
Spoiler: Yes, they can. Focusing intently on short rhythmic figures will up your picking game immensely.
Beginner
Intermediate
• Develop better right-hand technique.
• Learn how frequent rests can help you prevent injury.
• Understand how to isolate and improve picking weaknesses.
Whether you’re a lead player looking add some fast-picked lines to your vocabulary or a metal player who wants to play faster riffs, you’ll need a solid foundation to tackle the heavy-duty alternate picking that’s needed. It’s always good to have that technical headroom to express yourself without hitting the ceiling too quickly. In this lesson, we’ll look at how “speed bursts” can help you with short- and long-term technique goals.
There is no “correct” way of picking. Picking techniques vary from player to player and there are some odd ones, like Marty Friedman’s approach where he bends his wrist at almost a 90-degree angle.
MARTY FRIEDMAN - MIRACLE (Official Video)
Notice how other players pick from different parts of their arm. Paul Gilbert’s picking motion comes mostly from his wrist, while shredders like Vinnie Moore and Rusty Cooley derive their power from their elbow. It’s not important how you do it, just make sure not to create excessive tension. Now, some tension is ok, but if your tone gets buzzy or you’re having trouble controlling the rhythm you should probably slow down and relax a bit more. This is a trial-and-error process, so it’s important to be honest with yourself and reflect on what your hands are doing. You’ll get a feel for how much tension is appropriate.
That brings us to the next important point about picking: rhythm. It’s all about being in time. At a certain speed—which is different for everyone—our brains stop processing each note individually and think of them as a group of notes. At slower speeds, our brain processes each note we hear before sending out the signal to play the next note. This is what neuroscientists call an open feedback loop, while fast playing occurs in a closed feedback loop, where our brain sends out the signal for an entire group of notes that is processed as one unit. That means that playing slow and playing fast utilize different neurological processes and the old adage of practicing slow to play fast doesn’t work.
Yes, you do need to first practice something slow to properly learn the phrase or lick, but once you have it under your fingers, you must crank up the speed and focus on the first note that falls on each beat and let your brain build up those note groupings. This is known as a speed burst. That’s why being in time and having good rhythm is so important for this process.
Practicing at fast tempos will also expose problems in your technique and efficiency that don’t show during slow practice. I’ve included some basic exercises first to help you really feel the rhythm of the right hand.
Ex. 1 introduces the idea of speed bursts. I’m playing 16th-notes on the first three beats of the measure and then one beat of 32nd notes. That will help you to get used to how it feels to play fast and dial in your right-hand technique with these short bursts. I play four measures of this and then take a short break so as not to fatigue my hand too quickly.
Ex. 1
Start at a comfortable speed and, once you get a feel for it, increase the speed in increments of about 5 bpm until the point where the burst starts to feel a little uncomfortable. At that point I’d recommend single repetitions and focusing on the rhythmic feel. Take short breaks between every repetition. When you feel comfortable at that speed, add more repetitions. When you can do four comfortably, bump up the metronome until it’s uncomfortable again. This forces your body to adapt to the speed and actually get better. You don’t get faster by staying in your comfort zone. Also, don’t do this while watching TV as some people recommend. Mindful practice reaps much faster results than noodling away while being distracted, by a TV or anything else. I also find being really focused on what you’re doing prevents getting bored quite effectively.
Ex. 2 does the same but adds a triplet feel for the burst, forcing you to focus on the rhythm and timing even more. I try to feel the sextuplet as two groups of three. Personally, this gives me more rhythmic control when applying fast picking to string changes as opposed to feeling three groups of two. Try both and see what feels better to you. There are never too many ways to feel a rhythm.
Ex. 2
I use a triplet feel throughout Ex. 3, flipping the picking direction every measure. You’ll start with an upstroke in the second measure and the burst in the second measure will reverse the picking pattern. Take it slow at first to really get comfortable with that and then follow the above procedure again. This is a great exercise to lose excessive tension and focus on your upstroke. You can and should of course also practice starting all the other exercises on an upstroke as well.
Ex. 3
Ex. 4 is more for metal rhythm players who want to work on downstrokes at different subdivisions and then then add an alternate picked burst at the end.
Ex. 4
I use these first four examples as a right-hand warmup every day. Of course, there’ll be a point of diminishing returns once you hit certain speeds and you’ll reach that point rather quickly, which is why I focus most of my practice time on other aspects of my picking.
Let’s dive into some alternate-picking workouts. These are combinations of different short licks for you to work through. Practice each lick (marked by the letters in the notation) until you’ve got it under your fingers and then work through them back-to-back as a little routine. Start around 60 bpm and every time you get through about eight repetitions perfectly, bump up the speed. Once you start feeling uncomfortable, take a short break between every repetition. I prefer working through the licks in order because that improves your technique on a more general level and will translate better when you try to learn new songs or solos.
I usually spend about 25 minutes on one of those workouts building up speed. After staying at my limit for a few minutes I pick the lick that’s the least comfortable and lower the speed to where I can play it for about 30 seconds before I get sloppy. When you can play it cleanly without excessive tension for a full minute you can increase the speed there as well. If you comfortably hit 200 bpm or above, you can also start using 16th notes or sextuplets to work on different rhythmic feels. One you get comfortable with that you can even go up to 32nd notes to practice the feel of playing fast over slower beats. First up is Ex. 5, which focuses on eighth-notes. Once that’s in your fingers try Ex. 6, which works out a triplet feel.
Ex. 5
Ex. 6
Move these exercises to different scale positions and fingerings to mix it up. Also practice on different strings and with different tones so you can confidently play fast with clean and distorted tones as each one exposes different weak spots. Once you get those under your fingers you too will be praising the benefit of the burst.
- Cram Session: Thrash-Metal Rhythms - Premier Guitar ›
- 5 Tips to Relax While Playing Fast - Premier Guitar ›
- Full-On Pentatonic Shred - Premier Guitar ›
- Get Even with Alternate Picking - Premier Guitar ›
- Get Even with Alternate Picking - Premier Guitar ›
The range of clean, dirty, and complex tones available from this high-quality, carefully crafted Dumble modeler make it a formidable studio and performance device.
Fantastic variation in many delicious sounds makes it a bargain. High-quality. Easy to use and customize. Killer studio path to lively, responsive guitar sounds.
Price may be hard for some to swallow if they don’t leverage the whole of its potential.
$399
UAFX Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special
uaudio.com
I’ve never played a realDumble. I’d venture most of us haven’t. But given my experiences with James Santiago’s UAFX modeling pedals, most recently theUAFX Lion, I plugged in the new Dumble-inspired UAFX Enigmatic confident I’d taste at least the essence of that very rare elixir. You could argue there is no definitive Dumble sound. Each was customized to some extent for the customer, and they are renowned nearly as much for dynamic responsiveness and flexibility as their singing, complex, clean-to-dirty palettes.
The Enigmatic nails the flexibility, for sure. To my ears, its tone foundation lives somewhere on a sliver of Venn diagram where a black-panel Fender and a 50-watt Hiwatt intersect. It’s alive, dimensional, snappy, sparkly, massive, and, at the right EQ settings, hot and excitable. But the Enigmatic’s powerful EQ and gain controls, multiple virtual cab and mic pairings, rock, jazz, and custom voices, plus additional deep, bright, and presence controls enable you to travel many leagues from that fundamental tone. The customization work you can do in the app enables significant changes in the Enigmatic’s tone profile and responsiveness, too. All these observations are made tracking the Enigmatic straight to a DAW—making the breadth of its personality even more impressive. But the Enigmatic sounds every bit as lively at the front end of an amp, and black-panel Fenders are a primo pairing for its saturation and sparkly attributes. The Enigmatic is nearly $400, which is an investment. But considering the ground I covered in just a few days with it, and the quality and variety of sounds I could conjure with the unit just sitting on my desk, the performance-to-price ratio struck me as very favorable indeed.
This month’s mod Dan’s uses a 500k linear pot, a 1.5H inductor (L) with a 0.039 µF (39nF) cap (C), and a 220k resistor (R) in parallel.
This simple passive mod will boost your guitar’s sweet-spot tones.
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. In this column, we’ll be taking a closer look at the “mid boost and scoop mod” for electric guitars from longtime California-based tech Dan Torres, whose Torres Engineering seems to be closed, at least on the internet. This mod is in the same family with the Gibson Varitone, Bill Lawrence’s Q-Filter, the Gresco Tone Qube (said to be used by SRV), John “Dawk” Stillwells’ MTC (used by Ritchie Blackmore), the Yamaha Focus Switch, and the Epiphone Tone Expressor, as well as many others. So, while it’s just one of the many variations of tone-shaping mods, I chose the Torres because this one sounds best to me, which simply has to do with the part values he chose.
Don’t let the name fool you, this is a purely passive device—nothing is going to be boosted. In general, you can’t increase anything with passive electronics that isn’t already there. Period. But you can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent (so … “boost” in guitar marketing language). Removing highs makes lows more apparent, and vice versa. In addition, the use of inductors (which create the magnetic field in a guitar circuit) and capacitors will create resonant peaks and valleys (bandpasses and notches), further coloring the overall tone. This type of bandpass filter only allows certain frequencies to pass through, while others are blocked, and it all works at unity gain.
“You can’t increase anything with passive electronics that isn’t already there … but you can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent.”
All the systems I mentioned above are doing more or less the same thing, using different approaches and slightly different component values. They are all meant to be updated tone controls. Our common tone circuit is usually a variable low-pass filter (aka treble-cut filter), which only allows the low frequencies to pass through, while the high frequencies get sent to ground via the tone cap. Most of these systems are LCR networks, which means that there is not only a capacitor (C), like on our standard tone controls, but also an inductor (L) and a resistor (R).
In general, all these systems are meant to control the midrange in order to scoop the mids, creating a mid-cut. This can be a cool sounding option, e.g. on a Strat for that mid-scooped neck and middle tone.
Dan Torres offered his “midrange kit” via an internet shop that is no longer online, same with his business website. The Torres design is a typical LCR network and looks like the illustration at the top of this column.
Dan’s design uses a 500k linear pot, a 1.5H inductor (L) with a 0.039 µF (39nF) cap (C), and a 220k resistor (R) in parallel. Let’s break down the parts piece by piece:
Any 500k linear pot will do the trick, in one of the rare scenarios where a linear pot works better in a passive guitar system than an audio pot.
(C) 0.039µF cap: This is kind of an odd value. Keeping production tolerances of up to 20 percent in mind, any value that is close will do, so you can use any small cap you want for this. I would prefer a small metallized film cap, and any voltage rating will do. If you want to stay as close as possible to the original design, use any 0.039 µF low-tolerance film cap.
(L) 1.5H inductor: The original design uses a Xicon 42TL021 inductor, which is easy to find and fairly priced. This one is also used in the Bill Lawrence Q-Filter design, the Gibson standard Varitone, and many other systems like this. It’s very small, so it will fit in virtually every electronic compartment of a guitar. It has a frequency range of 300 Hz up to 3.4 kHz, with a primary impedance of 4k ohms (that’s the one we want to use) and a secondary impedance of 600 ohms. Snip off the three secondary leads and the center tap of the primary side and use the two remaining outer primary leads; the primary side is marked with a “P.” On the pic, you can see the two leads you need marked in red, all other leads can be snipped off. You can connect the two remaining leads to the pot either way; it doesn’t matter which of them is going to ground when using it this way.
Drawing courtesy of singlecoil.com
(R) 220k: use a small axial metal film resistor (0.25 W), which is easy to find and is the quasi-standard.
Other designs use slightly different part values—the Bill Lawrence Q-filter has a 1.8H L, 0.02 µF C and 8k R, while the old RA Gresco Tone Qube from the ’80s has a 1.5H L, 0.0033 µF C, and a 180k R, so this is a wide field for experimentation to tweak it for your personal tone.
This mid-cut system can be put into any electric guitar not only as a master tone, but also together with a regular tone control or something like the Fender Greasebucket, or it can be assigned only to a certain pickup. It can be a great way to enhance your sonic palette, so give it a try.
That’s it! Next month, we’ll take a deeper look into how to fight feedback on a Telecaster. It’s a common issue, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
The two-in-one “sonic refractor” takes tremolo and wavefolding to radical new depths.
Pros: Huge range of usable sounds. Delicious distortion tones. Broadens your conception of what guitar can be.
Build quirks will turn some users off.
$279
Cosmodio Gravity Well
cosmod.io
Know what a wavefolder does to your guitar signal? If you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t either until I started messing around with the all-analog Cosmodio Instruments Gravity Well. It’s a dual-effect pedal with a tremolo and wavefolder, the latter more widely used in synthesis that , at a certain threshold, shifts or inverts the direction the wave is traveling—in essence, folding it upon itself. Used together here, they make up what Cosmodio calls a sonic refractor.
Two Plus One
Gravity Well’s design and control set make it a charm to use. Two footswitches engage tremolo and wavefolder independently, and one of three toggle switches swaps the order of the effects. The two 3-way switches toggle different tone and voice options, from darker and thicker to brighter and more aggressive. (Mixing and matching with these two toggles yields great results.)
The wavefolder, which has an all-analog signal path bit a digitally controlled LFO, is controlled by knobs for both gain and volume, which provide enormous dynamic range. The LFO tremolo gets three knobs: speed, depth, and waveform. The first two are self-explanatory, but the latter offers switching between eight different tremolo waveforms. You’ll find standard sawtooth, triangle, square, and sine waves, but Cosmodio also included some wacko shapes: asymmetric swoop, ramp, sample and hold, and random. These weirder forms force truly weird relationships with the pedal, forcing your playing into increasingly unpredictable and bizarre territories.
This is all housed in a trippy, beautifully decorated Hammond 1590BB-sized enclosure, with in/out, expression pedal, and power jacks. I had concerns about the durability of the expression jack because it’s not sealed to its opening with an outer nut and washer, making it feel more susceptible to damage if a cable gets stepped on or jostled near the connection, as well as from moisture. After a look at the interior, though, the build seems sturdy as any I’ve seen.
Splatterhouse Audio
Cosmodio’s claim that the refractor is a “first-of-its-kind” modulation effect is pretty grand, but they have a point in that the wavefolder is rare-ish in the guitar domain and pairing it with tremolo creates some pretty foreign sounds. Barton McGuire, the Massachusetts-based builder behind Cosmodio, released a few videos that demonstrate, visually, how a wavefolder impacts your guitar’s signal—I highly suggest checking them out to understand some of the principles behind the effect (and to see an ’80s Muppet Babies-branded keyboard in action.)
By folding a waveform back on itself, rather than clipping it as a conventional distortion would, the wavefolder section produces colliding, reflecting overtones and harmonics. The resulting distortion is unique: It can sound lo-fi and broken in the low- to mid-gain range, or synthy and extraterrestrial when the gain is dimed. Add in the tremolo, and you’ve got a lot of sonic variables to play with.
Used independently, the tremolo effect is great, but the wavefolder is where the real fun is. With the gain at 12 o’clock, it mimics a vintage 1x10 tube amp cranked to the breaking point by a splatty germanium OD. A soft touch cleans up the signal really nicely, while maintaining the weirdness the wavefolder imparts to its signal. With forceful pick strokes at high gain, it functions like a unique fuzz-distortion hybrid with bizarre alien artifacts punching through the synthy goop.
One forum commenter suggested that the Gravity Well effect is often in charge as much the guitar itself, and that’s spot on at the pedal's extremes. Whatever you expect from your usual playing techniques tends to go out the window —generating instead crumbling, sputtering bursts of blubbering sound. Learning to respond to the pedal in these environments can redefine the guitar as an instrument, and that’s a big part of Gravity Well’s magic.
The Verdict
Gravity Well is the most fun I’ve had with a modulation pedal in a while. It strikes a brilliant balance between adventurous and useful, with a broad range of LFO modulations and a totally excellent oddball distortion. The combination of the two effects yields some of the coolest sounds I’ve heard from an electric guitar, and at $279, it’s a very reasonably priced journey to deeply inspiring corners you probably never expected your 6-string (or bass, or drums, or Muppet Babies Casio EP-10) to lead you to.
Kemper and Zilla announce the immediate availability of Zilla 2x12“ guitar cabs loaded with the acclaimed Kemper Kone speaker.
Zilla offers a variety of customization to the customers. On the dedicated Website, customers can choose material, color/tolex, size, and much more.
The sensation and joy of playing a guitar cabinet
Sometimes, when there’s no PA, there’s just a drumkit and a bass amp. When the creative juices flow and the riffs have to bounce back off the wall - that’s the moment when you long for a powerful guitar cabinet.
A guitar cabinet that provides „that“ well-known feel and gives you that kick-in-the-back experience. Because guitar cabinets can move some serious air. But these days cabinets also have to be comprehensive and modern in terms of being capable of delivering the dynamic and tonal nuances of the KEMPER PROFILER. So here it is: The ZILLA 2 x 12“ upright slant KONE cabinet.
These cabinets are designed in cooperation with the KEMPER sound designers and the great people from Zilla. Beauty is created out of decades of experience in building the finest guitar cabinets for the biggest guitar masters in the UK and the world over, combined with the digital guitar tone wizardry from the KEMPER labs. Loaded with the exquisit Kemper Kone speakers.
Now Kemper and Zilla bring this beautiful and powerful dream team for playing, rehearsing, and performing to the guitar players!
ABOUT THE KEMPER KONE SPEAKERS
The Kemper Kone is a 12“ full range speaker which is exclusively designed by Celestion for KEMPER. By simply activating the PROFILER’s well-known Monitor CabOff function the KEMPER Kone is switched from full-range mode to the Speaker Imprint Mode, which then exactly mimics one of 19 classic guitar speakers.
Since the intelligence of the speaker lies in the DSP of the PROFILER, you will be able to switch individual speaker imprints along with your favorite rigs, without needing to do extensive editing.
The Zilla KEMPER KONE loaded 2x12“ cabinets can be custom designed and ordered for an EU price of £675,- UK price of £775,- and US price of £800,- - all including shipping (excluding taxes outside of the UK).
For more information, please visit kemper-amps.com or zillacabs.com.