1.13 Shred Fitness Check

Are You Hard Enough?!

The talking’s over: now’s the time to get your guitar out, stand up, and be counted.

It doesn’t matter how naturally gifted you are as a player, there are recognised physical/technical playing standards that you need to be able to achieve in order to get the most out of this book, as well as play the recognised rock, shred and metal classics with any semblance of accuracy.

If you haven’t got the basic chops everything will be a bluff – playing music and guitar as technically demanding as the content in this book provides without a core basic ability is futile.

Now’s the time to get fit.

The great Shaun Baxter has long espoused that the parameters of world class guitar playing starts with the ability to alternate pick any single note lines – be it scalar, arpeggios, or any combination of - accurately in 16ths at 160 BPM and Sextuplets at 120 BPM.

Most of you should be able to achieve these figures utilising chromatic or 3 not per string scales: and each module in this course features a series of specific drills and warm up exercises to get your fingers working and the blood flowing, and designed to hit specific muscle groups.

Before we kick off have a blast through Exercise 1:

Yes, that old favourite the ‘Spider’ Chromatic: make sure you play this to the metronome start off nice and slow, keep things strictly alternate picked and gradually hit three figures…

Onwards and upward now to Pick’n’Slick in Module 2!