10 quotes found
"An essential technique aspiring thrash metal guitarists must master is the ability to perform fast single-note riffs and power-chord figures using only downstrokes. Two classic examples immediately come to mind: Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” and Megadeth’s “Hanger 18,” and there are, of course, many more great examples of relentless downpicked fury to be found in the world of metal. [...] To me, a relentless downstroke-driven pick attack is the only way to get certain riffs to jump out of the guitar with the aggressiveness necessary to make them sound as heavy and menacing as possible."
"You know, [whether to play with pick or with fingers] is a choice that bass players in this kind of music have to make. Sometimes it makes sense to try and go as fast as you can, even if it is a little jumbled, maybe in a tremolo picking part. If both guitar players aren’t quite lining up anyway, then I think it’s okay to have things sound a little jumbled. It gives it a frantic sound, and that might be exactly what you’re going for."
"For an instrument that’s so heavily dependent upon shredding scales and fancy chords today, it’s amazing that slide guitar still manages to blow the minds of listeners almost a century after being popularised by the American bluesmen of the early 20th century."
"Never, ever underestimate the power of a rhythm guitar player. Sure, they might not be doing all those flashy solos that make you guys all wet like screaming groupie fangirls. But without the strong background they're providing there'd be no song to play a solo over. Just like the legendary Steve Lukather – who's probably one of the best solo players of all time – said, many kids today spend their time learning all sorts of tricks but they forget about the most important thing – playing in groove. As cliche as this may sound, rock 'n' roll would probably never survive without them."
"It doesn’t matter how great your lead playing is—if your rhythm work sucks, you’re not gonna go very far. When you’re playing rhythm in a band like Metallica, what your right [picking] hand does is really important. Obviously, what your left hand is doing is pretty darned crucial too, but, as a lot of our riffs involve syncopated open-string notes and relatively simple-to-finger power chords, it’s often the right-hand picking and muting techniques that can make or break a song."
"Shred cannot be confined to one genre of music: it’s evident in rock, metal, neo-classical, jazz and fusion styles. It’s been around for a long time too."
"When the so-called grunge revolution hit in the early '90s, it brought a backlash against shredding. Seemingly overnight, it became fashionable to make fun of guys like Eddie Van Halen, who, at 23, single-handedly launched a musical movement, while extolling the virtues of the Kurt Cobains. Granted, it could be argued that the whole tapping/whammy bar/shred thing started to become gratuitous and perhaps even cartoonish by the end of the '80s. Guitarists became divided over feel vs. technique, and those in the former camp would pillory anyone from Michael Angelo Batio to Steve Lukather, accusing them of having no passion or emotion in their playing."
"Stay away from the whammy until you’re out of ideas, because it is way too easy to rely on it. Of course, there’s a skill to it. When you’re playing something, it’s so easy to go to the bar and hit it and it sounds great. That’s why I try to stay away from it – you can get tunnel vision and get married to your bar. [...] You want to use the whammy bar as an accent, not something you rely on. Sometimes, yeah, you need a big divebomb and you want to hit a harmonic and bend the fuck out of it, and I’ve done that too many times in my career."
"More than 40 years after the release of Van Halen, the opening riff in “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” - an arpeggiated Am-F-G5 passage played with palm-muted downstrokes - is still a favorite among beginning and intermediate pickers."