Customer Reviews

Shred! The Ultimate Guide to Warp Speed Guitar Book/CD

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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!!

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.

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.

Be careful with this book. It isn't a sherd guide, but a compilation of licks and some yadda yadda about guitar heros. Some licks are nice, but the book has no technical advise, so I wouldn't advise you to try it unless you have some technical guidance, becasue trying some of these licks without it might result in serious injury to you hands. It's not about repeating it over and over and faster every time until you get it, but about eficiency and avoiding excessive stress which will surely happen if you don't have someone knowledgeable around to teach you. CD's recorded tracks sound completely amateur in quality, although performance is fine. I wouldn't recommend you to get this book. You can get many more useful books for the same money.

This book is what is says: a guide to warp-speed guitar. It includes tips for increasing speed as well as a list of some of the greatest guitarists to grace the scene. The musical examples are fast, very fast. If you are not ready for shred, you may enjoy listening to the cd, but frustrated trying to play the examples because of their warp speed. The examples are played fast, then slow. The only problem is the slow examples sound like they are electronically slowed down versions of the fast examples, not actually played. They sound a little hokey.

This isn't the best it isn't the worst. I am a 14 year old shred wannabe. I bought this because it is a basic overview. They need more examples! They need to show you things like how to rest your hand. Stuff like that. I have improved from this book though. My speed is good. I can tap pretty well. But they need to show more examples. Other that it is good. If you want to learn to shred I would buy it. If you know how. it is a waste of money.

This books rocks. I learned a million new shred licks in like a week. Very clear and easy-to-understand chapters. Great CD, too--these guys can really play. The authors, Pete Prown and Rich Maloof, have massive chops.

[From Sept. 2006 issue of Guitar Player Magazine] "Any shredder worth his or her weight in metronomes will tell you that you must put in serious time if face-melting chops are your ultimate goal. To that end, woodshedding with Shred! The Ultimate Guide To Warp-Speed Guitar will most definitely improve your skills. The sections on alternate picking, sweeping, legato, finger-tapping, and palm-muting will get you going with shred's five basic food groups--but with chapters that focus on speed riffing a là James Hetfield and bands such as the Dillinger Escape Plan, as well as primers on whammy bar chicanery and blues shredding, this book is more than a neo-classical how-to.

"All of the musical examples come in standard notation and tab, and the book's accompanying CD shows the authors to be some pretty wicked players themselves (Pete Prown, in particular, is frightening). Shred! also does an admirable job of educating the reader about shred's origins and some of the genre's most important players."

[From the October 2006 issue of Vintage Guitar Magazine] "Shred! includes practice lessons, techniques, TAB solos, and even a CD to help you hear the lessons. Improve your playing, play FASTER and articulate notes more clearly. This book will also help you understand the fretboard better."

This is a cool book. I like the way the authors break down Shred into easy-to-understand chapter and TAB examples. And the playing on the CD is awesome. I'm stoked.