Probably, Paul Gilbert is the most popular and welcomed guitarist in Hong Kong and the world, as he has got incredible techniques, cool music and his humor. He has been a contemporary super guitar hero. The first song of him made me approach this super hero is "Just take my heart" by Mr. Big. The melodic solo attracts me so much.
Talk
about Mr. Gilbert, People would think of his extremely fast-picking and crazy
string skipping. His picking is one of the best in the world, very natural and
strong. If you want to have fast, clean and accurate picking technique, you
should try to see his guitar playing and get some ideas. Apart from his insane
picking technique, string skipping is another trademark of him. His string skipping
licks have got very cool rhythm and smooth tone. Sweeping can hardly get the
tone like his string skipping. You could visit my VIDEO
page to see how string skipping is like.
Jason Becker is the god of Sweeping I think. However, his life is a tragedy.
Almost 10 years ago, he suffered a fatal disease called Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) when he was about 20. It makes him not able to play the guitar, move his body, and even talkˇKˇK Although his fate is so bad, he doesn't give up himself and is still producing music. He is not able to be a guitarist, but he is still a very cool composer. Recently, he has published a cool album called Perspective. It is really good cd!!! You can buy it through Amazon.com or Cdnow.com
As I mentioned, he is THE GOD THE SWEEPING!!! His sweeping picking is the fastest, coolest and most creative. Since sweeping picking is a very good technique to play fast arpeggios, you can learn different patterns and chords when playing his songs. In my VIDEO page, I demonstrated 2 cool songs by him. They are Serrena and Attitude. Hopefully, you will obtain some ideas of how sweeping is and how to play Jason's songs