If you dream of becoming a master of shred guitar, and are looking for some lessons that can help you achieve your goal, you have come to the right place. With diligent practice, our premium shred guitar course can have you playing like a pro in as little as 90 days. The course contains more than six hours of professionally shot video that you can use to learn new techniques and build on the skills you already have.
This lesson gives you an overview of more than twenty techniques for both your right and left hands that will put you on the road to guitar kingship. The instructor, Dustin, explains and demonstrates a number of important concepts for any guitarist, beginning with the basics and working through some advanced techniques. Watching the lesson is a perfect way for you to get an idea of how your abilities compare to those of a true professional.
This video lesson is one of the most comprehensive overviews of shred techniques that you will find on the net. Dustin discusses why a guitar god must develop each skill. But more than that, he demonstrates how you will sound after diligent practice. It is more than just informative, it’s inspirational, too.
If you are like many guitar god wanna-be’s, you might get a little overwhelmed when imagining yourself playing a great solo like those you hear on your favorite recordings. You don’t need to feel that way, though, because the endless variety of shred licks you hear are all created using four basic techniques: Alternate Picking, Sweeping, Tapping and Legato. ‘Shred Madness’ breaks these techniques down into their simplest form, gives you a system for practicing them, and introduces 400 awesome licks you can learn and use to start creating your own personal style. So let’s take a look at the first of four techniques…
While beginning guitarists tend to use only down strokes when picking, this practice can seriously limit their speed and flexibility. Learning how to use the alternate picking technique (alternating between up strokes and down strokes with your pick) is essential if you hope to become a shredding master. In this video, Dustin explains and demonstrates some of the principles of the down-up, down-up picking pattern.
He also provides seven practice exercises that you can use as a way to develop dexterity in both your right and left hands. As always, the video provides close up views of both Justin’s hands as he plays, and you can see the tablature for each exercise while you listen to it.
Alternate picking is probably the most important skill for a shred guitarist to have. It allows great flexibility in terms of the dynamics of the instrument, the attack of the pick and the over-all style of the music.
This video lesson, and the seven practice exercises that are demonstrated at the end, provide valuable tips for any would-be shredder. Dustin explains all the basics of the technique, starting from holding your pick properly and proceeding through warm-ups, 2-and 3-note patterns, string skipping and more. It will give you a firm understanding of alternate picking, why it’s important, and how you can use it to best advantage.
If you watch Dustin play, hear the control and consistency of his sound and see how his hands work seamlessly together, you’ll be inspired to spend some quality practice time working on alternate picking. It is just not possible for you to become a great shredder without this technique in your arsenal. You need to develop the skill right away and use it frequently in order to reach your full potential. Let this lesson encourage and motivate you to become the best shredder you can be. All it takes is hard work, dedication and perseverance…and a great teacher to guide you on your way. We have provided the instructor, and the rest is within your grasp.
Every guitar player needs to be comfortable with the technique of alternate picking, and the more you practice this basic skill, the faster and more accurate you’ll become. There is no need to play the same scale or lick over and over to learn alternate picking, however. You can use this huge catalog of licks to add variety to your practice sessions, and eventually, you’ll have them committed to memory so you can incorporate them into your own unique solos and riffs. Use these 100 wicked licks to spice up your practice time, provide inspiration for new intros or add a new twist to an old favorite song.
**IMPORTANT: This is the secret sauce to the course – building ‘MUSCLE MEMORY’. If you’re not familiar with the term, think of it as practicing enough so that the movements your fingers make become automatic, freeing your brain to think about the mood and feelings of the music you are creating. The entire Shred Madness course has been constructed to make developing ‘muscle memory’ paramount!
Sweeping is a valuable technique to have in your arsenal if you hope to be a shredding king. As its name implies, sweeping involves moving your picking hand across the strings in one motion, either upward or downward. Learning how to sweep will help you define the melodies and harmonies in your music and provide you with an efficient way to increase your playing speed. In this video, Dustin gives you valuable pointers for developing the sweep technique.
If you’ve ever listened to your favorite guitar god and wondered how he learned to improvise the solos and riffs that make his music so powerful, this video can help break the process down for you. In it, Dustin demonstrates how you can take any chord that is in a song and separate it into its individual notes using the sweeping technique. Once you have mastered that, you can create a solo that is dynamic and authoritative and will keep your audience wanting more.
You’ll find several different ways to use sweeping in this lesson, and you’ll get some great pointers for making your play as efficient as possible while conserving your energy. You’ll also get some valuable information about improvising and learn how to add solo riffs to your repertoire that will give you a polished, professional sound.
The video lesson concludes with four practice exercises that you can use to get started acquiring your sweep skills right away. By seeing close ups of both Dustin’s hands and viewing the tablature for each exercise, you’ll be able to take the drills at your own speed and repeat them as often as you like for maximum benefit.
Many songs and phrases lend themselves to the technique of ‘sweeping’—moving your pick across the strings in a single upward or downward motion. Like everything of value, sweeping takes some perseverance to master, but it is well worth the effort. Having 100 terrific sweep licks at your disposal will ensure that you never get bored while you’re learning the technique, and every new riff you learn will help you develop that all-important muscle memory that only comes through focused practice. Have a look at these licks and choose one or two to get started on today. It’ll become easier as time goes on, and you’ll wonder how you ever played anything without understanding how to sweep.
**IMPORTANT: This is the secret sauce to the course – building ‘MUSCLE MEMORY’. If you’re not familiar with the term, think of it as practicing enough so that the movements your fingers make become automatic, freeing your brain to think about the mood and feelings of the music you are creating. The entire Shred Madness course has been constructed to make developing ‘muscle memory’ paramount!
If you are a Van Halen or Satriani fan, (and who isn’t?) you’ve heard two of the masters of the tapping technique. Eddie Van Halen is responsible for bringing the method into the mainstream of popular music and Joe Satriani is one of the pioneers of pick tapping. Learning how to tap will allow you to add tremendous variety to your shredding and will give you the freedom to create memorable riffs and lines that cover wide intervals on the fret board.
Tapping involves moving your right hand onto the fret board and using it to complete runs and riffs that would be very difficult to reach if you tried to use your left hand, alone. The technique can be used in combination with picking, sweeping or legato to give your solos extra punch and endless variety. This video features several of Dustin’s most valuable tips for learning how to tap, and he demonstrates them in a way that makes his points easy to understand. When you become a proficient tapper, you’ll be amazed at the freedom you’ll achieve to play cool-sounding riffs that wow your listeners.
This video contains five exercises that you can use right away to get started tapping. The camera allows you to see Dustin’s right and left hands work together to play amazing runs. He plays them slowly, at first, and then at a faster tempo, so you’ll have motivation to increase your own speed. While you listen to the exercises and watch Dustin play them, you’ll also be able to see the tablature for each drill so you can begin to reproduce them with your own guitar.
Guitar greatness demands that you learn how to tap, and this lesson provides the perfect way for you to get started.
If you love the screaming sound that only comes from using the right hand to tap the strings up high on the fretboard, you’ll be psyched to watch these videos. The excellent camera work allows you to see how the guitarist uses both hands to produce wild-sounding solos. You’ll also be able to hear each lick performed slowly while reading the tablature, so you’re sure you are hearing it correctly. Then, you can hear it at a fast tempo and catch the vision for what it should sound like when you have it mastered. So check out these wicked licks now and use them for inspiration. With practice and dedication, you can become a tapping czar.
**IMPORTANT: This is the secret sauce to the course – building ‘MUSCLE MEMORY’. If you’re not familiar with the term, think of it as practicing enough so that the movements your fingers make become automatic, freeing your brain to think about the mood and feelings of the music you are creating. The entire Shred Madness course has been constructed to make developing ‘muscle memory’ paramount!
While Alternate Picking gives you a powerful, staccato sound, Legato can be used to produce smooth, flowing licks that provide moments of appealing contrast in your solos. This video, and the practice licks that follow, will show you how to use hammer-ons and pull-offs to play dynamic runs that only require picking once per string. When you blend some Legato phrases into your solos that are already filled with powerful picking sections, your leads will come to life in a big way.
When utilized properly, Legato will result in a run that flows seamlessly from one note to the next, almost like a river flowing between its banks. By becoming proficient at Legato, a lead man can add a completely new dimension to his sound.
A guitar player usually finds that the work done with the right hand requires more coordination and practice than the movements done with the left hand. In this video, Dustin explains how you can rest your right hand and concentrate on increasing your left hand skills by learning Legato. Following along with him will allow you to extend your reach and achieve more variety in the melodies and chords you are able to play.
This informative lesson concludes with ten Legato exercises you can incorporate into your practice sessions. They feature awesome camera work that provides close up views of both of Dustin’s hands, along with the tablature for each exercise. If it is your dream to shred like a pro, you need to utilize Legato, and this video will help you reach your goal, without blowing your budget.
Some fans of metal, rock or punk may be turned off by the term ‘Legato’ thinking that they don’t want to incorporate a smooth or mellow sound into their playing. But they fail to realize that many great shredders put legato sections into their solos to provide a crowd-pleasing contrast with the more up-tempo parts of their music. Besides producing an appealing sound, a legato riff can also help you strengthen your left hand and build dexterity into your fingers. Since legato passages don’t require you to pick a string for each note of a line, your right hand can rest a bit, freeing you to concentrate on what your left hand is doing. Legato is an excellent technique to have in your storehouse of tricks, and these 100 wicked licks will give you plenty of variety for learning the skill.
**IMPORTANT: This is the secret sauce to the course – building ‘MUSCLE MEMORY’. If you’re not familiar with the term, think of it as practicing enough so that the movements your fingers make become automatic, freeing your brain to think about the mood and feelings of the music you are creating. The entire Shred Madness course has been constructed to make developing ‘muscle memory’ paramount!
You may have heard the old saying, “Practice makes perfect,” but Dustin explains why the proverb isn’t necessarily true. In fact, only PERFECT practice leads to perfect guitarmanship. In order to achieve your true potential as a shredder, you need to make the most efficient use of your practice time. This will ensure that you build proper muscle memory in your hands and fingers, so you can increase the speed of your riffs and runs while maintaining excellent technique.
One of the keys to becoming a great shredder is the ability to play at lightning speed. But, it is impossible to develop that speed without plenty of the right kind of practice. Following the tips in this video will get you off to a good start, however, so that the time you do spend in practice is truly valuable and helps you achieve your ultimate goal.
Like all people who dream of becoming a master of the guitar, you almost certainly understand that you must spend time practicing in order to make the dream happen. However, you probably also have a limited amount of time you can devote to your craft. Work, school, family, social obligations and a myriad of other things may tend to intrude on the time you have set aside for practice. That’s why it is so important to get the most out of every minute you can spend with a guitar in your hand.
This video will show you how to do just that. Dustin, the fabulous guitarist and teacher for our lessons, has developed a logical, effective system for his own practice time, and he shares a number of valuable tips with you in this video. You will see how he uses a metronome to set goals for himself and to provide inspiration that pushes him to develop more speed and better technique. You’ll learn how to maximize the results of your practice time while minimizing the drudgery. You’ll also be inspired to acquire an understanding of music theory that will help you internalize the information you need and integrate it seamlessly into your practices and performances.
Whether you need inspiration, additional musical knowledge or access to a useful system for practice time, you’ll find it here. When you add your own determination, talent and perseverance to the information in this video, you’re sure to see your skill and speed with your instrument increase. Practicing the right way will give you great confidence that will put you on the path to guitar expertise.
As a Shred Madness customer, you’ll be thrilled with this bonus. It gives you access to a section that demonstrates how to play all hand positions for all of the seven types (modes) of scales. If you’re not a music theory expert, don’t worry. Just understand that learning a variety of scales will make it SO much easier for you to create your own solos, because you’ll have a good building block to use as a basis.
Once you see that each type of scale is played in a particular pattern on the fret board, and that the pattern doesn’t change—just your hand position does—you’ll be able to learn tons of scales with very little effort.
You’ll see and hear an expert guitarist play each scale and you can follow along on the tablature until you have it memorized. Of course, like any aspect of learning the guitar, you’ll want to start playing a new scale slowly, build the muscle memory that will make it automatic to you, and then increase your speed. Why not make it a goal to learn a new scale or two every week? Shred mastery is within your reach.
Because arpeggios are just broken chords, and chords make up the basis of all guitar music, learning how to play them can help you increase your skill in a big way. The world of music is composed of nine different kinds of arpeggios, and each type can be played by starting from six different hand positions. This bonus will unlock the mystery behind them all. Once you learn the basic pattern of a certain arpeggio, you can move to another fret and repeat it. The logic and simplicity of the idea will amaze you.
Like all of our videos, you’ll have the advantage of seeing and hearing both the hands of a good guitarist as he plays the arpeggios—first slowly and then at a fast tempo. You can also see the tablature for each one, to help your brain make even more connections as you learn. By committing these broken chords to memory, you are equipping yourself to take on more difficult runs and licks and handle them with ease.
Pentatonic or 5-note scales are widely used in most popular forms of modern music. Whether you are a fan of bluegrass, folk, rock or metal, your favorite songs have probably been built around one of the four types of pentatonic scales. This bonus gift will show you how to use pentatonics to take your skills to another level.
As you know if you’ve been playing the guitar for even a little while, you can find the same note in many different locations up and down the fretboard. Of course, the same holds true for any kind of scale. You have the option of starting your run in a number of different positions. Choosing the correct one can enable your solos to flow seamlessly from one section to the next. These bonus videos use professional-grade videography to show both of Dustin’s hands as he plays every kind of pentatonic scale from every possible hand position (Four types from six different positions). Use these lessons to help you build finger strength, develop muscle memory, and begin to create great riffs of your own.
I really hope you have found some valuable resources here at Shred Madness, and I’m confident you have. I’m sure because I’ve worked with so many different emerging guitarists over the years. While all of my students have had their own personal reasons for wanting to learn to play, and their own goals concerning the type and style of music they wanted to create, all of them had a few things in common. They needed a simple way to analyze a great guitar solo, break it into its most basic parts and the motivation to practice it until they could reproduce it.
Four Techniques
All guitar music is composed of phrases and lines that are played using one or more of the four basic techniques we covered here: Alternate Picking, Sweeping, Tapping and Legato. This is true whether the musician is playing bluegrass, metal, classic rock or folk music. This course was designed to help you become familiar with each of the techniques, and learn how to combine them in ways that make your style uniquely yours.
Of course, you might naturally gravitate toward one or two techniques more than the others, but if you have all of them in your bag of tricks, you’ll be on the road to truly mastering your instrument. By working through the lessons offered here, you should have acquired the skill you need to incorporate all the techniques into your style.
Hundreds of Riffs
When practicing your guitar alone in your room, it can be easy to run out of creative ideas for adding some sparkle to your sound. That’s why I provided so many video licks for you to sample in this course. I hope you’ve realized that the more licks and runs you memorize, the more versatility you’ll bring to your playing. Play your favorite riffs often enough, and your fingers will take over almost automatically. When things start to get a little stale, come back to this huge 400-lick library and learn another one that might get your creative juices flowing once more.
Thanks
I want to say thank you for using Shred Madness to help you along the path to greatness. I hope you’ve been inspired, challenged and informed. I trust that you will keep working toward your goal of shred mastery and that you’ll help to make the world a better place through your music.
