Every shredder keeps a little mental list of licks they swear they'll nail "someday." Racer X's Technical Difficulties sits near the top of mine, permanently, smugly, refusing to get any easier no matter how many years pass. Paul Gilbert wrote a song whose title is also a warning label, and honestly, respect.
This clip is Lick #7: a bite-sized chunk of that high-speed monster, the kind of phrase that sounds like a machine gun having a really good day. It's short, it's mean, and it's an absolute rite of passage for anyone who wants to play fast without their picking hand filing a complaint.
How the Technical Difficulties lick actually works
Under all the noise, this is a scale sequence fired through strict alternate picking — down, up, down, up, no cheating — with the extra spice of string skipping, where Gilbert jumps over a string instead of playing the neighbour. That skip is exactly what makes the line sound wide and athletic instead of like a tidy little run, and it's also exactly what trips up your picking hand, because your pick suddenly has to travel further in the same amount of time.
The real takeaway: do not chase the tempo. Set a metronome painfully slow, watch that your down-up motion never flips at the string jumps, and only nudge the speed up once the lick is clean. Speed is just accuracy that got comfortable — every shredder who sounds fast simply practised slow for longer than you'd believe.
Nail this one and you're one lick closer to the whole beast; fail it gloriously and, well, you're in extremely good company. Full tab, Guitar Pro file and the complete video live over on my Patreon, where my metronome and I are contractually obligated to keep a straight face.