Everybody knows the warm-up exercise where you play 4 chromatic notes in sequence and move sequentially through each string without shifting positions up or down the neck:

Chromatic warm-up PDF ::: Guitar Pro 5

This is fine for developing basic coordination between your left and right hands, but it’s not exactly musical.

Life is short: if you’re going to spend time working on technical exercises, it makes more sense to design exercises that at least have some potential for musical application. Making an exercise more musical makes it more fun to play as well.

With some slight changes to the warm-up exercise above you can turn it into a true chromatic scale. This gives you both coordination practice AND the benefit of musical applicability:

Chromatic exercise 1 PDF ::: Guitar Pro 5

Make sure that you stick to strict alternate picking, even on the slides — every note should be picked.

I encourage you to experiment with variations on this exercise — for example, playing it with a triplet feel instead of straight sixteenths. And make sure that NO MATTER WHAT you play it clean. If it’s sloppy, you’re playing too fast. Pay particular attention to fingers 2 and 3 — for me those tend to be the troublemakers.

Have fun!

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When I find something that inspires me, I can’t help wanting to share it with my readers. Allow me to introduce you to Rachel Barton Pine, a classical violin soloist who totally rocked my world when I learned about her a few weeks ago. Not only is she a stunning musician by any measure, she radiates infectious enthusiasm and love for music, devoting much time and energy to music education through her charitable foundation, the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation, by visiting schools, and appearing on TV and radio. And she likes metal. How cool is that?

Beginnings
Rachel started begging her parents for a violin at the tender age of three, after having been entranced by the sight of “older girls in beautiful dresses who were playing violin at church.” But after setting bow to strings for the first time, it was no longer just about the dresses: “Initially, it was the sound of it I loved,” she says. “Its voice spoke to me as if this were preordained somehow. By age five, I knew this is what my life would be about: I was already defining myself by my instrument.”

Imagine having such clarity of purpose by the age of five!

Formative years
Rachel’s family opted to home school her, giving her enough time to do schoolwork, practice eight hours a day, and still have a social life. Her family struggled to make ends meet, but their choice to let Rachel pursue music paid off: by the time she was 14 her her violin playing was responsible for the lion’s share of the family’s income.

I was responsible for the mortgage, the utilities, the groceries, and there was so much pressure, growing up like that. … When I was 17 or 18, even if I had gotten a full scholarship, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to be in school and continue to work enough to … support the family.

Rachel first performed as a soloist at age seven, and by age 10 she had appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her teen years saw her win loads of prestigious international competitions. For example, at 17 she was the youngest person (and first American) to win a gold medal in the J.S. Bach International Competition in Leipzig, Germany in 1992. Since then she has enjoyed a successful career as a concert soloist and recording artist, playing one of the world’s most important violins, the 1742 “ex-Soldat” made by Guarneri del Gesu.

Overcoming setbacks
Rachel is also an inspiration for the way she bounced back after “the Metra incident.” As she was exiting a Metra commuter train one day in early 1995, the train’s doors closed on the strap of her violin case. Remotely controlled and lacking safety sensors, the doors remained firmly closed. Clutching her violin — a 400-year-old Amati valued at about a half-million dollars — Rachel was dragged 366 feet before she was pulled under and run over. The accident severed one leg above the knee and severely injured the other.

But did this stop her? No way. After taking two years off to recover from her injuries, Rachel successfully resumed her professional career. In 1999 she took Metra to court. Metra’s defense argued that it was her own choice to not let go of her valuable violin, so her injuries were mainly her own fault. However, the jury didn’t buy it, and awarded her $29 million in damages. (Metra subsequently changed the door mechanism on its trains and revised its conductor safety procedures.)

Recommended recordings
Rachel has recorded numerous CDs, but there are two that may be of particular interest to P.L.A.G. readers:

Stringendo: Storming the Citadel contains Rachel’s original arrangements of rock and metal classics, including Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and Metallica’s “One.” Rachel’s notes on this recording include the following observations:

The rock world is not as far removed from the classical world as many people assume…Many rock artists were trained classically, and classical heavily influences their compositional style. Marty Friedman, Kirk Hammett, and Slash, among others, listen often to classical music. (Marty told me that his favorite instrument is the violin!)

Many metal musicians (Van Halen, Man O’War, King Diamond, Rainbow, Judas Priest, Accept, etc.) include actual classical quotes in their compositions…The harmonic influences come from sources including blues and classical, and the structures of tunes like “The Spirit of the Radio” and “One” are quite sophisticated, much more so than in a typical pop tune.

My favorite rock bands always fully express the emotions they are portraying with their music and try to share those feelings with the audience. These musicians inspire me to reach for that level of communication in my performances of classical music, with its more varied emotional palette.

Instrument of the Devil is a classical follow-up to “Stringendo,” featured a collection of diabolically dark pieces for solo violin, such as The Mephisto Waltz, The Devil’s Trill, and Danse Macabre. On her website, Rachel explains that “The album’s liner notes tell the fantastic stories behind each piece and describe the violin’s centuries-old associations with the macabre. It was said that Paganini must have sold his soul to the devil to gain the ability to play all of those fast notes. But don’t worry, I just practiced a lot!”

You can learn more about Rachel Barton Pine by visiting her website, her Myspace, and her Youtube channel. Make sure to check out the photos of Rachel and her rock idols in her photo album.

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Today’s reader question is on the perennial topic of sweeping arpeggios. “B” wrote in a couple of weeks ago asking:

…Sweeping is fairly easy for me. I have the movements of my right hand sweep down just fine, and I can sort of figure out the Arps. I am self taught of a year or so, a little less and already I have associated myself among the best shredders around. =D Or so my friends say. I have been learning sweeps for about 2 weeks, and I need to know how you make it cleaner, with a distorted sound. I play Technical stuff, if you have ever heard of Necrophagist or something like Abigail Williams, and I can play the sweeps and arps just fine, except I leave all the notes ringing after the sweep on the string.

So, how do I..not do that? I try and palm mute, run my thumb over the strings as I sweep, but I end up making more noise. So I tried playing sweeps on clean just to get the motions down without banging on the strings with my fingers when playing fast. I know I am rambling, but sweeping is so frustrating when you can only hear static. My efforts in trying to clean by distorted sweeps have been destroyed…So as the only person to ever WANT to help me, Thank you.

Oh dear. Two weeks is nowhere near enough time to master a challenging new technique. Our fast-paced culture of instant gratification leads many people to expect to totally kick ass at new skills within an extremely short time. If they can’t manage, they think they either don’t have the “talent” for it or that they must be doing something horribly wrong.

Some skills just take time to develop. And beware: there are plenty of guitarists out there who will lie about grossly underestimate the amount of time and effort they need to master a given technique, just so they will appear more “talented.” This is total bovine excrement. So cut yourself some slack, realize that any skill takes time to develop, and don’t compare your own progress with other people’s.

OK then, without having seen or heard you play, my guess is that you are trying to play your sweeps too fast too soon.

You need to slow way the heck down, and here is why.

If you play very slowly, you can observe what you’re doing in detail and discover the exact source of the noise. It could be coming from either your left hand, or your right hand, or a combination of both. If you slow way down and still can’t tell where the noise is coming from, then ask a friend to help observe you. You might also find that the noisy problem disappears at a very slow tempo. In that case, gradually increase the tempo until the problem starts to occur.

Once you’ve identified the problem, THEN you can work on fixing it.

Sweep like a girl

For what it’s worth, here are some of my own observations about sweeping arpeggio technique.

• It’s not necessary to mute with the right hand unless you’re going for that Al DiMeola percussive effect. Try letting the heel of your right-hand palm glide lightly over the strings as you sweep to keep them from ringing.
• As you sweep through the arpeggio, your left hand should finger each note separately as you strike the string with the pick (or play a legato note). As you move to each new note, the preceding finger lifts off the string. So you only actually fret one note at a time. When you do a “bar roll,” make sure to actually ROLL your finger so that only the note you want to play is being fully fretted.
• I tend to keep my right hand and forearm fairly relaxed and loose, but I’ve noticed that some guitarists sweep with a much stiffer right hand and forearm. You can experiment with different feels to determine what’s right for you.
• Try practicing with varying levels of distortion, from clean to “more gain than God.” Using a clean sound will help you develop an even pick attack (you can hear if it’s not), whereas using lots of distortion will reveal any sloppiness that you need to clear up.

Just remember that the following applies to almost everything you’ll ever try to play: if you can’t play it at a slow-to-moderate tempo, then you’re not ready to play it fast. Period.

Good luck!

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Sorry for getting all meta on y’all, but someone keeps sending me nasty mails complaining that I haven’t responded to his emails (what a way to win me over…). The last one was so bad that I have to say something here, as my mails to this person obviously aren’t getting through.

azhantae@crappymailhost.com, you need to check your spam filter. I have replied to ALL your mails, even the last totally snotty one.

Life is too short, I tell ya…

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