TrueFire
Try For Free

Guitar Gym: String Skipping

String skipping exercises to take your playing to the next level

Marty FriedmanTommy EmmanuelSteve VaiEric GalesEric Johnson

Get this course and 1,000+ more with All Access

Try 14 days free. Cancel any time.

Purchase Individual Course for $9.99
Guitar Gym: String Skipping
Chris Buono

Chris Buono

Educator

multi genre

Genres

About this course

In this edition of Guitar Gym, it’s all about mastering String Skipping. Split into four leveled sections, these workouts guide you through a comprehensive, rigorous practice regimen designed to get these essential playing elements solidified and ready to build on. Buono will guide you through 48 Workouts across the 4 levels. The workouts are organized into tempo sets (from slow to fast) each with an accompanying overview video where Buono explains the ins and outs for practicing the workouts. Each Workout is also clearly laid out for you in Guitar Pro, which can further be adjusted to any tempo. Buono will perform each workout on video (in various views) for the prescribed amount of time and so you’ll always have your coach there to play along and sweat it out with in the Guitar Gym.

Each Guitar Gym course focuses on a specific guitar technique by guiding the student through a deliberately prescribed series of optimized workouts, organized across a series of levels with increasing intensity. Buono demonstrates each of the workouts by explaining how the workout is engineered and then showing you how to play the workout correctly.

The workouts are ALL interactive video playalongs -- Buono performs each workout with you, for the correct amount of time, at all of the prescribed tempos. You will not be alone in the shed!

All of the workouts also include text guides, PDF charts, Guitar Pro files and all of the practice metronome tracks, at all of the prescribed tempos. Everything you need to develop monster chops by practicing correctly is included.

Practice does NOT make perfect -- "perfect" practice does. We've heard this time and again from our instructors and we get it; practice the wrong thing, or practice the wrong way, and you'll learn how to play it perfectly wrong. Makes "perfect" sense but what exactly do we practice, and how specifically do we practice it? TrueFire's resident Professor of the Deep, Chris Buono has invested the last couple of decades coming up with the answer.

Developing solid guitar techniques is particularly subject to the quality and intensity of your practice regimens -- you'll only get so far relying on repetition and frequency alone. Chris Buono's Guitar Gym workouts will take you the rest of the way with 12 collections of tried, tested and proven intensive workouts for Triad Arpeggios, Tapping, Hybrid Picking, Alternate Picking, Hammers & Pull-Offs, Power Chords, Scales, Speed Picking,Triads, Harmonic Minor Triad Chord Scales, Major Triad Chord Scales and Melodic Minor Triad Chord Scales

Guitar Gym -- your path to "perfect" chops!

What you'll learn

  • Navigate multiple scale types across the fretboard with string skipping
  • Execute single, double, and triple string skips with precision
  • Apply hybrid picking technique using the third finger (P3)
  • Understand the importance of consistent daily practice over sporadic long sessions
  • Develop awareness of proper practice habits for long-term success
Release date: 01/08/2016 • 2h 39m runtime
intermediatelate intermediateguitarelectric guitartechniquepractice
Start Course
Sample lessons
Working Out In the Gym
Working Out In the Gym
Schedules and Rules
String Skipping
String Skipping
Level 1: Overview
String Skipping: Level 1
String Skipping: Level 1
Workout #1: Overview
String Skipping: Level 1
String Skipping: Level 1
Workout #1: 40 BPM

What's included

42 lessons • 36 charts • 33 Jam Tracks

Guitar Gym: String Skipping
Chops: Our heroes have 'em and we all want 'em. In order to get 'em you gotta do what any other person training to better themselves in some way would do - get to the gym! Well, that's exactly what you're going to do - welcome to the Guitar Gym series. No matter what level you're at or if you have various strong and weak points in your technique, Guitar Gym has you covered. Each course is comprised of a collection of leveled workouts waiting for you to dig into.

Here in Guitar Gym: String Skipping, we'll be playing ideas that jump to and from non-adjacent strings in various ways. You'll have challenges to play that involve alternate picking, hybrid picking, legato, and combinations thereof. Split into three leveled sections, Guitar Gym: String Skipping guides you through a comprehensive, rigorous game plan for you to get this essential playing element solidified and ready to build on. Each level is split up into three workouts made up of 13 video segments, starting with the overview where I'll give you a quick synopsis of what's in store. The following 12 videos further split the three workouts into three tempos (slow, medium, fast) that all have an accompanying introduction video where I'll explain the ins and outs on how to play the workout. Each workout is clearly laid out for you in Guitar Pro and will be readily available for you to download right from the TrueFire player.

In the three actual workout videos, I'll play through the workout for the amount of time I prescribe in the overview and introduction videos so you'll always have me right there with you (in various views) as you sweat it all out here in Guitar Gym.

At the heart of any drilling regimen, including this one, is precise timing. It not only keeps things orderly in all aspects of music, but also serves as a guide and indicator as to how you're progressing. What's more, anyone who has been in the chops shed knows that one of the most important practices is to increase the tempo incrementally one-by-one. While the three parts of each workout will be presented in a slow-medium-fast fashion in regards to tempo, it's up to you to take the workout into your own shed and incrementally up the tempo while you practice, preparing you for the next tempo mark.

Dig?

Ready!?

Let's do it do it!!
Working Out In the Gym
Developing great chops is not about just mindlessly drilling an exercise over and over. There has to be a method to the madness...

First and foremost, you need to create what I call in my Guitar Gym Online Classroom a Workout Schedule. My Workout Schedules carve out a set amount of time on set days of the week that slot out precisely what it is you're going to play. This helps big time and the results are inspiring to say the least! And it doesn't take as much time as you might expect - if you're working on just one skill such as the one here in this course, you need but 15-30 minutes a day depending on how many workouts you want to drill down. That said, you could set it up so you do a morning and evening session. The key is focused, disciplined practice time with a metronome. Just stick to your "WS" and let your fingers do the rest!

Speaking of focus and discipline, when starting to put together your own WS keep this mantra in mind: You absolutely must start out playing the workouts slow and gradually climb up the tempo ladder to the top tempo tier. No if's, and's, or lazy butts about it. Even if you think you can play the workout at the medium tempo, trust me, knock it down to the lowest tier and build. You may be masking playing anomalies you don't even know are there by jumping into passages at a medium to high tempo. Slowing down what you're playing will reveal what you may need to work on. Do it!

Not only does starting out at the lowest tempo tier ensure you'll get the most out of your practice time, but it will also help to prevent any injuries. Playing in reasonable blocks of time is a much safer way to build your muscle memory as well as help you attain the ultimate skill in playing proficiently on the guitar: The art of relaxation. If you're relaxed and keeping your practice time calculated and spaced out, you'll be safe and successful!
String Skipping
Here in Level 1 the concept of string skipping will be introduced. Put simply, string skipping is playing melodic passages that involve jumping to and from non-adjacent strings in various ways.

The three string skipping workouts here in Level 1 go from long to pretty darn long - so get ready. All three can be played with either an alternate or hybrid picking technique and you will see me employ both at different times. Basically, the faster it gets the more likely I'm to go for the hybrid approach. As for the skips themselves they will only be over one string and they're will only be one within the lick at this level. Trust me, that's enough for two minutes!
String Skipping: Level 1
Skipping Workout #1 is a throwback to an article I wrote for Guitar One magazine many moons ago on the subject of string skipping. It's been morphed to better fit the format here and will get you going in no time. What you have is a six bar lick in Gm with an octave jump. You'll be surprised at how different things get when you make the shift from one zone to the next. What you think is merely playing the same thing turns out to actually require a completely different approach both in fretting and feel. What remains the same in this workout is a cool ricochet action between the chromatic sequences played on the lower string between b7th degree and the root and the chromatic melody played on the top string from the 5th to b7th degrees.
String Skipping: Level 1
Skipping Workout #1 is a throwback to an article I wrote for Guitar One magazine many moons ago on the subject of string skipping. It's been morphed to better fit the format here and will get you going in no time. What you have is a six bar lick in Gm with an octave jump. You'll be surprised at how different things get when you make the shift from one zone to the next. What you think is merely playing the same thing turns out to actually require a completely different approach both in fretting and feel. What remains the same in this workout is a cool ricochet action between the chromatic sequences played on the lower string between b7th degree and the root and the chromatic melody played on the top string from the 5th to b7th degrees.
String Skipping: Level 1
Skipping Workout #1 is a throwback to an article I wrote for Guitar One magazine many moons ago on the subject of string skipping. It's been morphed to better fit the format here and will get you going in no time. What you have is a six bar lick in Gm with an octave jump. You'll be surprised at how different things get when you make the shift from one zone to the next. What you think is merely playing the same thing turns out to actually require a completely different approach both in fretting and feel. What remains the same in this workout is a cool ricochet action between the chromatic sequences played on the lower string between b7th degree and the root and the chromatic melody played on the top string from the 5th to b7th degrees.
String Skipping: Level 1
Skipping Workout #1 is a throwback to an article I wrote for Guitar One magazine many moons ago on the subject of string skipping. It's been morphed to better fit the format here and will get you going in no time. What you have is a six bar lick in Gm with an octave jump. You'll be surprised at how different things get when you make the shift from one zone to the next. What you think is merely playing the same thing turns out to actually require a completely different approach both in fretting and feel. What remains the same in this workout is a cool ricochet action between the chromatic sequences played on the lower string between b7th degree and the root and the chromatic melody played on the top string from the 5th to b7th degrees.

+ 35 more lessons

Start Course

Reviews

7 results

lilcuda

04/18/21

Getting the right hand sorted

Sort out that right hand to play what you want comfortably is a skill everyone needs. This course could be tackled by a beginner with the correct mindset of a long term goal and low tempo to start with and is a great way to expand to intermediate playing.

wholmer

12/23/20

Chris Buono’s Gym Rocks!

Guitar Gym has a great selection of workouts that just like its counterpart will give you a great targeted work-out. These string skipping lessons cured my issues with trying to play fast and they were actually fun! He figured out a systematic approach broken down into the steps needed to do it right in the shortest time possible.

solinski

Verified buyer

12/16/20

Excellent Course

Chris' teaching is planned out well and gradually teaches an important skill that I've struggled with. You slowly build muscle memory, confidence and precision as you progress through the exercises. Highly recommended.

jcomito

Verified buyer

11/05/20

Terrific Course

I really have benefited from the Guitar Gym series. This one on string skipping is no exception. Get it, you will see improvement!

Mario64

Verified buyer

10/18/20

My favorite exercises

My main difficulty with guitar playing is string skipping. This course is perfect for me and allows to learn one of the most challenges with guitar, almost for me, from an excellent teacher. Highly recommend!

Stop searching. Start improving with All Access.

Try 14 days free. Cancel any time.

Learn MoreStart Free Trial

Similar courses

Guitar Gym: Alternate Picking Workouts
Guitar Gym: Alternate Picking Workouts
Chris Buono
Chris Buono
Guitar Gym: Hybrid Picking
Guitar Gym: Hybrid Picking
Chris Buono
Chris Buono
Guitar Gym: Arpeggiation
Guitar Gym: Arpeggiation
Chris Buono
Chris Buono
Guitar Gym: Sweep Picking
Guitar Gym: Sweep Picking
Chris Buono
Chris Buono
Browse Library