I agree...I never learned to sweep, as I'm not hugely interested in being able to play that fast - but I always thought it would be cool if people tried sweep picking across only 3 strings. Could extend the variety of patterns used somewhat methinks :drink:
i thought lots of guys sweeped across 3 strings... i know friedman (ex-megadeth) does it a lot (definitely over 4 strings), he's basically what beaulieu wants to be (as I've said before). he manages to be both incredibly melodic, dynamic, and shreddy at the same time- and at the same time incorporating excellent touches like eastern scales, and koto bends to put in subtle inflections to the notes he plays.
Again, I must reiterate that I quite like trivium- but I'm not so naive to believe (or even think!) that they're the best metal band there is, or the best soloists. They're far from it. They may be a step in the right direction, but in a perfect world there would be other bands that were several more steps in the right direction...
EDIT: I quite like dragonforce too. Again, I don't think li and totman are as good as everyone says they are either (much like the trivium guys). while they are good, I kind of rate them as "good" rather than amazing- the guys who say they're amazing tend not to be familiar with the guys I'd qualify as "amazing"- mainly the shredders from the 80's- guys like vai, satch, gilbert, EVH, Lynch, malmsteen, timmons, friedman, becker, nuno etc.
plus, I tend to judge a player by their feel first- how good their vibrato is, how musical they make each note sound, BEFORE i rate their chops. Anyone can practice enough to get good chops- you do need talent, I agree, and if you have talent it'll take less practice to get that good, but if you gave a total duffer 20 years of 10 hours per day practice, I'd think they could shred pretty well at the end of that- shredding is mainly mechanical skill. But you can't practice "musicality" as well- I think EVH said once that he heard two pianists play the same piece of music, and one was technically perfect, but it lacked a little something- it was too mechanical. While with the other guy, every note was beautiful, the music just flowed through his fingers.
So I guess that's what I'm not so fond of with a lot the newer shredders in popular bands like trivium. There's hardly any blues or feel in their solos, which the 80's guys (in my opinion at least) still had. They also seem to be playing easier examples of shredding (like shadows fall will use a 3 string sweep where an 80's guy would have used 4 or 5) to make them sound better than they are- a bit like the way jeff beck said that you could play easy stuff that sounded hard (though jeff beck rules!).
So, umm, yeah. None of the modern players in a lot of the popular metal bands really impresses me. Like amott of arch enemy said recently in an interview I read, the only reason people think he's a guitar god is because there's nobody any better- he said he wouldn't have stood a chance in the 80's. And while I agree, I think amott is one of the good modern players!
Um, rant over, lol.
:drink:
