One of the most talented players in the metal scene, this is Jeff’s first instructional DVD and considering its only an hour long manages to cover a lot of topics. As with many videos there is an established format to follow (Intro, Tuning, Warm-ups, Techniques, Solo Excerpts) but in this case it seems to help in that the information is presented very clearly and concisely with multiple camera angles and explanations (even if Jeff appears a little self-conscious at times ).

Warm-up excercises and Scale Studies arrive first and Jeff takes the time to explain his style of picking before showing some atypical picking licks and excercises. To his credit, he’s not attemtping to reivent the wheel and just shares material than helped his playing. Next up we move (albeit briefly) into economy picking as an alternative to playing some scalar passages and again, brevity is the soul of wit so the information is imparted and with nary a pause we move onto the bits that people are no doubt salivating for – Sweep Picking, and sweeping with tapping.

As a player with a huge Jason Becker influence there’s no real suprises here, but people wanting to cop some impressive licks or even understand a few basic principles do equally well. As with the later section on Arpeggios and sweeping in his solos the playing is fluid enough to forget the technique and listen to the music – There are a lot of sweep-pickers about but Jeff manages to combine musicallity and agression better than most.

No video would be complete without a section on scales and their use in music so with time constraints in mind Jeff illustrates some rather cool phrasing ideas using a “warped” blues scale and the ever-popular phrygian dominant mode of the Harmonic minor. Again, the Becker influence is clear but we won’t hold that against him.

In between all the pyrotechnics there’s a section of heavy riffs from a few of his tunes and its nice to see such an inventive lead player also able to lay down intelligent rhythm parts right up to Meshuggah-style riffs by way of more typical fare.

Perhaps of interest to Loomis fans more than other players this is still a quality piece of work and bodes well for his future instructional releases.