He was a great guitar teacher! I took lessons from him years ago at Ye Olde Guitar shop in Des Moines. He got me into doing sweep arpeggios. I learned a lot just from watching his playing technique. Precise and brutal! Really cool guy too. I wish I could have taken lessons from him longer. A few months after I started lessons he had to leave to record on Slipknot's first major label release. He came back and we continued lessons for a few weeks. After that he had to leave for Ozzfest and I think he's been pretty busy since then :)
Alexander Oden Hey man, that's awesome. Dude can shred, but shows enough restraint in not over-complicating his riffs, which is admirable. Sounds like quite an experience, rock on!
I know the comment is six years old (Jesus time flies...) but I'm saying this more as motivation rather than insult and it isn't directed to you only but to everyone who reads. Being from Des Moines in ye olden days these guys were probably very isolated, I know that was the case with Mick, who sat in his room and played guitar 6 hours every day, Prince also shared the same tale, Prince's room mates see him practicing guitar leads at 6pm, come home from partying at 11pm he is still on that same chair practicing guitar leads as if he hadn't moved an inch. What I'm trying to say is, the words talent/talented have been truly skewed, it's a simplification and I completely understand you didn't mean any disrespect, but to me it does come of disrespectful. I hate when people call me talented, or "rhythmically gifted" I didn't know jack shit about holding a groove, hell I didn't understand it 5 months in... I can go on but I don't want to sound egotistical it's not my goal here. Imagine if today you put in the work, imagine if this guy played guitar at least an hour in 2 days these last 6 years, he would be a MACHINE today. So reader, your life is in your hands, everything you hear and see in the human realm is achievable by YOU, it's on YOU how bad you want it. Fuck the "grind", it's livin' and breathin' it mothafucka! I hope I helped someone, this doesn't even have to be guitar related. I'm ready to crush my local scene and show them what hard work sounds like. Good luck to yall!!!
This dude is unironically of the most technically skilled metal guitarists you could imagine. If he wanted, he could play with any number of technical death metal bands and would fit like a glove. No I'm not kidding in the least. He's a guitar teacher for a reason.
Mick is a huge Death Metal guy. So were Joey and Paul, they all played in Death Metal/Grind bands before the Knot. There’s a reason the older records sound so damn brutal. Now on his guitar skills, yes. He is deceptively good, and his downpicking is ridiculous. He motivated me to practice it religiously.
My old guitar teacher once told me that it's not how many notes you can okay in a second, but how little you can play while still having something powerful and moving
I would've said, that this is still kinda not that easy, especially that Mick's intro part,and ESPECIALLY considering what most of the Nu-Metal scene made. Self-titled still has that amazing "VHS" vibe in it, and the style of this album is pretty different from rapcore and Nu-Metal
"The heaviest songs tend to be the simplest." Indeed I mean Pantera, Sepultura, Crowbar... some of the heaviest Metal there is and not excessively complicated any of them.
Frankie cocker Wow guitar really is easy isnt it... I bet your just a shred monster too, I bet your knowledge and technique is perfect, I bet you can play anything....
True guitar teacher right here. I would kill to take a couple lessons from Mick. One of the most underrated guitar players in metal. I love his comment on Master of Puppets. Definitely a true guitar lover. Watch some of the videos about his signature amps and guitars. This guy is a total gear head! I would love to pick his brain for a few hours.
I can’t believe this video is over 10 years old, I remember watching this as a kid and being in complete awe of mick and his playing style, he inspired my love for metal and guitars 🤘🏻❤️
This was the first video I watched in RU-vid. I used to work in a music store in 2006 and I was browsing around googling "slipknot guitar video". All of a sudden this video pops up and my mind is blown because I was watching a video without having to download it! I called all my friends to tell them about it and they also went nuts. Good ol' times!!
Why do people love to hate so much. "that guy sucks!" "slipknot sucks!" I think they get the misunderstanding that if they don't like it, it must suck. Which that's not it at all. The world doesn't revolve around you. They are the ones with recognized names. They are the ones with recognized looks. They are the ones that play for huge crowds. Just saying.
FYI Slipknot song are supposed to rip your head off your shoulders, not make you sit in a dark room trying to figure out the complexity of a masterpiece tab.
+nyanrlz But i can rip my head off my shoulders while i'm sitting in a dark room trying to figure out Meshuggah's works. Not this prick. No offense tho.
@Nima Yeah, but Mick is actually a really solid, technical player. It's just not being shown here. He's playing to the song. Not everything has to be technical, and not everything has to be guitar dominated.
"No its actually says semen, if you think it says seven, youre a fuckin idiot....." Not many people will get this reference. But it's funny that you said that because that gets brought up in a funny overdub of this video.
If you don’t play guitar. There is no possible way to wrap your mind around how talented Mick is. FOR A MAN WITH HUGE HANDS AND LONG FINGERS TO MOVE THAT FAST ON A NECK THAT SMALL AND NEVER MISS A NOTE IS TRULY FING AMAZING. NO DOUBT. MICK YOU ARE BADASS. BUT IT DOESN’T COME OVERNIGHT ITS A LONG TIME TO GET TO THIS LEVEL. I LOVE IT.
“The opening line in Surfacing. I use a pitch shifter. One note shifted up one octave. Another note shifted up two octaves. Original note mixed out. Little bit use it away, little bit of reverb. And some really disgusting bit of distortion to make it sound like shit. Here's how it's performed.”
simply amazing he must have practiced for like 10 hours a day for years to become this good i hope i can someday achieve maybe half of his excellence and talent on the guitar
For those of you complaining about the quality of this video: look at the upload date. HD at this time was only a feature on high end TVs, and a run of the mill computer was less powerful and had less processing power than a current generation iPhone/Android device.
Mick and james are so huge! make the guitars look like toys. I think they are quite underrated, Im glad these videos exist so we can see how they are without the band.
I remember going home 14, only using schools internet to watch Jim root and mick Thompson guitar lesson during lunch (I had no internet lol), not even eat till I got home and practicing HOURS with pure enjoyment because I felt cool playing slipknot songs and actually learning them : D... I’m glad I grew up with talented ass guitarists like mick and Jim because to this day they inspire me and I’m proud of myself : D.. I like to play more like Jim as time went on and just practice silky legato stuff over variations of major scales, like he does.
I don't really like Slipknot that much anymore but they were the band that got me into really heavy stuff so I still respect them. Mick Thompson obviously has a lot of skill just like Jimmy.
@@jimknight7666 There are such guitarists, as Tosin Abasi, or Tim Henson, and I'm pretty sure, that there are even better ones, whom we don't know about. So, I don't think, that saying "he's not best" is an offence. Remember, "if you're think you're best at something - there is a Chinese guy, that can do this even better". But I think OP is just an asshole, who wanted some flame in replies, lol
Great shit, I love that Mick was a guitar instructor for years before making it with Slipknot. He really fits a lot of good advice into this video that doesn't necessarily apply to just Surfacing but any music you might be working on.
He's so fucking epic, his mask his height enforces his epicness and his hair is insane and his guitar playing is badass, throughout his playing he doesn't look at his guitar....he stares into your soul
