September 2010 \ Features \ Shred Guitar Roundtable: Rusty Cooley, Oli Herbert, Mike Orlando, and Jeff Beasley

Shred Guitar Roundtable: Rusty Cooley, Oli Herbert, Mike Orlando, and Jeff Beasley

Jeff Beasley

Shredders lend five licks with video, tab, and description for this mega-lesson
Premier Guitar September 2010
(2 of 4)

The name Rusty Cooley has become synonymous with some of the best the shred guitar genre has to offer. His 7-string guitar madness has catapulted him to the top as one of the best shredders in the world. We’re both Dean Guitar endorsers and at the NAMM show we spoke about all things guitar. I have to say that Rusty is not only a fantastic guitarist but a great guy as well.

Lick 1
Example one is one of my all time favorite sequences and is heavily part of my style, I call it sevens. I’m using a three octave A Mixolydian mode for the scale, which is from the key of D major. Basically, the sequence breaks down into seven-note groups that I play evenly over the beat. You can use this sequence in any three-note-per-string scale in any key or mode. I’m a huge fan of odd note groupings. Alternate pick this example.





Lick 2
Here’s one more of my favorites. It’s another odd note grouping, this time fives in E harmonic minor. The cool thing about fives is that every group flips directions from ascending to descending so you are hit with a barrage of notes coming at you from every direction--sweet! Again, you're using alternate picking.





Lick 3
Now it’s time for some legato fun! We will be using Aadd2, Dadd2, and Eadd2 arpeggios. This is a very cool way to play arpeggios--you are actually playing each arpeggio on a single string using all four fingers, which is a refreshing approach considering most people these days are using sweeping. This lick is from the key of A major.





Lick 4
Next up--you guessed it--is sweeping. Here’s a cool A7 arpeggio lick. I'm back to the odd groupings again with three groups of fives followed by what I consider to be a fairly common 5th string root shape for A7.





Lick 5
Last, but certainly not least, is one of my all-time favorite scales, Mixolydian b6, which is the 5th mode of F melodic minor. I don’t get to use this scale as much as I like because I don’t find myself writing in C Mixolydain b6 much, but I love its sound and the emotion it creates. This lick uses legato and string skipping with groups of five that ends with a nice legato C major arpeggio.





Hit page 3 for Mike Orlando's lesson...

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Comments

 (13 comments) display by
UsernameComment
Weir Do
on 11/06/2011 		never heard bout him till today
art
on 11/18/2010 		i guess it is a matter of taste,i dug it though.to each their own and he is a very cool dude,no ego or pretentious bs....shred on....
JD
on 09/28/2010 		Take advantage of these FREE guitar lessons and apply them to your playing..You are only as good of a musician as you want to be!
J. Perry
on 09/15/2010 		I've never heard anyone, knocking shredding, that can do it or get anywhere near that accuracy in technique.
stringer
on 09/14/2010 		I am not so sure why this is considered a lesson in music. A magazine such as premier should be aware of this. To get to this level of speed is the equivalent of some kid dribbling a basketball 100 a second but cant score a hoop. There is mo emotion here nor is it music or metal in any form. Rusty, please write us Crazy train or Revolution is my name and maybe the rest of us can hear that wicked solo in the middle until then I can hit FFW on my protools.
Mike
on 09/13/2010 		Obviously, musical taste is subjective, but only a few of these sound musical or usable to me. I'd recommend the Wohlfahrt opus 45 violin studies or even Joseph Viola Saxophone studies for technical exercises that are musical. The right hand parts of the Hanon or Czerny piano exercises are also very helpful and musical. And the Klose clarinet studies. Then if you want more jazz oriented sound, just apply those classical etudes to advanced theory settings. Not trying to take anything away from these guys. They are obviously technically talented. I'm just surprised nobody talks about about the old great classical studies that you can buy for like six bucks a piece. Probably because they are only in notation and not tabbed.
doc taz
on 09/13/2010 		These examples are in isolation from the music. I can guarantee you that if you listen to the music these guys play, you'll probably appreciate them a lot more and have a better understanding of what's going on. Better yet, make up your own stuff...

Of all of them I probably like Beasley and Herbert the most. I tend to like All The Remains anyway, but some of the Outworld stuff's pretty cool, too.

Metal shred tends to be subjective anyway... if I were to pick one guy right now, it would be Jeff Loomis. Too bad about Nevermore trying to retain Chris Broderick in the lineup. Speaking of Broderick, he's quite awesome unplugged, too. Not something one can say of many metal shredders, anyway. :)
Stephen
on 09/12/2010 		Rusty is so fast, that it's just plain ridiculous...is this music or is this an athletic competition (ie. I'm faster than you are)?
Preston
on 09/12/2010 		I think these are great lessons! Beasley did the best explaining out of the 4 and his stuff seems to be the most usable out of all of them for me atleast. Great stuff!
J
on 09/12/2010 		I enjoyed watching these. Not all were in my style but a little bit of something can be learned from everyone. I would love to see more in the future. Thanks guys for finding time to do this.



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