Meet Xander — this is his first-ever solo guitar recording. No backing track, no accompaniment, nothing to hide behind — just the guitar, and plenty of dedicated work.
A little context: I love bringing classical guitar repertoire into lessons with my electric guitar students, because classical guitarists have spent 200+ years refining technique of playing the instrument, while electric guitar is a much younger instrument that simply hasn't built up that same depth of inherited knowledge yet. So instead of reinventing the wheel, why not borrow from what already exists, adapt it to the electric guitar, and build the fundamentals every player needs?
The piece in this video is Arpeggio Study #2, also known as "Estudo de Arpejo, EL2," borrowed from the famous Brazilian classical guitarist and educator Edson Lopes, based on a study by the 19th-century goat of classical guitar technique, Dionisio Aguado.
The left hand barely moves in this piece — the real challenge lives entirely in the right hand, which is exactly the point.
So I set Xander a challenge: record the same piece using three different picking techniques every electric guitarist should know. Same notes — completely different color and character each repetition.