Hal Leonard Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar

A fantastic collection of licks, riffs and lead breaks which will transform your shred playing - many of the exercises you can simply take verbatim and incorporate into solos as they are. On the downside, you will need considerable time and commitment to master these licks - some riffs have taken me months to learn. but well worth it in the end. minus one star for perhaps, lack of variety - after a while the licks do get a bit samey but this really is a minor quibble. fantastic book for those who can put the time in.

I have a few of Troy Stetina's books. They are all very methodically laid out and as long as you follow the authors advice, you WILL improve. This book is excellent in terms of the amount of information given on each section, very in depth and almost as good as having your own personal tutor! I will be adding the others in the series to my collection as time (and money) allow.I would also recommend this book to anyone not necessarily into playing Metal guitar. Use the advice and exercises to generally improve the speed and precision of your playing.The only criticism of this and the other Troy Stetina books I have is that the CD is copied from an earlier edition which obviously used tape and is not broken down into small enough "chunks". This makes accessing certain licks etc sometimes a bit tedious. However, as the accompanying text is that good, the book would be very useful even without a CD.

Speed Mechanics is one of THE fundamental books for shred guitar. Having been playing for about five years and hit a plateau, this is one of the few resources that has pushed me further recently. Some of the fretting hand exercises in this book made my hands ache ridiculously, and with the advice in the book I can come up with my own dexterity exercises harder than the ones in here to keep progressing forward.Only four stars because the tablature is poorly set - a 6 on the staff line looks identical to an 8 for instance - and this could easily have been rectified like it has in his newer books like Fretboard Mastery, which actually has readable tablature.

This book was written a long time ago before picking techniques had been studied. It has misleading lines such as ‘however you’re holding your pick is probably fine’ (it probably isn’t) and mentions nothing about pick depth or slant, wrist motions or switching strings (the hard part of playing fast). Far better to study Troy Grady or Chris Brooks who have analysed what fast players actually do with their pick, hands and arms.

A quality resource in speeding up lead guitar. The exercises start from simple and build up to more elaborate patterns. Practice makes perfect and if you practice enough, the exercises really do help. stretching and articulating the fingers and distance from fretboard are three primary factors covered. Recomened!