How to shred?

I can't play all that great but I was wondering how people like Kirk Hammet get these single note runs at lightening speed so clean? I know it involves muting the strings but when I do it it always sounds way too muted. How can they mute and get that sustain? eg the intro solo to Fade To Black it's not fast but it's really clean with loads of sustain.

it really takes a practice...a lot of practice. Try learning the piece in little bits and "practice" it slowly over and over again untill your blue in the face...then "practice" it some more....the speed will come in time naturally.

Could you give me a little advice on the string muting for the lightening solos?

I find that muting is quite possibly one of the best tricks in guitar playing, along w/bending. You can change a songs sound just by muting a few strings. Unfortunately some people use it a little too much today. I found out how to mute by accident, and i just kept doing it over till i got better at it. That may be the only problem is that you need to practice it more, or find your sweet spot on the bridge to mut it. Just keep practicing, i promise it will get better.

Muting is not much used in soloing (but a jazz/ rock/ flamenco guitarist called Al Di meola springs to mind), lead runs generally are not muted but this technique is common in metal rhythm guitar.
Here's how: hold your pick between thumb and 1st finger and use the fleshy area at the bass of the thumb to mute the strings by placing it lightly on the strings near the bridge. This is easiest on the wound strings, less pressure is required on thinner strings. You should eventually be able to do this equally easily with up and down strokes.
If you play lots of fast things on single strings then you will never need muting runs with plenty of pull offs and hammer ons often leave the lowest note of the string to ring out.
If you find that strings ring out when you don't want them and you are not playing something where you need the open strings you can get a "hair bobble" like hippy dudes and women wear and stick it round the neck fairly low down. A bandana or random peice of clothing will also work but I don't recommend you make this a habit since it is limiting. I only do this if I'm playing a really difficult and very fast runs.
If you want to cross strings you will often find shapes that don't require you to remove fingers and replace them, all you need to do to mute these is release tension on fingers covering each string as you cross them. This takes practice.
For really fast runs you can cross strings and hammer on/pull off.
Good luck!

I've always been told to get the lightening runs you have to barely mute the strings. And I find t does sound like that. For example in the same Fade To Black - Metallica, the end solo sounds like that and I think he also, somehow, does it in the into solo. Not to critise anyone. I'm just making sure.

combining both muting and singlepicking in solos is used a lot in old school heavy metal. George Lynch (Dokken/Lynch Mob), Rhoads, Brad gillis (Night Ranger), Jake E. Lee, Zakk wylde (Ozzy's guitarists), and Judas Priest come to mind to name but a few.

So I take it that when doing lightening solo runs no muting is required.

Wrong! Lightning runs can be done just as fast muting, or not muting.

you can play fast runs muted or unmuted, but the important thing is to always have other strings that you're not playing strictly muted... it takes sometime till you get used to it, when shredding over scales or arpeggios (specialy when the distorion is on) you must have only one string unmuted at a time, you should practice it a lot.. acualy every body does this muting thing, even without knowing that he's doing it...

Tips for muting:
================

1 - for strings above the one you're playing (lower pitched), use your palm to mute them
2 - for strings under the one you're playing (higer pitched) , use your left (fretting) hand fingers by having them to rest on the strings under those you're playing, and also use your right (picking) hand fingers ,usualy i use the thumb and index to hold the pick, so i have 3 free fingers to mute the strings..


Keep On Shredding Folks

Note: Even if using a heavy muting you can still shred just as fast...but it takes practice. And I agree with SLY on his points as well :-)

How to shred:

Take a pick and play as fast as you can evrything from one singel not to scales. Also don´t use much legato because shred is alternate picking. String skipping is ok ´cause than you get this cool effect if you got good sound. Also forget tapping. Use it only somtimes but be sure to do it like Satch did on surfing with alien. Van Halen tapping style 12-8-5 is not recomended as well as bends. Sweeping is highly recomended. Evrything from two to six will kick ass. Maby not four string sweeping.

I dont agree with you about Tapping...
Tapping is very cool, and it can be very hard to learn and execute.. I don't mean Van Halen's Tapping, just take a look at Steve Vai's tapping paterns... this guy is a genius, sometimes I don't even understand what he's doing... I can shred, sweep & I can play any malmsteen/satriani/etc. .... but when Steve Vai does some of his Tapping I just shut up and watch... I think I'll be concentrating on tapping the next days...

This seems to make the most sense to me. Now I gotta go practice it.

shred for one thing doesn't mean just fast alternate picking, it can include legato, rhthum, taps, sweeping, wammy bar, etc., etc.

What is legato?

Generaly, the term legato means to play smooth and fluid... in guitar it usualy means not to pick ..
e.g. Hammer-ons & Pull-offs... also all types of tapping are considered as legato..

Playing faster?
Try using different sorts of picks
They vary for reasons =)

I can see what ure getting @.
Dude why teh hell do we mute in teh first place when playing wit high gain? See the other strings tend to 'ring' out when u don't want 'em to. This happens when u either
-hit an open string when ure not suppose to and that kills teh other notes u be playin.
-or when u either pull of or skip to anotha string - then teh sting keeps ringing!

To avoid this i actually mute with both my left and right hands. Firstly use the palm of ure right hand (sorry ure picking hand for those lefties) to mute the strings above the string ure playing (i think u heard this b4).
This is done by resting ure picking hand a bit from the bridge. But the string ure playing on should not be muted.
Eg lets say u bee playing this bit from FADE TO BLACK where ure on the second string (B) ---7- - 8- 10 --- then urr picking hand would be slanted like " / " so that all teh top strings stay muted especially the third and forth strings which were previously hit. Use ure fretting hand to mute the high e string by using ure fretting hand to lightly rest on the e string when playing the notes on teh B string


but lets say ure doing the aprpeggio in the intro solo u know the
-----14--19--14----------15-14--------------
--15-------------15-------------15--------
---------------------16--------------14-----
-----------------------------------------
----------------------- -----------------

then u'd actually mute the top 4 strings (g,d,a,E) and sort of roll ure right hand to mute the last ringing notes. But ontop of that
U HAVE TO LIFT UP WITH URE FRETTING HAND SO THAT URE STILL TOUCHING TEH STRINGS BUT LIGHT ENOUGH SO THAT U MUTE THEM.

ALSO
Lets say u moved on with fade to black and moved on to ONE - by metallica (similar in style ) and tehres that nifty tapping solo which is p!ss easy. What u do is tapp with ure picking hand and use ure fingers not the pick . When u get into teh tapping position use ure thumb to hold onto teh fret board and mute teh rest of teh strings with ure thumb and teh back of ure palm. since the tapping solo is only on twe strings u got nuttin to worry about.

good luck wit dese. I'm in teh middle of a programming class so ignore all the typos.
hope this helps heaps.

If u have questions post one up to prod11 - he's like my most recent student he should be able to help u out wit stuff by metallica, pantera, megadeth, slayer yada....
ciao

[Edited by munqy on 09-25-2002 at 12:52 AM]

Dude,

As far as sweeping goes muting the strings can occur with both hands either way. You can do the same method as you would for tapping when sweeping which involves palm muting the strings you aren't playing at the time so after. Or you can work on placing the fingers of your left hand down in a way that mutes the strign above and below whatever position you are in. Basically that entails placing your fingers on your lef thand down in a way that uses the tip to mute the string above the string you want to play on and leaning it down so you mute the string below it.

Or you can do an insane playing technique I use every once in a while that uses your pointer finger on my left hand to mute all the strings above my ring finger while playing slow stuff. Makes it sound a lot better, the other technique using your right hand to palm mute is similar and does the same thing by muting the strings you aren't strumming.

Another cheap ass technique lots of people use such as Malmsteen, is tweaking with pikcup selection and the volume knobs while playing their solos. This takes quite a bit of practice to coordinate and you should probably not experiment with switing during a solo unless you have complete control over your playing. Adjusting the volume of a sustained note during a slow solo can make it sound much better. Also switching pickups for slow and fast parts can also be a cool effect, as the neck pickup is usually better for a smooth sound, and the brigde is better for fast twangy tone.

Legato technique basically entails being able to hammer and pull-off an entire run making it sound excessively smooth and fluid.

On shredding though, you should choose 5 or 6 insane guitar solos to learn. As most people will tell you, practice slowly and build accuracy and speed. The solo's on the Four Horsemen are decent for a beginner to practice.

Hell anything off Metallica's first album is good beginner practice, it's practically the same **** all the way through...hope that helps in any way

- Enjoy