Art of Picking
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Well guitar fans I have the pleasure of presenting to you, Chops From Hell Volume 10: Rusty Cooley's "The art of picking." This is by far one of the most professional and best put together instruction CD ROMS I've seen yet! Rusty takes you and guitar on a none stop adventure into the world of guitar shredding. So grab your safari hats, and double barrel shot gun, opps I mean guitar and hit the jungle for a wild ride. Its packed with user friendly navigation, so anyone can figure out how to use the program with ease. In fact, the program is powered by the Internet Explorer, which makes it even simpler to use. The presentation is very eye pleasing and well organized (See the picture below). I also like how the video material is presented along with the notation and TAB so you don't have to refer to a printout as you go. Another highlight is that they included a Adobe Acrobat PDF file so the lesson notation can be viewed separately with the Acrobat reader. I recommend printing a copy of the notation guide so you can refer to licks later. I did that immediately, beware though, the tab sheets are around 35 pages long, so make sure you print them out at work or school so you don't waste your own ink at home! This CD-ROM seems to be geared towards the medium and more experienced level players. Its not for the faint of heart for sure! Make sure to get your hands and mind in for a medical evaluation before tackling Rusty's action packed lessons. I found each little lesson to be very challenging. I've been playing for a number of years now, and really found these licks to put my skills to the test. During each video clip, Cooley plays the lick at medium speed then at Rusty speed (which is really fast). As I said before, having the tab and notation under each video clip is a big help. Chops from Hell made it so you can grab your guitar and sit down in front of your computer, and go to town with all these lessons without any interruption. The Art of Picking will give you a few months worth of licks and runs to keep your fingers busy. I found that Rusty put lots of time into these lessons, and each one builds on the one before. He also informs you of which key or mode that each idea is played in, which is a big help for beginners. Some of my favorite lessons were: Minor picking in sequences of 5s, playing scales over 4 octaves, tremolo picking one note in the scale before moving on, and he also gives many examples of playing scales utilizing most of the fretboard. Along with that, Rusty enlightens you with many different ways to play the same scales, including ascending, descending, and even from the middle of the scale. Another thing that blew my mind was the pure skill that Cooley has. While I was watching the lessons I kept saying "Damn he's fast!" or "Is this guy insane." I kid you not, you will be blown away by the incredible chops that Rusty has. His playing is super clean and every note pours from his fingers with ease. Watching him play is like watching a well oiled machine perform it's normal tasks with pure accuracy. I found this video to be more helpful than the famous "Star Licks" series. This one gives you the one on one real life lesson feel. I really felt comfortable playing along and learning with this CD-ROM. Rusty doesn't have that "I know I'm better than you" attitude, like some of our usual instructional video teachers, you know who there are, I'm not saying a word. He is very down to earth and gave me the feeling that he really cares that you succeed as a guitarist and musician. Rusty has a great teaching style as well. He explains everything and keeps you up to date on what you will be playing and how you can manipulate it as you go along. I also really liked that he incorporated lots of scales modes into this series of lessons. He covers Major, Minor, Phrygian, Harmonic Minor, Mixolydian, Blues Pentatonic to name a few. Rusty even goes over how to combine scales together. The pentatonic mini lessons were one of my favorites, he gives you a bunch of different ways to break up the scale and utilize different parts of it. I would also recommend this to people who are in a playing rut, these lessons will defiantly give you a new look into your own playing and open doors that were never traveled before. This CD-ROM instructional was very helpful and helped me take a positive step forward with my own personal playing. Along with that, there are so many new things to try that I will be busy for months learning all these new licks and applications. Looking back, I will recommend this extremely high quality instructional ROM to everyone that I know. Rusty is an excellent teacher. His teaching style makes it fun and easy to sit down and learn new things. On a scale from one to ten I would without a hesitation give "The ART of Picking" a ten, for beautiful presentation and strong content value. The presentation is superb, the video clips are very clear and well lit so you won't have to squint or change your monitor settings to watch him play. He plays each lick at a medium and then normal speed. A major plus was the posting of notation right under the video screen, so you don't have to have a million windows open at a time. The software allows you to focus all your energy on the lesson at hand, nothing else. Learning from Rusty was definably a positive experience and I can't wait to get my paws on more of his instructional material. This production was well worth the time and plastic that's for sure. Hats of to Rusty Cooley and Chops From Hell for bringing us high quality and fun learning material. If this CD-ROM doesn't improve your playing then quit playing guitar, its just that easy to learn and progress. Just put in the effort and you'll be reaping with benefits from Rusty's lessons. Rusty Cooley's Website: www.rustycooley.com Chops From Hell: www.chopsfromhell.com Reviewed by Nick Martinelli @ The Shred Zone.com |
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