Guitar shred exercise for those wanting to learn the secret of fingers without shadows.

Pay careful attention to the picking!! Speed picking is all about perfect co-ordination between fretting finger and pick stroke. As usual, start slowly, and make sure each action is correct. Work on speed last.

So what's happening in the ActionTab? The first part is a up-sweeped arpeggio (F min). Sometimes this technique is called raking - the technique here is very important, but not as tricky as it sounds. It's like an up-strum across the strings, but instead of letting each note sound out, MUTE notes immediately after you have played them with your fretboard as soon as you hit the next string / note! Because you are playing so fast, you will only hear each chord note played in fast succession. It is a technique that will feel awkward and not sound so great until you start getting up to speed, but don't let that put you off - it's actually nowhere near as difficult as it sounds.

The trick is then to seemlessly break into the scale sequence that follows the raked chord / arpeggio at full speed. The pickstroke directions are the key to that. Break the arpeggio and the scale into 2 parts and practice them seperately, then work on joining them together. Where does one part end and the other begin? The second part begins with the first downstroke you see (note is the Bb note - 1st finger fret 13). The first part ends just before that - the last raking upstroke.

Incidentally, the chord scale played after the sweep is a diminsihed scale.

The second part of the ActionTab is exactly the same thing, played 2 frets up - (starting in G min position).

The 3rd run in the ActionTab is an A minor repeating scale 'run' starting from the low E note. Pick strokes are very important. Also notice that quite early into the run, the 4th finger is not used any more to reach those higher notes. The simple reason for this is that the frets are much closer here on the fretboard, and the 3rd finger can easily reach the higher notes. It prevents tripping up over your fingers being bunched together over those small frets, and there's no loss of speed. If anything, it is faster and easier to play this way, because the 3rd finger is stronger and usually more easily co-ordinated.

The very last part of the run breaks into a string bending lick and shifts the scale into a c minor pentatonic lick.

Whenever constructing your own runs / sweeps and licks, remember that they work over background chords. In this case the whole solo would work over a chord progression moving between F min - G min - A min - C min (or powerchords). Or F min - G min - C maj (relative major of A minor) and ending in C min.

Use this knowledge to plan your own licks and make more out of those scales!