TECHNIQUE

Lesson 07 Practise fast, play better

Whether you’re interested in playing fast or not, you can use speed and tempo training to help you learn new music. Here’s how it works. All you need is a metronome or drum machine app and your guitar.

1. Choose a short passage of music to practise.

2. Set your metronome slow enough for you to play the passage without mistakes.

3. Repeat your riff over and over for 60 seconds.

4. Raise the tempo by two or three beats per minute then start again.

5. Keep increasing the tempo, before trying your starting speed again. It should feel easier now.

Lesson 08 Friedman & Mustaine’s spider powerchord fingering

Back in Issue 171, Marty Friedman told TG about his ‘spider’ fingering for powerchords, explaining that this four-fingered approach allows him to play faster, cleaner changes. The first/third finger shape is the obvious fingering, but if you add in a second/fourth finger shape you can cross the strings and cover the fretboard swiftly. Try alternating between the two shapes shown here, paying close attention to the fingering.

Lesson 09 Use open D tuning for one-finger major chords

Change your tuning from standard to open D (D A D F# A D) and your guitar’s open strings produce the bright sound of a Dmajor chord – that’s because the notes of the tuning are the same as the chord’s notes. It also means you can play major chords by barring across all six strings with one finger. Easy! Retune the first, second, third and sixth strings. The other strings are the same as standard.

Lesson 10 Open Dm. Like open D, but easier

Open D has one key drawback: if you’re playing one-finger major chords it can be difficult to adapt the shape when a minor chord crops up. The solution? Try open D minor instead – this allows you to play one-finger minor chords that are much easier to adapt to play a major chord. If you’re in open D, lower the third string a further semitone to D minor.