Neoclassical metal lick - alternate picking and legato (with tab) | Licks - #5

Neoclassical metal lick using alternate picking and legato. On-screen tab can be found in this compilation video:    • 10 metal & rock guitar licks - compil...   Or the following PDF file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fyn7j5mnp2g...

I’m not sure exactly how “neoclassical metal” is defined, but if I play something in harmonic minor with distortion that’s probably what I’m going to call it!

There are two ‘parts’ to this one. The first is alternate picked, and the second involves legato.

The alternate picking part is fairly straightforward, in the sense that it is just a series of alternate picked notes followed by a bend and some vibrato. But… fast single note alternate picking is hard. Left and right hand have to be perfectly synchronised on every note, which is difficult when playing fast. Same for sweep picking. Whereas with legato, the left hand is mostly doing its own thing and the right hand only chips in occasionally rather than on every note.

Generally I think the way to improve at alternate picking is to practice it with a metronome; start slow and build up speed. There are probably many ways out there to do alternate picking, but what I find helps me is to pick closer to the neck, tilt the pick slightly, initiate the movement from the wrist (vs making it a kind of thumb/finger motion), and learning to keep the right hand relaxed.

The legato part starts with a pinky / little finger slide up to a note and straight into a half bend. Bends with the pinky takes some getting used to, but here it’s much less awkward than trying to use the third finger. The key is to support the bend with the second/third fingers. The description of the following video has some comments on hammer-on-from-nowhere and right hand muting, two techniques which also appear in the legato part of this lick:    • Slick metal lick using the hammer-on ...  

The guitar in the video is an Ibanez RG652AHMFX-RPB, in standard tuning. Audio was recorded using a Positive Grid Spark as an audio interface.