The perfect warm up to practice technique

Playing Technique
#1

Hello!

I am a new user near Nashville (metal musician) and wanted to share the perfect warm up that has helped me practice the techniques I have learned here and further my overall guitar playing. Many may already know of it, but it is a warm up created by Frank Gambale.

If the link does not work, YouTube Frank Gambale chop builder. This is by far the best warm up I’ve ever used, so I just wanted to show it to anyone who would be willing to try it out. There is a normal tempo version and slow version.

Feel free to introduce yourself here or share any guitar knowledge as well I’d love to connect with everyone! I love learning and sharing things about music.

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#2

What a classic! :slight_smile:

It’s much harder to play than it seems in my experience. And it also demonstrates that Gambale is a true master of the instrument and can do much more than sweeping!

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#3

That Chop Builder warm-up section is sooo hard. I started using it to work on my downward pickslating (i am hard upward pickslating guy). Definitely good to warm up and have some new ways of torture your left hand. Although to be honest my picking hasn’t improved that much :frowning:

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#4

Welcome to the forum @Maurocolapso! The chop builder is indeed pretty tough, and I also used parts of it to work on my DWPS / escaped upstroke motions.

Feel free to post a video in the #technique-critique section showing the parts where you get stuck, we’ll try to help! The guidelines for filming can be found here:

Edit: also, we recently started putting more emphasis on the concepts of “escaped/trapped” picktrokes more than “pickslanting” (which is a useful concept but not the crucial one). This intagram post of @Troy provides a good summary of these ideas:

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#5

@Maurocolapso there is also a slow version up on YouTube that I frequently use as a warm up to the warm up. You also have the slow down function built into the settings of YouTube videos as well. I do not do the video in its entirety every day, I take certain exercises from it that help me with what I want to work on daily. Round 1 and 2 are my most used sections to help me work on pick slanting motions. It’s very demanding in speed and really makes you uncomfortable trying to hang in there, which only means theres room to improve!

#6

@tommo I’ve learned so much from Gambale’s instructional videos and agree he truly has mastered the instrument. I was excited to see him featured on this website too!

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