Help with "jamband-style shredding"

[jbheyman]

I'm looking for some help developing some shredding skill, but not necessarily from the neoclassical metal standpoint that it's often associated with. I'm a jamband guy- and some of the blazing arpeggio sweeps I hear from yngwie and others don't quite do it for me. I'm thinking more along the lines of Jimmy Herring, Jake Cinnegar (from Umphrey's McGee), Chris Micheti (from RAQ). These guys (especially Cinnegar) clearly have what I think of as shred metal-technique, but have applied it to the kind of grooves that I'm into.

 

Any suggestions for practice approaches, other guitarist's to check out, instructional material? Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.

[Poparad]

When you're insterested in learning a specific style of playing, it's best to go straight to the source and learn the lines that those players are doing on the recordings. Take the recordings you have of the guitarists you mentioned, and try to transcribe the parts off the recording. I like to write it down, so it's still there if I forget it, but you can just cop it all by ear if you want. If you've never done any transcribing before, pick something slower and more melodic before moving into the shred stuff.

[guitarhero21]

I've found in spending a large amount of time learning Jake and Brendan's licks and lines that the technique is in fact very similar to metal playing and standard shred playing. The key is to get the technique and ear training to a level where you can learn the lines by ear; but man Jake is so far beyond anyone it's not even funny. Jimmy Herring is from another planet too; there was a really cool Guitar Player lesson with him and he seems to now have a column in the last 2 issues. Good luck.

 

Also if you're into tabs this site http://www.geocities.com/danknugget2/ is a wealth of Umphrey's information even though there is a fair amount of inaccuracy.

[Flanger]

What you are describing are two different things. "Shredding" is one, and "jamband soloing" is another. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

[guitguy26]

Technique is technique- it doesn't have to be limited to one style. A player in a Jam Band might have a different sound, style, and choice of notes than a metal guy, but they're probably using the same physical techniques to play arpeggios, fast scale sequences, etc.

 

The differences between the players, other than sound, is style and note choices, really. If you want to learn some of the stuff those jam band guys play, either transcribe it, or maybe find some tablature, or whatever. Also, try to find interviews with these players. Read up on what their influences are, and that would help you out as well.

 

I've read some interviews with Jimmy Herring, and he's influenced by jazz players like Coltrane, and guitarists like Steve Morse. So you might want to check out some of their playing.

 

When it comes to something like learning how to sweep-pick arpeggios, you could find some Yngwie Malmsteen-style arpeggio exercises to help you. You may not be into that style, but you'd master the actual physical technique of playing sweep arpeggios. To make it more suitable to jam band style playing, you could experiment with extended arpeggios rather than triads which is what Yngwie might do.