Guitar lessons: Learning a guitar lick is easy, right? You just play it over and over – starting slowly of course – until you get it. Well, kind of. When you’re tackling tricky phrases it’s better to isolate individual elements to perfect them before stitching everything together.
Once your muscles have committed the movements to memory, you’ll find everything comes together quicker. The phrase below has a number of technical challenges that should be addressed individually:
1. Fourth finger vibrato
Focus on a consistent vibrato using your weakest finger.
2. Fast hammer-on and pull-off
Work on making each not clean and even in length and volume.
3. Crossing strings
Aim for minimal pick movement as you deal with one of the toughest picking manoeuvres.
4. Alternate picking
Use strict alternate picking and aim to make each one clear.
A lick to break down
Follow the instructions outlined above and break this lick into short bite-sized chunks before you get stuck into it at full speed.
