How to Practice
Pole-Vaulting
you some advice on how to master it. The
loud-talking taskmaster returns and says:
BY PAUL GILBERT
Paul Gilbert purposefully began playing guitar at age 9, formed the guitar-driven bands
Racer X and Mr. Big, and then accidentally
had a No. 1 hit with an acoustic song called
“To Be with You.” Paul began teaching at
GIT at the age of 18, has released countless
albums and guitar instructional DVDs, and
will remembered as “the guy who got the drill
stuck in his hair.” For more information, visit
paulgilbert.com
•;Notice;that;the;Color;TVs;begin;with
a downstroke, while the Refrigerators
begin with an upstroke. The space in
between will allow you time to get
ready for the change in picking.
•;Keep;the;tempo;slow.;The;important
things are: Use the correct picking strokes
and keep the rhythm even and flowing.
CHOPS: Intermediate
THEORY: Beginner
LESSON OVERVIEW:
• Learn the basics of “outside”
picking
• Combine string-skipping with
minor arpeggios
• Investigate the finer points of
Dire Straits’ lyrics
•;Respect;the;holes.;Keep;them;in
tempo just like you would if they
were notes.
•;Notice;that;every;note;is;picked.;My
metaphor pays off here. “You’ve got
to move these refrigerators. You’ve got
to;move;these;color;TVs.”
Have you watched pole-vaulters on the Olympics?
I’ve always wondered what a lesson for
a beginning pole-vaulter might look like.
How do you practice something like this
slowly? I suppose you could travel to the
moon where there is less gravity or maybe
practice underwater where you could float
rather than suffer a nasty drop to the earth
every time you make a mistake. My guess
is that budding pole-vaulters don’t do
either of those impractical things. They
probably just do a lot of falling and get
bruised up more than the rest of us could
endure. My respect goes out to the pole-vaulters of the world.
Back to the world of guitar.
I’ve planted a vision of bruised pole-
vaulters in your head to mentally prepare
you for something difficult and painful
on the guitar. But I’m going to do the
opposite and give you something easy to
play. Breathe a sigh of relief and get ready
to play ... two notes. Easy, right? And
you can practice them slowly without any
worries of falling to the ground. I want
to make this into a rhythmic phrase, so I
repeated these notes a few times. The right
hand will use alternate picking, starting
with a downstroke.
Hello! You’re back. Three weeks have passed,
and you have digested the examples all the
way back into the reptilian part of your
brain. No barrier or distraction can stop you
from playing it as easy as an E chord. You
can play it on a guitar, with strings that are
too high while plugged into an amp with
a sound that you don’t like with a monitor
where you can’t hear yourself, with a drummer with erratic meter, a bass player who is
out of tune, an audience that is asking for
more Bee Gees tunes, and a dog that keeps
eating your homework. You don’t need to
make excuses. You can play it easily every
time. That’s what three weeks does. So now,
you are ready for the secret. You still have
to move these Refrigerators. But you do not
have;to;move;these;Color;TVs.
What am I talking about? Let’s look at
our;Color;TVs;for;a;second.;It’s;basically
