ANDY GARRETT

Welcome to my third column at the world's greatest guitar site, “Chops From Hell”!!!!

Today, we are going to focus on a technique that I like to use called “Trill Add-on's”. I find this especially useful for spicing up arpeggios and moving them around the neck at great speeds. For the picking on both of these examples, I use a combination of sweeping and “Legato Picking”.

Lick #1 demonstrates this approach applied to a normal A Major Arpeggio shape. You can hear the effect the extra “Trill Add-on's” have on this riff up to speed.

Lick #2 demonstrates how you can utilize this technique to move between two consecutive arpeggio shapes (A Major and C Major) very quickly back and forth.

Practice both of these licks slow at first in time with a metronome before combining them and bringing them both up to speed. Pay close attention to muting the strings you are not using to keep them from ringing out, which is always a challenge when playing any kind of tapping riffs through a high-gain amplifier. These licks also work well within any type of 3-note-per-string scale groupings (major, minor, diminished, augmented, etc.) in any position on the neck. Have fun with this stuff and email me with any questions you might have.

Andy Garrett (nicknamed “StringMaster” by his friends) has played guitar and bass for 30 years, performed 100's of shows, and has worked professionally testing strings for Dean Markley/American Winding Company. He continues to release his instrumental guitar music independently through his own label “GBM Records” in Ocala, Florida; and is putting the finishing touches on material for his first instructional CD-ROM explaining his advanced shred techniques. You can contact Andy by email at pag1111@prodigy.net and also download and burn your own CD-R of his free MP3 shred demos at http://www.soundclick.com/bands/9/andygarrettmusic.htm and music.download.com.