It has been a while since I have posted anything on here, I figure now is better than never!
I wanted to share three great guitar exercises that I have found, all which have helped me break through some plateus after 24+ years of playing. These exercises are from two great metal guitarists: Dallas Toler-Wade (Narcotic Wasteland, ex-Nile) and Jeff Waters (Annihilator)! These are all one note per string with alternate picking. Well without further ado let's get into them.
You can click here to get the tabs in PDF form for all of these exercises.
The first exercise I want to share is one from Dallas. It is a cross picking exercises from the acoustic world. I was struggling to tab it out exactly, so I simplified it and made it into my own thing, but it is still very similar. Here is the video of Dallas playing/talking about this exercise:
So what I have done is taken the base of that and simplify it, be sure to alternate pick the whole thing while moving up the neck.
The second exercise is a slight modification to the first that skips every other string, increasing the difficulty a bit. You should get comfortable with Exercise 1 first before moving on the Exercise 2.
The third and last exercise I would like to share with you today is the Spider Walk by Jeff Waters. Here are two videos of Jeff explaining the exercise. (You will definitely want to watch these as it can be a bit difficult to explain):
Now try and be patient with this exercise, it took me a while to get a feel for it. Worth noting as well that the tabs only have it going for once per position rather than repeating as Jeff plays it; you can play it either way. Jeff states at the end of the second video: "If you can play that quickly, you can do anything." I think that is some good motiviation to get good at this.
Anyways that is all for today, until next time.