweep picking – a technique (often used) for playing arpeggios also has nothing to do with the style of music you play.
Believe it or not, I’ve taught sweep picking to guitar players in every style (including classic rock and southern blues).
Neoclassical Guitar Playing Tip #3: Control String Noise In Your Guitar Playing
On top of controlling bleeding between notes, it’s equally important to control string noise from the strings you are not playing.
That is key to making all your guitar licks (including pedal point licks) sound clean and pro.
The best way to control string noise?
Use thumb muting to mute the lower (in pitch) guitar strings.
As the name implies, you simply rest your picking hand’s thumb on the string sand slide it up and down as you play guitar licks.
This is a very effective way to keep your guitar playing (and pedal point guitar licks) clean.
Question: “Tom Hess, what about muting string noise with the palm of the picking hand?”
Answer: You can do what you want, but I don’t recommend it. Thumb muting is more reliable than palm muting, because the thumb is more immediately available to mute the strings right below (in pitch) the one you are playing.
Plus, resting your thumb on the strings keeps your guitar pick in the trench of the strings (space between the strings), making your guitar playing technique more efficient and helping with speed.
Note: to do thumb muting the right way, it’s important to hold your guitar pick the way I show in this video:
To mute the higher (in pitch) guitar strings, use the fingers of your picking hand that aren’t holding the guitar pick. Simply have them touching the higher (thinner) strings to keep them from ringing.
Neoclassical Guitar Playing Tip #4: Relax Excess Muscle Tension In Your Body
Excess muscle tension makes everything about your guitar playing feel like a struggle... including building guitar speed with pedal point guitar licks.
How do you relax excess tension?
Here are some of my favorite and proven ways of doing that:
1. Tension audit. This allows you to see how much tension you are holding in throughout your body and relax it while playing.
Begin playing any guitar lick (such as the pedal point neoclassical guitar phrases I showed you earlier) and – systematically – check (“audit”) every part of your body for tension. Relax any tension you find.
Start with your jaw (and the muscle in your tongue), then proceed to your neck, shoulders, triceps, biceps, stomach, thighs, calves and feet.
Find the top guitar playing speed where you can play the guitar lick you’re working on without excess tension in any of those parts of your body.
As that top speed (of being able to play without excess tension) increases, your overall top guitar speed will increase as well. Not to mention, everything about your playing will feel a lot easier too.
Watch this video to see a demonstration of how to do a guitar technique tension audit:
2. Exaggeration. This counterintuitive guitar playing trick is tremendously effective when simply “trying to relax” doesn't help your guitar playing. What you do is (briefly) tense up your entire body as hard as you can (and hold your breath) for 3-5 seconds.
Then, relax as much as you can. You’ll find that you relax more after being very tense than you would by trying to relax from a state that feels ‘normal’.
3. Exhale before a fast part. This idea helps you play faster guitar licks without tension (especially when you go into a fast neoclassical guitar lick having played no notes before).
And – as its name suggests – you simply breathe out right before you begin to play. Exhaling helps to release tension in your body and makes faster guitar playing feel easier.
Neoclassical Guitar Playing Tip #5: Work On Your Vibrato And Slides.
Another very counterintuitive, but highly effective way to play neoclassical guitar licks fast and clean is to work on your vibrato and slides.
Believe it or not, those 2 techniques are every bit as important for neoclassical guitar soloing as fast picking, clean legato and ripping through arpeggios.
For one thing: a huge influence on the virtuoso neoclassical guitar style is the violin.
And if you want to mimic violin phrasing with your guitar solos, you’d better learn to do clean and accurate slides (to the exact note you want to hit) and make your vibrato thick, fast and wide.
Plus (and almost nobody talks about this), practicing vibrato and slides actually ‘helps’ with fast guitar playing.
That’s because vibrato and (especially) slides thicken up your fretting hand calluses. And the thicker your calluses are, the easier it is to play guitar fast (because you don't have to squeeze the strings as hard to get the notes to ring).
Watch this video to see how to practice vibrato on guitar the right way:
Now that you know how to play neoclassical guitar pedal point licks, I want to help you build your picking hand speed, so you can easily play all the fast and challenging guitar licks you’ve been wanting to play for so long. I show you how in my free eGuide: How To Build Lightning Fast Guitar Picking Speed. Download it today and discover the guitar technique secrets most guitarists will never know.
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