Shred! The Ultimate Guide to Warp Speed Guitar Book/CD [Sheet music]

Pete Prown (Author), Rich Maloof (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2006

With lessons covering more than a dozen sure-fire techniques, this book/CD combo is designed to light a fire under any playerÂ’s fingers. Shredding is difficult, but Shred! breaks it down by demystifying guitar solos that sound intimidating on record. The book is about technique first, with a fearsome roster of shred's biggest stars revealing their tricks. Each chapter tackles one killer technique in depth. Guitarists are walked through these skill sets with a hands-on approach, and are shown connections to the monster players who employ the technique. With this book, guitarists can switch gears from careful chord progressions by unleashing their inner shredder, ready to blister the paint right off the walls and annihilate any nonbelievers.

Product Details

• Sheet music: 80 pages
• Publisher: Backbeat Books (May 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087930877X
• ISBN-13: 978-0879308773
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,384,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A very disappointing book!!!!, August 4, 2006

By 

Ivan R. Hernandez Diaz (Mexico City, Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shred! The Ultimate Guide to Warp Speed Guitar Book/CD (Sheet music)

The phrase "the ultimate guide to warp speed guitar" can mislead you. First, the list of "the top 30 speed demons of rock guitar", well I guess each one of us have their favorite shredders, so is unnecessary.
Second, this is not a book that cover in detail the "surefire techniques", there's no thorough examination of each technique featured. The exercises and examples are very basic. Instead of giving you recommended discography the author could explain the aspects that makes a song representative for each chapter.

For beginners, this "book" doesn't explain the basic things to play fast like the correct position of both hands, the more efficient way to hold the pick or how to use the metronome.

"The ultimate Guide to Warp Speed Guitar" is a book that I wouldn't recommend. Troy Stetina's "Metal Guitar Tricks" and "Speed Mechanics for lead guitar" and Carl Culpepper's "Terrifying Technique for guitar" are much better books-real books, not catalogues of "impressive" techniques. If you want to really develope your technique those books are great. Also Paul Hanson's "Shred Guitar" is a very interesting book, well structured and very useful.

DON'T BUY THIS BOOK! DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY!!

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Lame...I recommend plenty of alternatives., June 15, 2007

By 

Z. Miller - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shred! The Ultimate Guide to Warp Speed Guitar Book/CD (Sheet music)

Upon glancing at the synopsis, this book initially sounds pretty interesting. Beyond the expected sections on alternate and sweep picking, the book offers sections on "blues shredding" and "speed riffing", which both sounded pretty cool and unusual.

However, as other reviewers have stressed, this volume simply does not deliver. It is very long on "guitar hero lore" and general descriptions of how they like to play, but very short on actual examples and licks that will help you become a better player, which I thought was the whole point.

We live in a world of limited time and resouces. If you want material that will cut to the chase and get you started improving your technique immediately, I have plenty of recommendations. Any book/DVD on this list will help you improve you technique significantly:

1. Speed Mechanics For Lead Guitar (Troy Stetina)
2. Terrifying Guitar Technique (Carl Culpepper)
3. Ultimate Guitar Technique: The Complete Guide (Bill LaFleur)
4. The "Speed Kills" Series (Michael Angelo Batio, metalmethod.com)
5. Shred Guitar Manifesto (Rusty Cooley, chopsfromhell.com)

The one from Rusty is pretty intense, so I might suggest starting with one of the others. I like the ones from Troy and Michael best, because they go into some detail about how to perform various techniques. The ones from Carl and Bill are more like "Here's a jillion exercises. Now play!" Which is useful too, because it can show you what general areas to concentrate on, but they don't go into much detail about what to focus on while practicing specific techniques.

I hope you find something of value here, and I wish you luck in becoming blazingly fast.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not a good book., July 31, 2006

By 

D. Moore (Everywhere at once) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shred! The Ultimate Guide to Warp Speed Guitar Book/CD (Sheet music)

This guitar 'instructional' book is bad. The contents of the book are just as comical as the cover and the persons that authored it wrote it in a very sloppy and unprofessional manner. Something that bothered me was all the unnecessary background information of famous guitarists...I bought this for instruction...not biographies. Not to mention their constant use of vulgar street slang.. IE: .."screw them" .. calling the wammy bar your "substitute weenie". If you want to buy a book with the absolute minimal instruction then I'd suggest this book for you. Each chapter is very short and slack on actual exercises and various examples of techniques and is mostly filled with banter and ramblings in dimwitted, dumbed down, post 80's dude slang. If you want a book that teaches you to idolize other guitarists (well, that's the impression I got anyway, seeing as at the beginning of every chapter is a photograph of some guitarist or another) then this book is for you too. It seems as if this book was targeted at impressionable teenagers rather than an aspiring serious musician. I wouldn't recommend this book to my worst enemy.