Pattern Generation in C Major Pt 2.

Aside from the technical/theoretical aspects of the Pattern Generation approach to practicing, the most important thing about it is the fact that YOU get to impose YOUR stylistic bent on the exercises in as creative and technically challenging a way as you choose.

Take for example this elaboration on the basic C Major scale tonic-to-tonic rendering of the octave pedal-tone exercise:

In this video I decided to apply a rhythm to the octave pedal tone exercise that harkens back to 80s hair metal, a la Dokken or Ratt with its muted low notes and squelchy higher notes. I don’t know why I chose this as it’s not at all what I do musically but I’m a child of the 80s so I guess this kind of thing is never far from my hands no matter how hard I try: )

The pattern that I applied is a two-parter in which the first pair of notes is played as low-low-high-low (LLHL) and the second pair is played as low-high-low-low (LHLL) in order to offset the rhythm in a somewhat stylistically typical way. In this example, and because of the tempo, I’m playing with an all downstrokes approach but if the tempo was higher I might switch to alternate picking. If you’re trying to get your metal downstroke speed up into Hetfield territory then you might want to practice this exercise until you can do it at bpm=160 or faster, it’s totally up to you.

Click the link below for the tab:

Thanks for visiting, happy practicing!