Swedish Shred Secrets

Lewy

I'm working through Tom Howard's (TomShreds) new course Swedish Shred Secrets which as the name suggests is a deep dive on YJM's style and it's brilliant. Way more informative that the man himself's TrueFire course when it comes to what he actually does. But what strikes me more than anything is how Yngwie's style is such a complete system for playing absolutely anything.

To the point where if you can just see through the buffonery and even the style of his music itself if it's not your bag, just about any guitar player would benefit from studying it in detail. It's bordering on a form of savantism how he evolved this just woodshedding on his own as a kid.

Not cheap and I'm sure all the info is in the public domain somewhere but having it all in one place in bitesize lessons with drills and etudes  makes working on it much more enjoyable and productive.

As a footnote, I started getting into more shreddy playing about 18 months ago at the age of 50 having spent 30 years as a blues and roots player (and almost all my gigs for the last 15 years being acoustic). By studying the right stuff (and having lessons from arch shredlord Clarky) it's coming together. It's hard, but it is absolutely not beyond anyone.

Don't buy a Porsche when the midlife crisis comes along.....unleash the fury!

TheMarlin

Sounds exhausting. Gilmour is too fast for me!

guitarjack66

Not for me due to having no interest in Heavy Metal but on a general point. Is fast/shredding exclusively a Heavy Metal thing? I don't see it mentioned elsewhere.

CarpeDiem

guitarjack66 said:

Not for me due to having no interest in Heavy Metal but on a general point. Is fast/shredding exclusively a Heavy Metal thing? I don't see it mentioned elsewhere.

Fast passages can appear in a variety of styles of music, including jazz. Some may be legato, hybrid picked, or all picked. 

Lewy

guitarjack66 said:

Not for me due to having no interest in Heavy Metal but on a general point. Is fast/shredding exclusively a Heavy Metal thing? I don't see it mentioned elsewhere.

Definitely not just metal. Bluegrass, jazz, country, pop and of course classical. But guitarists are weird in so far as they seem to be the only ones who so obviously compartmentalise playing fast as being an entire different realm of playing the instrument. You don;t get sax players or violinists dividing themselves into shredders and non-shredders. You can either play fast or you can't.

hollywoodrox

Sounds ace  good one

finest1

good luck with the course!

fastonebaz

I wanna see your Blitzkrieg video when it's ready  

Lewy

fastonebaz said:

I wanna see your Blitzkrieg video when it's ready  

Ha! You'll have a long wait (although one lick I've learned will be lurking in this months SOTM when I finally get round to finishing it....)

donbot

Thanks for mentioning this course @Lewy. Just ordered it too. If anyone else is interested, use coupon code shredtoday for 50 bucks off. Works out pretty much bang on £80 total 

wddonalds

Thanks for sharing the discount code. I had been looking at this course for a while now and just picked it up for £80 thanks to the discount code!

digitalkettle

Lewy said:

fastonebaz said:

I wanna see your Blitzkrieg video when it's ready  

Ha! You'll have a long wait (although one lick I've learned will be lurking in this months SOTM when I finally get round to finishing it....)

I'm pretty sure I heard that

Lewy

digitalkettle said:

Lewy said:

fastonebaz said:

I wanna see your Blitzkrieg video when it's ready  

Ha! You'll have a long wait (although one lick I've learned will be lurking in this months SOTM when I finally get round to finishing it....)

I'm pretty sure I heard that

Haha actually I think there's two - one at 0:06 and one at 0:30

Lewy

How's everyone who bought the course getting on with it? After an initial splurge when it was all I was working on, I tend to dip into it about once a week now. The highest tempos elude me on most of it except the ascending and descending runs where I can keep up all the way through the drills for the most part.

wddonalds

I’m really enjoying it so far. Being able to watch Tom break down the let licks, patterns etc is really helpful. 

I see that he is launching a new course “Shred Like Ed”!

Lewy

wddonalds said:

I’m really enjoying it so far. Being able to watch Tom break down the let licks, patterns etc is really helpful. 

I see that he is launching a new course “Shred Like Ed”!

I know....I may or may not have just pre-ordered that!

wddonalds

Lewy said:

wddonalds said:

I’m really enjoying it so far. Being able to watch Tom break down the let licks, patterns etc is really helpful. 

I see that he is launching a new course “Shred Like Ed”!

I know....I may or may not have just pre-ordered that!

How’s it so far? If I recall he said that he had released the first 5 hours of the course?

Lewy

wddonalds said:

Lewy said:

wddonalds said:

I’m really enjoying it so far. Being able to watch Tom break down the let licks, patterns etc is really helpful. 

I see that he is launching a new course “Shred Like Ed”!

I know....I may or may not have just pre-ordered that!

How’s it so far? If I recall he said that he had released the first 5 hours of the course?

Yes what he's released is a module called "Ed's Pentatonics" which is pretty much what it says one the tin. It's got things like the stretchy lick from Beat It etc. Exactly the same format as Swedish Shred...you get the lesson, then the drill, then a backing track (the tracks seem pretty good too).

He's tuned to Eb for it so that's a consideration in terms of having a guitar set up for it - I imagine it's going to be quite important to have a down-only floyd along the way, as I expect he'll be getting into some drop D riffing at some point.