Do you want your name etched in stone among the other various shred lords like Jason Becker, John Petrucci, Vinnie Moore, Marty Friedman and Yngwie Malmsteen?
Well, this lesson is your first step to harnessing the power of shred and using it to ascend beyond the limitations of humanity. That’s right—you can become a shred god. Put your meanest guitar face on, and let’s get to work.
While the road to shred immortality is long and tumultuous, there will never be a substitute for a consistent, disciplined practice regimen. The key is to entice yourself to enjoy these many practice sessions through the use of backing tracks and genuinely tasty exercises. In other words, you want guitar exercises that don’t suck.
In the exercise below, you’ll train all the vital elements of shred guitar wizardry: aggressive tone, alternate-picking and legato gymnastics, screaming harmonics, and most importantly, a confident attitude. All these things and more make up the sound and spirit of a shred god.
Shred God Exercise
The best way to learn any new lick, especially quick ones like these, is to break the beast into pieces and attack it in sections. Since we’re merely descending through the B Aeolian mode, your ear will aid you in finding the familiar notes as you begin to increase your speed between each position shift.
By the way, if this sound is too “over the top” and causes anger to boil inside you, or if you’re certain guitar playing is all about a “less is more” approach… you can leave. Seriously, there’s the door behind you. Don’t let it hit you in the ass on your way out.
Tyler Larson is the founder of the guitar-centric brand Music is Win. His insightful, uncomplicated guitar lessons and gear demonstrations along with entertaining, satirical content about life as a musician receive tens of millions of video views per month across social media. Tyler is also the creator of the extremely popular online guitar learning platform, Guitar Super System. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Tyler has been teaching guitar for over a decade and operates a production studio in Nashville, TN.
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