This one is one of the more advanced because it gets into the “Shred Speed Zone”. Still, the patterns are very simple and you can play slower and still have a cool effect. I’ll have more “Boogie Blues Magic” for you next time.
Without further ado, check out my “Simple Shred Pattern Lesson”.
Hey, guys Claude Johnson here with Guitar Control, I want to show you another box pattern today. Now, I’ve covered some box pattern lessons in the past. When people talk about box patterns they mean like a whole scale across all six strings. I’m just talking about a little like four-note box like this.
First of all, I’ve got a lot of distortion on today so I apologize if it’s too
distorted for you guys, but I’m just kind of feeling the distortion right now.
Today I want to do something even more simple, kind of a three-note pattern. On the D string, 5th fret to 7th fret, and then 5th fret on the G string, just going up and down. Think of it as like a three-note mini scale.
Now, the key to this, is doing an alternate picking and starting on an upstroke. The reason I’m starting on a upstroke is that I want to upstroke my G string. I’m not going to get into the mechanics of why it’s easier to do it that way, but let’s just go with that for right now.
You can actually start on the top doing upstroke, down stroke, and upstroke. This is great for a number of reasons. Number one, it’s a great alternate picking exercise. It will help your chops, your picking hand and you can really work this up to speed, as fast as you want.
It works not only as an exercise, but it’s kind of a cool shred pattern, if you like that kind of shred style. You can get that cool effect going. When you do that, make sure you’re in rhythm. It helps to get like a slower thing going. And you don’t necessarily need to go like all-out as fast as you can.
Sometimes it actually sounds better to go a little bit slower. It can sound more musical.
For example, if I was playing like… That’s actually not that fast, but it sounds nice, right? It’s pretty fast. But if I were to go faster, like…and I can’t even really play it that smooth. It just sounds frantic, you know? Even if I am playing fast smooth. I don’t necessarily need to play it that fast. I can play it — just dial it back a little bit. It sounds a little more musical, but it still sounds really shreddy.
Here’s another variation, instead of going like this, you do this. You’re flattening out your finger, or you’re doing 5, 7, and then 7 on the G string. What you can do is alternate between the two. If you’re in A… You can also slide up to here to this position and get some cool effects like that.
Now, this is just for shred. You can do it in more of like a slower blues kind of text, and add a little burst. You can also do it like this, like that. It’s great as an exercise, a shred pattern. You can use it just as a little flare kind of thing in blues. And you can do other kinds of patterns, too. I encourage you to try to come up with as many little box patterns as you can.
For example, we went up and down three notes. What if we went up and down four notes? That works good, too. You can speed that one up and you can alternate between going up three and four. Another thing that’s cool is doubling-up on the bottom. This pattern is like this. I’ve got to practice that one a little bit.
So check the tabs for that. There’s a lot more ways you can go with this. Hopefully, this will give you some food for thought.
I hope you enjoyed the lesson. You can get the tab for this and all the other
stuff that I do on guitarcontrol.com/blog. Make sure to subscribe on our You Tube Channel and we’ll see you in our next video lessons, thanks for watching.
