Lessons

Tapper's Delight: 20 Challenging Tapping Licks

Guthrie Govan — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:18:35 +0000

Fretboard tapping has earned a bad name in certain sectors of the guitar community. Some players dismiss it as a technique suitable only for perpetrating the worst possible kind of overblown, unmusical histrionics, preferably played through a wall of amps that “go to 11.”

If you feel that way, then you probably haven’t even managed to read this far. But for those of you who are still undecided about tapping, I would urge you to view the technique simply as an easy way to play notes you could never reach otherwise.

If you think of your tapping fingers as extensions of your fretting hand, you’ll find it easier to imagine how this technique can benefit virtually any style of playing.

Track Record

In the world of rock, Van Halen’s self-titled 1978 debut album heralded a tapping craze that soon caught on like wildfire. In the years following the album’s release, gifted guitarists such as Randy Rhoads, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai used the technique in their own landmark recordings. If you want to hear tapping taken to new heights of invention, check out Freak Kitchen by Mattias Eklundh and Normal by Ron Thal (a.k.a. Bumblefoot).

Tone

For tapping, many players opt to use their guitar’s bright-sounding bridge pickup and a heavily distorted, or at least overdriven, tone, which serves to compresses the dynamic (volume) range of the electric guitar’s signal, amplifying the quieter notes and increasing sustain, although players like Stanley Jordan manage to tap with a very clean, neck-pickup sound. When tapping with a clean tone, you’ll find that a compressor can even out dynamics and add sustain.

Technique

Most tapping is performed on one string at a time using either the middle or index finger of the picking hand, depending on if, and how, you’re holding a pick. Some players will momentarily tuck the pick into their palm or cradle it in the crook of one of their knuckles when they go to tap and maneuver it back into its normal position (typically between the thumb and index finger) when they go to pick again.

This magician-like sleight-of-hand can take a bit of practice to attain, and for this reason many players prefer to just keep the pick in its normal place and tap with the closest available finger, typically the middle. Experiment and use whichever technique works best for you. Eddie Van Halen holds his pick between his thumb and middle finger and taps with his index finger, and Rhoads tapped with the edge of his pick, which produces a very distinct articulation. (Listen closely to Rhoads’ classic solos in Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” and “Flying High Again” to hear the subtle difference in his tapping attack.)

Your speed and proficiency will increase if you minimize your movements and keep all relevant fingertips close to the strings when not in use so that they never have far to go at any given time. Depending on whether or not you’re holding a pick when tapping, you may find that resting, or “anchoring,” the thumb or heel of your tapping hand to the top side of the fretboard helps stabilize and steady the hand and increase the accuracy of your tapping movements.

The easiest way to train the fingers of your tapping hand is to learn from the way you perform hammer-ons and pull-offs with the more experienced fingers of your fretting hand. The following principles hold true for both hands:

• If you’re hammering a note, the force of your hammering motion will dictate its volume. The harder you hammer/tap, the louder the note.
• If you’re pulling off to a note, its volume is a function of how far you flick the string sideways (either toward the floor or ceiling) with the finger responsible for fretting the preceding note. This sideways flicking, or pulling, motion actually serves to pluck the string again and is what keeps it vibrating. If you were to just lift the finger directly off the string, the following note would be weak and barely audible. (Note that when tapping with a pick, the “pulled-off” note tends to be louder than normal due to the pick’s hard surface striking the string.)

Muting

Distortion amplifies the sympathetic vibrations of unfretted strings. When tapping, you should make a concerted effort to dampen any idle strings with various parts of both hands, something that requires a bit of practice and experimentation to figure out and master. To that end, many players will place a piece of foam or fabric against the strings in front of the nut. In addition, a cheap elastic-core hair tie stretched over the headstock and positioned over the fretboard is convenient for damping the open strings.

If you’re new to tapping, allow your fingertips time to toughen up and develop the necessary calluses. Hopefully, the rest will become clear as we go. We have a lot of licks to look at in this lesson, ranging from classic hard rock and metal lines to sequencer-like patterns and bluesy runs to jazzy arpeggios, so let’s dive in.

This is arguably the most versatile approach to tapping. A lick like this could sit comfortably in any rock, metal, blues, country or fusion context without necessarily invoking visions of Eighties-era spandex fashion statements. The recorded performance of this example on this month’s CD-ROM may sound reminiscent of Eddie Van Halen’s tone, but players of diversely different styles, ranging from Billy Gibbons, Brian May and Larry Carlton, have all dabbled in this approach.

There’s a strong argument here for using the middle finger of your pick hand to tap. By doing so, you can retain the pick in its conventional position and easily revert to picking at a moment’s notice. You can improve your accuracy if you anchor the heel of your tapping hand to the wound strings. This will also help mute unwanted string vibration while it allows you to keep a grip on the pick.
One tricky aspect of tapping a bent note like this is that the string moves closer to its neighbor (in this case, the D string), so you have to be extra careful to ensure that your tapping finger only makes contact with the G string. Try to bend the G string with your fret-hand ring finger while you simultaneously push the D string up slightly with the tip of that hand’s middle finger. This can help create more clearance between the two strings and provide a little more margin for error.

The following five examples serve as a great tapping primer, and there’s no other way to play arpeggio ideas like these with the same level of fluidity.

FIGURE 2 presents a classic Van Halen–style single-string triad tapping lick. This is the famous “Eruption” triad. To make this sound effective, the tapping finger must execute a strong pull-off as it leaves the ninth fret, thus ensuring that the Cs at the second fret rings out as prominently as its predecessor. You should also attempt to preserve a strict triplet rhythm, with every note equal in duration and volume.

Incidentally, there’s no single “right” way to execute a pull-off with the tapping finger. Some players prefer to flick the string upward, while others find it easier to flick it downward. Experiment with both approaches to find out which integrates more easily with the natural angle of your tapping hand and allows you to dampen the idle strings more effectively.

FIGURE 3 is a variation on the previous figure. Here, the order of two notes played by the fretting hand is reversed. It’s important that you become familiar with both approaches so that you can move on to ideas like the one shown in FIGURE 4, where the arpeggio goes all the way down and back up again, enabling you to move away from the ubiquitous triplet rhythm and phrase licks in even 16th notes.

Here’s another twist, reminiscent of Van Halen’s tapping licks in “Spanish Fly” and “Hot for Teacher” and Satriani’s “Satch Boogie.” In this lick, the first finger of your fretting hand has to pull off to the open A string, preferably without disturbing the D string in the process. As ever, careful attention to damping and accurate timing of each note are the keys to making this lick flow clearly. To sound the very first note, pluck the open A string with your tapping finger. Once you’ve gotten the string moving, all the subsequent open A notes are pulled-off to with the fretting hand.

FIGURE 6 demonstrates how you can outline a chord progression with triad inversions. Notice how the lick lets you arpeggiate four different chords without moving either hand far from its starting point. This is done by analyzing the component notes of each chord and placing them so that they all fit into roughly the same area of the fretboard.

The tapping sequence is similar to that found in FIGURE 5, but since we’re tapping the highest note twice, the sequence is now six notes long. Players such as Rhoads and Nuno Bettencourt have used this variation to great effect.

This next example isn’t reminiscent of any rock players and is intended to show how you can use tapping to create something a little bit different. If you start by looking purely at the B-string notes, you’ll see that the tapped notes outline a rhythm known in Latin music as the 3:2 clave: if you’re a fan of the bossa nova style, you’ll have heard this rhythm before. In this example, the fretting hand essentially does whatever is needed to fill in the gaps between the all-important tapped notes.

Once you’re familiar with the phrasing pattern, include the notes on the high E string, which adds a harmony to the B-string notes. Try tapping with either your index and middle fingers or the middle and ring (on the B and high E strings, respectively). The trickiest part here is arching your fret-hand fingers sufficiently so that the open E string is not muted by the underside of your index finger. Try to think like a classical player, keeping the thumb of your fretting hand based around the middle of the back of the neck.

FIGURE 8 demonstrates how you can use tapping in conjunction with finger slides to cover a lot of the fretboard in a short amount of time and achieve a smooth legato effect. The note choice here is derived from the A Aeolian mode (A B C D E F G), but you can design similar licks using the notes of any seven-note scale.

At slow speed, it can be tricky to squeeze seven evenly spaced notes into each beat—most of the popular music we hear tends to divide the beat into twos, threes or multiples thereof, so a grouping of seven might sound a little unfamiliar—but you’ll find that this becomes less of a problem at faster tempos. Simply aim to nail each new beat with a tapped note, and you’ll find that the notes in between will tend to distribute themselves evenly as you speed things up.

Here’s an interesting twist on the single-string scalar tapping approach. The first 10 notes look normal enough, but by the 11th you see that the fretting hand has leapt past the tapped note, to the 12th fret to perform a fret-hand tap, also known as a “hammer-on from nowhere.” The tapped note needs to be held at the 10th fret as the fretting hand quickly zooms up to the 12th fret, and you’ll need to be careful to ensure that the two hands don’t collide.

This lick won’t be for everyone, and it’s not particularly easy. On the other hand, it’s a useful approach whenever you’re trying to work out a fingering for something and it feels like you simply don’t have enough strings. This bypassing technique also has a certain flamboyant visual appeal, so it should come as no surprise to learn that Steve Vai was employing it as far back as the early Eighties.

This example is inspired by Bumblefoot. The important part here is the first half of bar 1; the lazy approach would be to play two evenly spaced groups of five, but you get a wholly different effect if you prolong the two D notes (at the 10th and 22nd frets) and squeeze all the other notes into a shorter space of time. If you’re having trouble with the seven-fret stretch here, you could instead play 13-15-16-17 on the first string instead of 13-15-17-20. It doesn’t sound quite as cool to me, but it’s still a great lick.

Regarding the rhythmic phrasing of this lick, in FIGURE 8 we saw how an odd number of notes tends to be distributed evenly throughout a beat as you increase speed. Sometimes, however, it can be fun to resist that tendency and preserve a more distinct rhythmic contour, as we do here. The ear can still identify distinctions between the rhythmic values of the notes even when they are played at ridiculously high speeds.

Here’s something a little more conventional. The idea is to play a blues lick with the fretting hand while highlighting certain notes by tapping them an octave higher. This is somewhat reminiscent of Nuno Bettencourt’s or Mattias Eklundh’s soloing styles.
The most challenging aspect of this lick is that you have to clearly and loudly hammer the first note on each new string with your fret-hand’s index or middle finger. This may feel a little weird at first, given that the index finger spends the bulk of its time acting more like a fleshy capo rather than as an independent hammering digit, so focus on executing the first-finger hammer-ons as cleanly as possible. This will be time well spent, as some of the subsequent licks will require much the same skill.

With regard to the final bent note: your tapping finger’s only role here is to hammer the note and then keep the string pushed down onto the fret while the fret-hand middle finger bends the string. As indicated, hammer the last note in the bar 1 with your middle finger, but once the tapped note has been initiated, there’s no harm in enlisting the fret hand’s ring finger to assist with the bend. As always, do whatever it takes to perform the job with the least amount of effort, pain and intonation issues.

Now for some more Van Halen–style fun. This lick is loosely modeled on a famous lick from “Hot for Teacher,” and it’s based on the A blues scale (A C D Ef E G). As with FIGURE 5, there’s a strong argument in favor of plucking the first note of the lick with your tapping finger. After that, each new string is greeted by a hammer-on, courtesy of the fret-hand’s ring finger. Hopefully you’ll find this easier than the first-finger hammering required in the previous example.

FIGURE 13 illustrates a scalar fingering approach favored by players like Greg Howe (who is featured in this month’s Betcha Can’t Play This, page 32). The fingering doesn’t incorporate any particularly wide intervals, and you could feasibly play the whole of the first two bars using strict left-hand legato, but by using the tapping hand to share some of the work you should be able to get more volume out of the lick while sparing your fretting hand from undue fatigue.

Here’s the downside: the tapped notes often fall in unusual places within the bar (rather than, say, on the downbeats), so this approach may feel a bit unnatural at first. Having said that, Howe’s exemplary playing is ample testimony to what can be done with this approach if you devote some time to it.

Here’s another scalar tapping concept. Most players would simply hammer the first note on each string with the first finger of the fretting hand, but the approach suggested in the tab here is based on the way Reb Beach (of Winger, Dokken, Night Ranger and now Whitesnake) would do it. Reb taps with his middle finger, so for ascending sequences he’ll use the ring finger of his tapping hand to pluck the first note on each new string. This may feel odd at first, but it undeniably gives you more volume and definition, particularly if you prefer not to use a lot of distortion.

If you go to any guitar show or music fair and head toward the “pointy guitar” booths, you’ll hear a veritable army of players churning out the following lick furiously and repeatedly. It’s a simple example of a “sweep-and-tap” arpeggio, which can be viewed in three sections.

Section 1 (the first five notes) involves dragging the pick downward across the strings in a single stroke to outline the first five notes of this C major arpeggio. Ideally, each fret-hand fingertip should relax slightly at the end of its designated note to ensure that only one note is ringing at a time. By moving the whole picking hand downward as you sweep, you should be able to utilize your palm for a bit of extra string damping. High-gain settings are pretty much de rigueur for this kind of lick, so you can never be too careful when it comes to muting unplayed strings with both hands.

Section 2 (beginning with the sixth note) requires that you hammer the G at the 15th fret while bringing your tapping finger into position. The first three notes of beat two should then remind you very much of what we did back in FIGURE 3.

Section 3 involves the last three notes of beat two. You could either sweep these notes with a single upstroke of the pick, or do what most players prefer and use fret-hand hammer-ons while repositioning the picking hand for the next big downstroke sweep on beat three.

Note that most of this lick involves techniques other than tapping, yet that one tapped high C note makes all the difference, adding a pleasingly soft quality to the top half of the arpeggio and contrasting nicely with the more percussive sound of sweep picking.

FIGURE 16 is an example of another approach to playing arpeggios, this one incorporating more taps, plenty of fret-hand hammer-ons and no sweeping whatsoever, resulting in a more fluid sound. Check out shredders like Scott Mishoe to hear this approach in action.
This example marks the first instance in which we’ve encountered a slid tapped note. You’ll find the key here is to slide with authority and to ensure the fingertip is constantly pushing on the string. Otherwise you run the risk of losing the note, particularly as you slide back downward. However, don’t press the tapping finger against the string any harder than is necessary, as doing so will create excessive friction that will slow you down and actually make the tap-and-slide more difficult than need be.

Here’s the same concept applied to a blues scale. Note that this and the preceding pattern are symmetrical, essentially featuring the same shape on each subsequent pair of strings.

This run starts out as a signature Paul Gilbert string-skipping lick, then moves into tapping territory. Musically, all the notes (apart from that pesky C in bar 2) are from a Gm7 arpeggio (G Bf D F), but the overall effect is closer to that of a warp-speed G minor pentatonic (G Bf C D F) blues lick. The slides toward the end of bar 1 span four frets, so they’re a little trickier than the single-fret slide in FIGURE 16, but the principle is the same.

Here’s another arpeggio-playing approach that incorporates string skipping and tapping. Michael Romeo of Symphony X is rather partial to this approach.

If you’re not averse to a bit of fret-hand stretching, FIGURE 20 offers a versatile approach to playing major seven arpeggios. It has the same symmetrical qualities as FIGURES 16 and 17 and incorporates string skipping by cramming each octave’s worth of Cmaj7 arpeggio notes (C E G B) onto a single string.

The Complete Guitarist: An Introduction to Arpeggio Inversions

Richard Rossicone — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:10:39 +0000

Hey, everyone! In the past few blog posts, I've been discussing various arpeggio exercises in order to show you how notes on the fretboard are connected, and also how to master the fretboard.

In this column, I'd like to continue the arpeggio discourse but also really challenge you by taking it up a notch. I present arpeggio inversions!

First things first, however. We need to define inversion. An inversion is a chord or arpeggio that doesn't begin on the root note. For example, in a C major 7th chord (C, E, G,B), if we play the chord or arpeggio starting on the root note, the C, that would be considered the root position.

But if we start the chord on the E, which is the second note of the triad and the third note of the C major scale, that would be considered first inversion.

If we start the chord or arpeggio on the G, which is the third note of the triad and the fifth note of the C major scale, that would be considered second inversion. Finally, if we start the chord or arpeggio on the B, which is the third note of the triad and the seventh note of the C major scale, that would be considered third inversion.

The lowest note of the chord or arpeggio will always determine which inversion is defined. Or, as my old theory professor, Dr. Austin, would say, "Richard, the bass is boss." This is true of all major, minor, dominant and diminished chords and inversions. You will notice that in all of my past columns on this subject, the arpeggios started on the root note of the chord we were arpeggiating. That will change as of now.

The following two exercises are a G major arpeggio (G, B, D, F#) and a G minor arpeggio (G, Bb, D, F), respectively. For both exercises, the first measure is root position, the second measure is first inversion, the third measure is second inversion and the fourth measure is third inversion.

As always, these forms are moveable, so they will work in all keys with the root on the sixth string. So move them around and incorporate them into your lead work. This exercise also will increase your knowledge of how the notes fit together on the fretboard. This is a very challenging and demanding exercise to play and master — especially cleanly and quickly with a metronome — but I know you guys are up for it!

Now let's get out there and pick up that guitar and play just like yesterday. As always, any feedback and comments are always welcome. Thanks for reading.

Guitarist Richard Rossicone is a veteran of the New York City and Long Island original and cover band scene. He's been playing since he was 8, when he attended his first concert (Kiss) and saw Pete Townshend smash a guitar. He has studied with various instructors over the years, which led him to a career in music therapy. He began his educational journey at Queensboro Community College, where the faculty introducing him to classical music. He received his associate's degree in fine arts in 1997 and went on to receive his bachelor's in music therapy in 2001 and his master's in music therapy from New York University in 2004. He's been Board Certified as a music therapist since 2002. Richard continued his studies at C.W. Post University, pursuing a second master's degree in classical guitar performance and music history, studying under Harris Becker. He's been teaching guitar, piano and theory since 2002 and in 2006 started his own company, Rossicone Music Studios. Visit him at Axgrinder.com and his Complete Guitarist Facebook page.

Professor Shred with Guthrie Govan: Tapping in 16th-Note Triplets

Guthrie Govan — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:45:04 +0000

These videos are bonus content related to the January 2012 issue of Guitar World. For full print reviews, lesson tabs and more, look for theJanuary 2012 issue of Guitar World on newsstands now, or purchase this issue in our online store here.

For the rest of the January 2012 video content, head here.

In this month's edition of "Professor Shred," Guthrie Govan covers tapping in 16th-note triplets and gives a little insight on how to play his song, "Bad Asteroid."

Part 1

Part 2

Interview: Megadeth's Chris Broderick Talks Technique

Andy Aledort, Photo by Justin Borucki — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:34:01 +0000

"My musical tastes don’t belong to any particular genre," says Megadeth guitarist Chris Broderick. "The only requirement is that the musicians are proficient and the music meets the intent of the composer."

With his monolithic chops and die-hard work ethic, Broderick has emerged as the scariest monster shredder on the planet. As he makes clear in the above quote, Broderick has a deep respect for both music and musical performance and has pushed himself relentlessly in the pursuit of technical proficiency and musical freedom. No less an authority than Dave Mustaine calls Broderick “the greatest guitar player Megadeth has ever had.”

Now 40, Broderick started playing guitar at age 11. A fan of all things guitar-related, he’s studied rock, metal, jazz, fusion, classical and country, as well as advanced music theory and sight reading. Not surprisingly, his list of favorite guitarists is diverse, and includes rockers (Greg Howe, Paul Gilbert, Jason Becker, John Petrucci, Marty Friedman and George Lynch), jazz players (Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery, Allan Holdsworth and George Van Eps) and classical guitarists (John Williams, Paco de Lucia, Scott Tenant and Pepe Romero).

Broderick joined Jag Panzer in 1997, replacing Joey Tafolla, and performed with the group for 11 years, during which time he also frequently played live with Nevermore. The guitarist joined Megadeth in 2008 and can be heard shredding his way through the band’s latest album, Endgame. Megadeth are currently on their Rust in Peace 20th anniversary tour. While the band was in New York, Broderick took some time off from his busy schedule to give Guitar World this glimpse into his virtuoso shredding technique. Watch for his new column, Chaos Theory, to begin appearing in these pages in our June 2010 issue.

How did you become interested in the guitar?

In early middle school, I was really more of a jock than anything else. Then one summer, I went away, and all I did was eat oatmeal and watch cartoons, and subsequently I became a very overweight kid. Back at school in the fall, I was ostracized by all of my jock friends, but I ended up meeting some cool new friends that didn’t care what I looked like or how I acted. It turned out that they were all really into metal.

Were any of these guys guitar players themselves?

Yes. In fact, one of them would always get annoyed with me, because whenever I was at his house I was always saying, “Come on, let’s go play your guitar!” because I didn’t have a guitar of my own. He’d say, “No, let’s go ride motocross,” or something like that.

How old were you when you got your own guitar?

When I was 11, I bought one of his friend’s guitars, which was a Sears guitar that was just horrible. You couldn’t even tune it. It had, I think, 18 frets, but it didn’t matter—I had to have it. It had been painted red with a can of spray paint, and I taped it with black tape so it would look like an Eddie Van Halen guitar.

Were you a big Van Halen fan?

Oh yeah. He was one of my first guitar heroes. I loved to do all the pick scrapes and simple repeated pull-offs to open strings. I remember all of that stuff amazed me so much, even though it was just the tip of the iceberg.

So what got me into the guitar in the very beginning was this big shift in my social life. And as soon as I had a guitar, I knew that I wanted to be a guitar player.

Did you take formal lessons or did you learn mostly by ear, on your own?

No, I took tons of lessons as my guitar playing progressed through high school. At one point, I was taking two classical guitar lessons, an electric guitar lesson, a violin lesson, a piano lesson and a vocal lesson every week! It was definitely way too much to manage. I was also taking some college courses while I was still in high school, so the workload was pretty heavy.

Did you consider going to college for music?

The ironic thing about that is, when I was in high school, I almost dropped out because I was so into guitar. All I wanted to do was play. I went to my mom one day and said, “I can’t deal with school anymore, and I know I want to play guitar.” My mom begged me not to drop out of school, so I stayed there for another week, and during that week I discovered that you could actually go to college for guitar. I never realized that was possible. So I went to University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music and majored in classical guitar performance.

At the time, were you dedicated to classical guitar or were you more interested in becoming a rock guitar player?

When I first went into college, I don’t think I had the right mindset to study classical guitar. I was doing it with the idea that to become the ultimate guitarist, one would have to be a classical guitarist. I had heard a decent amount of classical music, but I hadn’t built up a real repertoire of standard classical guitar pieces. When I got to college, all of the other guitar players there had already done that, because they had been classical guitarists for quite a while. That was eye opening for me, and over time I began to see how much easier it is to play an instrument—or do anything, for that matter—if you have a real passion for it.

In the beginning, classical guitar was very hard for me, because it was so technically oriented and I didn’t have that love and dedication to the style that I needed to develop. I soon began to see the classical guitar as something very different from the electric guitar, and I think about the two as very independent of one another in terms of how you approach and consider them. I actually think of the electric guitar as being closer to the violin, in that it’s more adaptable to single-string melodies.

When you were starting out, what was your favorite style of music to play on electric guitar?

I was definitely way into metal in the beginning, and Van Halen was the guy all of my friends and I wanted to be. I remember hearing a song with fretboard tapping and thinking, Wait—he’s using both hands to execute notes on the guitar? That’s going to be way too difficult to learn to do! It was probably something along the lines of this [FIGURE 1], which of course is pretty rudimentary in regards to fretboard tapping.

Very shortly after that, I got into Yngwie [Malmsteen], and then that was the new ideal: everything is Yngwie! And so, I had to learn to play this [FIGURE 2], which is a typical, Yngwie-type classical-inspired lick. I learned everything I could from Yngwie’s albums, and then from there it went on to the Shrapnel artists, like Jason Becker, Marty Friedman and Greg Howe, who I really loved. Greg’s newer stuff is really great; I totally dig everything from Introspection onward. I also got into more eclectic people, like Scott Mishoe, who used to do all of this wild slapping and popping stuff on guitar, so I incorporated a little bit of that into my playing.

As time went on, my influences broadened, and soon I was heavily influenced by flamenco music and guitar players like Paco De Lucia, Paco Peña and guys like that.

Did studying the guitar in college help you get to where you wanted to go as a player?

It did, but what I found in college was that everyone was either a classical snob or a jazz snob, and unfortunately I was neither. But I did pick up influences from both of those styles of music. My most recent “new” influence is country guitar, which has been a little harder for me to fully get into. I’ve never dug country music that much, but as soon as I heard people like Chet Atkins and Danny Gatton, I was hooked. And nowadays, I’m really into Johnny Hiland. I love his playing.

At some point you realize that there are smoking players in every form of music. So, lately, I’ve started trying to incorporate little things from the country guitar players into my playing as well. I guess that’s why my influences are so broad—I can appreciate the effort that everyone puts into their craft.

From the tremendous amount of work that you’ve put into the guitar, do you feel like you’ve got a pretty firm handle on all of these different styles?

]No, because the funny thing is, as time goes on, the realization of how much you don’t know only gets worse! I only see more and more things that I need to approach on the instrument—more different techniques, more styles, more players.

I remember a time about 15 or 20 years ago when I’d sit down with the instrument and say, Well, I’ve already practiced my scales, I already worked on my arpeggios, I’ve worked on this and I’ve worked on that, and I don’t have anything else to practice. But today, there is just a minefield of things to work on. It’s too much! I finally came to the conclusion that you’ve just got to go toward whatever it is that interests you the most at any given time. Hopefully, you’ll zigzag your way through the patterns of everything you want to learn. Eventually, you’ll come full circle.

How did you come to join Megadeth?

I got a call from Dave Mustaine’s management company just before the end of 2007, and they asked if I’d be interested in auditioning for Megadeth and, of course, I said yes. So we set up a time for me to go to Dave’s house and talk with him. When I got there, Dave greeted me along with [bassist] James Lomenzo, and we just started to talk and see how the fit would be. From there I played for them a little and then it was straight to work. I had to learn 22 songs in a month for the first show, which was in Europe.

Now that you are in Megadeth, do you have time to work on your classical playing or are you playing mostly electric?

Lately, the pull has definitely been to the electric guitar, and, unfortunately, my classical guitar has been a little neglected. It’s got some dust collecting on it, and I really feel bad about that, because classical guitar is a passion of mine as well. But, like I said earlier, I know that, when I get the time, I’ll just be on a porch relaxing, playing classical and flamenco music on the guitar. I might even pick the violin back up and scare some cats away with it.

For guitar players that have diverse musical interests such as yourself, what would you recommend as a good practice approach?

I think you need to focus on your priorities and realize that there are all of these different things that you want to learn, and as you go through all of the things that make you want to play the instrument, you will hopefully get to everything in due time. To me, having the desire is the best way to grow on the instrument. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to focus on learning all of my chord inversions, playing through all the chord voicings of, say, Fmaj7, like this [FIGURE 3]. I’d do all four inversions with the piano voicing, all four inversions closed voicing, and so on, and then a week later I couldn’t remember any of it. But if you apply that approach to a jazz standard and you try to utilize those inversions, it will stick with you, because you are studying those concepts within the context of a piece of music. That’s a much more desirable way to address it than just running through a series of inversions.

On your current tour with Megadeth, the band is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Rust in Peace, which featured the guitar work of Marty Friedman. During the performances, how close do you stick to Marty’s original guitar parts and solos?

I’m sticking as close as I possibly can. When I’m working on learning a specific riff or part, the first thing I look at are the techniques involved in recreating some of the crazy things that happen on the fretboard, and I play these parts really slowly for a long time. To me, if you try to bring a difficult passage up to tempo in haste, that will only serve to build stress into your playing, which is something that I definitely do not want.

I am very meticulous about trying to get the solos that I transcribe, sonically speaking, as accurate as possible. I have never seen Marty play most of these solos, so I might play some of the licks in a different position than he did. But when I play along to the CDs, I try to make it so that it sounds as locked-in and as tight as it can be. From there, I just try to have some fun with it, too.

A great example is the first distorted solo from “Holy Wars.” I love the way the solo kicks off, in terms of the changes in tonality from G major to Bf major. Once I learned the phrases, it was my goal to find the best way to make those musical phrases come to life. It begins with 16th notes and then quickly shifts to 16th-note triplets or sextuplets. The solo then shifts to G minor pentatonic and a Gm9 reverse arpeggio, followed by ascending octaves and ending with a cool G blues scale riff.

Do you have a set practice routine that you adhere to these days?

As recently as two years ago, I’d start off with exercises, focusing on slurs and legato techniques within a chromatic framework. Then I would go through all of my scales, then through my studies and then through my repertoire. That’s almost a “textbook” approach to practicing. But nowadays, when I first put on the electric guitar, I’ll start with a piece of music, and then I’ll deconstruct it from there.

Can you give us an example?

Sure. If I’m playing a sweep-picking piece like this [FIGURE 4], which is a composition I’m currently working on, I’ll look for the “issues”—the trouble spots—in there. This helps me to focus on the particular areas in each of the arpeggios that I need to work on. Maybe it’s the root form [beat one] that needs work, so I’ll focus on how my pick hand is sitting against the face of the guitar.

These days, everything is about how relaxed I can keep both of my hands. That’s so much more important to me than how fast I can play something or how it sounds, because if all you think about is speed, you’re going to set yourself up for failure. Trust me, I know.

Describe your pick-hand sweep-picking technique.

I think of it as drawing a straight line from point A to point B, dragging the pick across the strings on an even plane. If it’s a small movement within one octave, I recommend a little bit of “wrist contraction,” meaning you should bend slightly at the wrist as you go across the strings. With larger sweeps across multiple octaves, I recommend keeping the wrist steady, and pulling or pushing the whole arm at once across all of the strings.

The range of the wrist is actually pretty limited, so, for all of the tight/fast picking, I rock it back and forth, without moving my hand out of place. When I need to use a larger picking movement, I’ll move the entire arm so I can change the position of the pick to suit the movement across the strings.

Additional Content

In Deep: Gary Moore

Andy Aledort — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:04:44 +0000

In this edition of In Deep, we’ll examine some of the signature elements of the brilliant blues-rock guitarist Gary Moore’s stunning, immediately identifiable guitar style.

Born in 1952, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Moore picked up the guitar at the age of eight, inspired by the music of Elvis Presley, the Shadows and the Beatles.

But his strongest influences were John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers guitarists Eric Clapton and Peter Green, as well as legendary electric blues progenitors Albert King, B.B King and Albert Collins. Another important influence was Jimi Hendrix; Moore would regularly include Hendrix’s slow blues “Red House” in his live shows.

Though Moore was often seen playing a beautiful Fiesta Red 1961 Strat, his signature sound is more closely associated with the beloved 1959 Les Paul Standard that he played for many years (see sidebar on page 36). He purchased that guitar from Peter Green in 1970 and, fittingly, used it to record his 1995 tribute to his mentor, Blues for Greeny.

Often, Moore would begin a song using the warm tone of his Les Paul’s neck pickup, with which he would perform melodic, vocal-like lines, then switch over to the bridge pickup for his solos to achieve a more aggressive and biting sound.

Moore often employed a fair amount of gain—courtesy of Marshall heads (often JTM45s), 4x12 basketweave Marshall cabinets and Marshall Guv’nor and Ibanez Tube Screamer pedals—and was known for conjuring tremendous sustain, such as the celebrated “endless note” featured in his live performances of his classic song “Parisienne Walkways.”

A great way to approach incorporating Gary Moore–style licks into your playing is to start with the most essential scale for blues/rock soloing, the minor pentatonic. FIGURE 1 shows the A minor pentatonic scale in fifth position.

The fingering I use for this scale is index-pinkie on the low E string, switching to index-ring finger for the rest of the scale. One of the unusual things about Moore’s style is that he preferred to use his middle finger in conjunction with his index for a great many of his licks, similar to the fretting approach of Gypsy jazz great Django Reinhardt. When playing this type of scale in this position, Moore would often use his index and ring fingers on the top two strings and the low E string but would switch to index-middle for all the other strings.

Occasionally, Moore would stick with the index-middle approach across virtually all of the strings, along the lines of FIGURE 2. In this lick, I start by barring the index finger across the top two strings at the fifth fret and use the middle finger to execute the quick half-step bends on the B string, as well as the fast hammer-ons and pull-offs across the B and G strings.

FIGURE 3 details a “traditional” fingering for descending the minor pentatonic scale in this position within groups of 16th-note triplets.
A staple of Moore’s soloing style was to unleash fast flourishes of notes, executed with free-form “crammed” phrasing that rushed over the top of the groove. He would balance these fiery blasts with simpler, more vocal-like phrases that would effectively pull his improvisations back into the groove. For many of these runs, Moore would rely on quick hammer-on/pull-off figures between pairs of notes on a given string, as demonstrated in FIGUREs 4a and 4b.

In FIGURE 5a, I apply this concept to every string as I descend A minor pentatonic in a symmetrical fashion. FIGURE 5b offers a similar, albeit simpler, idea, and FIGURE 5c presents a similar approach applied to an ascending lick.

Further permutations on this concept are shown in FIGURES 6a–c. Once you’ve got a handle on these, try moving to other areas of the fretboard and apply the concepts to other keys, as demonstrated in FIGURES 7a and 7b.

FIGURE 8 offers an example of soloing in Gary’s style over a medium straight-eighths funk groove along the lines of his cover of Albert King’s “Oh, Pretty Woman.’

The title track of Moore’s hit album Still Got the Blues (a complete transcription of which appears in this issue) featured a “cycle of fourths” chord progression more common to jazz than blues or rock.

FIGURE 9 is a melodic solo played over this type of progression in the key of Am. Notice that each phrase makes direct reference to the accompanying chord by targeting its third. Also, bar 6 features a fast pull-off lick to the open high E string, a technique Moore utilized in a great many of his solos.

In Deep: How to Utilize Unusual Alternate Tunings in the Style of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page

Andy Aledort — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:01:13 +0000

The following content is related to the January 2013 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now, or in our online store.

Jimmy Page is regarded as one of rock’s greatest guitarists, bandleaders and producers for the incredibly rich canon of music he created with Led Zeppelin. But not everything produced by the man was as crushingly heavy as Zep favorites like “Whole Lotta Love,” “Heartbreaker,” “Black Dog” and “Rock and Roll.”

Jimmy was often quoted as saying his true passion was to create a combination of “light and shade” in the form of contrasting and complementary musical sounds. These sounds often found their roots in acoustic English and Celtic folk music, and can be heard as well in the proto-metal electric sounds of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream and Page's former band, The Yardbirds.

A standard technique found in English and Celtic folk music is the incorporation of alternate tunings, utilized by some of Page’s favorite guitarists, such as Bert Jansch and Davey Graham.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Additional Content

Jazz Guitar Corner: Intro to Spread Triads for Guitar, Part 1

Matt Warnock — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:30:52 +0000

When learning how to play guitar, many of us begin by exploring major and minor triads, often in the open position.

As we advance, we might take these three-note chords up the neck and look at different inversions in our practice routine. But we tend to stop at closed-position triads when checking these shapes out in the woodshed.

While it is important to learn and be able to apply closed-position triads and their inversions to different musical situations, we can open a Pandora’s box of information when we begin to dig into spread-triads on the guitar and their various fingerings and musical applications.

In today’s lesson, we’ll be looking at one such spread triad concept, how it is applied to various triad qualities and how to practice these shapes around different string sets and keys on the fretboard.

Spread Triads Voicing 1

Before we look at the different fingerings for these spread triads on the guitar, let’s take a look at how we will build them from a theoretical perspective. There are several ways to build spread triads on the guitar, and the first approach we will take is to raise the second note of any closed-position triad by one octave.

You can see this in the example below, where I have written the three inversions of a C major triad in closed position, followed by the related spread triad next to it.

Practice playing the closed triad and its related spread voicing on different strings and inversions in the key of C, and then in other keys, if possible.

Once you’ve spent a few minutes checking out these shapes on the guitar, you’ll be ready to explore all of the different inversions, chord qualities and string sets for the different second-note raised spread triads on the guitar.

Major Spread Triads

Here are all the possible Major Spread Triads using the “second note raised” concept. Work these triads in all 12 keys, if possible, to ensure you can play them in any key and any area on the neck when needed.

Minor Spread Triads

You can also flatten the 3rd of each of these chords to produce all of the different inversions, and string sets, for Minor Spread Triads using the same concept. Notice how similar the major and minor spread triads are, with the 3rd of each shape being lowered by one fret to produce the minor triad as compared to the major spread triads you just learned.

Diminished Spread Triads

Though not as common as minor and major spread triads, here are the different inversions and string sets for the Diminished Spread Triads. These shapes are most often used when playing rootless 7th chords, such as using Cdim in place of Ab7, which gives you the 3rd-5th-b7th of the underlying Ab7 chord.

Augmented Spread Triads

Lastly, here are all of the different inversions and string sets for Augmented Spread Triads using the second-note raised concept. After you have learned each of the 4 spread-triad shapes, major-minor-diminished-augmented, try playing through each of them in a row to test your memory and hear how each triad relates aurally to one another.

Learning triads is an important step in the learning process for any guitarist, especially those exploring the jazz-guitar genre. While we tend to look at closed-position triads regularly in our practice routine, as you can see in the lesson, it is also important to check out spread triads in order to fully explore these important three-note shapes in the woodshed.

Do you have a question or comment about this lesson? Post it in the COMMENTS section below.

Matt Warnock is the owner of mattwarnockguitar.com, a free website that provides hundreds of lessons and resources designed to help guitarists of all experience levels meet their practice and performance goals. Matt lives in the UK, where he is a lecturer in Popular Music Performance at the University of Chester and an examiner for the London College of Music (Registry of Guitar Tutors).

What In the World: Oud-Style String-Skipping Pedal Tones

Steve Booke — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:45:23 +0000

The oud is an ancient, fretless instrument, originating in the Middle East. You could say it is the grandfather of the guitar, with the lute developing from the oud and then finally the guitar from the lute.

There are 11 strings on the oud: five courses, or sets, of doubled strings and a single low string, usually a C. It is still widely popular in many places in the world. Learning basic techniques from this instrument can add a cool sound to your playing and maybe help to inspire new and fresh ideas.

The technique we will be focusing on for this lesson is a simple pedal tone technique sometimes heard in "Taqsims." A Taqsim is an intro improvisation that usually proceeds a composition in Arabic, Greek, Turkish or Middle Eastern music. This establishes the sound and feel of the composition that follows it. Search "Oud Taqsim" on YouTube for some examples and to be introduced to the oud if you aren't already familiar with it.

The pedaling (referring back to melodically) that will be shown in this lesson is playing the low E string while alternately playing the tones of a scale, two and three strings away. This is a great exercise to build your depth-gauging ability on the guitar in respect to being able to feel with your right hand how far you have to go to accurately hit the string of your choice. It is also a good way to get the sound in your head of a particular scale/mode, because you will be playing the root every other note.

We will use, for these exercises, the Phrygian Dominant scale (a minor scale with a lowered 2nd degree and raised 3rd degree). This will give us more of an Arabic sound for this particular technique. I encourage you to practice this with all of the scales and modes and alternate pick each exercise.

The notes of this scale in the key of E Phrygian Dominant are as follows:

E – F - G# - A – B – C – D – E

A simple way to think of this scale is just all the natural notes, except for G, which is sharped. If you've never tried a scale like this before, work on it slowly. There is a bit of a stretch between the second and third notes, which can be a bit challenging at first. For these exercises, we will go straight up the scale ascending with a pattern in 3rds on the descent to change things up a bit.

Example 1: Skipping from the low E to the scale on the D string

Example 2: Skipping from the low E to the scale of the G string

Example 3: Skipping from the low E to the D string, back to low E and then up to the G string

This is just an introductory lesson to this technique in order to get used to playing this style of pedal tones. In a future lesson, we will expand of the technique to get more of an authentic oud sound and delve into how to improvise using these ideas.

Steve Booke is a composer for film and TV from the New York area. His compositions range from orchestral to metal to world styles from every corner of the earth. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Steve has played guitar for more than 27 years. He has recorded 10 albums of his own and has played on countless others. He plays gigs in the NY area and tours the East Coast with a variety of bands. He has performed with Ben E. King and members of Mahavishnu Orchestra. He endorses D'Addario/Planet Waves, Larrivee Guitars, Levy's Leathers, Peavey, Stylus Pick, Finale PrintMusic, Pigtronix, Tech 21, Toontrack, Graph Tech, Seymour Duncan, Waves, Studio Devil and L.R. Baggs. His music is available on iTunes and Amazon. He can be contacted at info@stevebooke.com. Visit stevebooke.com.

The Ultra Zone: Steve Vai's Course In Ear Training, Part 2

Steve Vai — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 22:29:15 +0000

GuitarWorld.com is revisiting Steve Vai's classic mag column, "The Ultra Zone," for this crash course in ear training.

As I mentioned last time, a valuable method of training your ear is to practice singing the notes that you play on the guitar. I’d like to elaborate on this fun approach and offer you some specific advice on how to go about doing this on your own.

A good way to start this training method is to stay within one scale and key and make sure that you can follow with your voice any melodies or licks that you play. Obviously, you can only sing one note at a time, so you’ll probably want to stick with playing single notes, at least for now, so you can zero in on specific pitches. Let’s say you’re using the A-minor pentatonic scale, illustrated in FIGURE 1A, as your starting point. FIGURE 1B is an example of a line to play and sing simultaneously. This drill can be challenging, but it’s ultimately rewarding.

The next level of this exercise is to venture outside the fixed structure of one scale and add chromatic “passing” tones—the notes that fall between the scale degrees—to the lines you’re trying to sing and play. FIGURE 1C is an example of how you might go about doing this within the A-minor-pentatonic pattern we just looked at. Venturing away from the fixed structure of the diatonic key presents a great challenge to your ears and will strengthen your “pitch-recognition muscles” immensely. If you practice this drill every day, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how quickly your ears will “grow.”

An essential element in ear training is the thorough understanding of intervals. An interval is the distance or gap between two notes: if you start on an A note and go up two frets to B, the intervallic distance between the two notes is a major second. If you were to go up four frets from A to C#, the interval between these two notes would be a major third.

FIGURE 2A depicts the A-major scale and indicates the intervallic relationships between the tonic (root note) and all the other notes in the scale. FIGURE 2B shows the chromatic scale, starting on A and covering an octave and a half, with the intervals indicated. I highly recommend memorizing all of these intervallic relationships; a good way to do this is to recite each interval name while playing the notes of the scale.

There are many different exercises one can do to strengthen interval recognition. Here’s one that I like: get a tape recorder and record yourself playing pairs of notes, using root notes combined with either major or minor thirds, as illustrated in FIGURE 3A. Play random pairs of major or minor thirds all over the guitar neck and, after each pair is played, wait a moment and then say either “major” or “minor” to identify the interval. After filling up a 60-minute tape with this random stuff, listen back and try to identify the intervallic relationship by saying “major” or “minor” before your voice on the tape provides the answer. The purpose of this exercise is to train yourself to quickly identify major and minor intervals in all keys, anywhere on the guitar.

The next step is to proceed to other intervals, such as fourths and augmented fourths, which are one half step (one fret) higher than fourths. FIGURE 3B shows random pairs of fourths and augmented fourths; again, fill a 60-minute tape with pairs of notes, then go back and try to identify the intervallic relationships. Another idea is to make a tape of fourths combined with major and minor thirds, or fourths and augmented fourths combined with major and minor thirds. Then, continue this approach using all of the intervals in different combinations.

Another good exercise is to play every type of interval against a fixed root note. For example, if you choose the key of B, begin by playing a low B, and then play a variety of higher notes against this low B. After the higher note is played, identify on the tape what the interval is, and then move on to another interval. This type of exercise is illustrated in FIGURE 4.

By the time you’ve gotten this drill down cold—to the point where you consistently attain a near-perfect score—you will have established a firm grasp of intervals. You may have to make three or four 60-minute tapes, each in a different key, but, in time, you’ll end up knowing this stuff inside out. The study of intervals is something that many musicians work on their entire lives.

I’ll be back next time with some more ear training advice.

Additional Content

Chop Shop: A Country-Influenced Application of Hybrid Picking

John 5 — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 16:23:04 +0000

In the first two installments of Chop Shop, we looked at some arpeggio-based runs that were spiced up with octaves, finger taps, pinch harmonics and behind-the-nut bends.

This time, as promised, I’m going to talk about the ways in which I’ve employed ideas I’ve learned from guitarists in different genres to my own playing. To start off, I’m going to show you a lick in the key of B that I use on the track “The Nightmare Unravels,” from my latest solo CD, The Art of Malice.

To perform this lick, I use the technique known as hybrid picking, which involves using the bare fingers to pluck strings in conjunction with a flatpick. The best way to describe the technique and how it sounds is through demonstration, so check out the performance of FIGURE 1 on this column’s accompanying video lesson to hear it in a rock context.

Note the unique “popping” sound created by the combination of finger picking and flat picking.

Country guitar great Albert Lee is a master of this technique, and it is used to great effect in a rock context by players such as Steve Morse and Zakk Wylde. While hybrid picking can provide you with another cool way to vary your tone, it also allows you to easily perform string-skipping runs that would be arduous to play using just a pick.

Some country purists wouldn’t involve the use of a pick, just the thumb and first two fingers of the picking hand (see PHOTO 1). But since I like to incorporate this technique into my rock playing, I often use my pick in conjunction with my middle and ring fingers.

As you can see in FIGURE 1, with the exception of the very last note (the B at the 19th fret on the high E string), this run is played entirely on the D and B strings. I use my pick to down-pick the D string and my middle finger (marked m above the TAB) to alternately pluck the B-string notes, making the numerous string skips a breeze to negotiate. The open B note is sounded often, which is very useful because, as it is the root note, it clearly anchors the run to the key of B.

This run may seem a little complicated at first, but when you break it down you’ll see that it’s really just a repeating seven-note fingering-and-picking pattern that is applied to different positions on the neck. This very rhythmic pattern is isolated in FIGURE 2. All that is required to master this lick is to nail this shorter pattern, which includes a hammer-on on the D string, from the index finger to the ring, and an index-finger pull-off on the B string.

The longer lick in FIGURE 1 is based on this same pattern and shaped-shifted up and down the neck to various positions. Like anything new, start off slowly and build up speed slowly, concentrating first on the fingering and picking pattern and then incorporating some palm muting, which will help keep things neat and tight sounding. Also, start with a clean sound and introduce distortion later. Stick with it, and before you know it you’ll be playing FIGURE 1 at speed.

Additional Content

The Ultra Zone: Steve Vai's Course In Ear Training, Part 1

Steve Vai — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:42:27 +0000

GuitarWorld.com is revisiting Steve Vai's classic mag column, "The Ultra Zone," for this crash course in ear training.

I could never overstate the importance of a musician’s need to develop his or her ear. Actually, I believe that developing a good “inner ear” — the art of being able to decipher musical components solely through listening — is the most important element in becoming a good musician. Possessing a healthy imagination is a necessary ingredient for creativity.

But without the ability to bring those imagined sounds into the real world, one’s creative aspirations will remain crippled. Training one’s ears to understand and recognize musical sounds and concepts is one of the most vital ways to fortify the connection between the musical ideas in one’s mind and the musical sounds created on one’s instrument.

All musicians practice ear training constantly, whether or not they are cognizant of it. If, when listening to a piece of music, a musician is envisioning how to play it or is trying to play along, that musician is using his or her “ear” — the understanding and recognition of musical elements — for guidance.

This is also true when trying to emulate a piece of music, or transcribe it, or even just finding inspiration in it. No matter what one is playing, one’s ear is the navigational device that steers the musical ship where it will go. Without a good ear at the helm, you could find yourself musically adrift at sea.

I have always been fascinated with looking at music written on paper. When I was in college, I took a class called solfege, which entailed learning how to sight-sing. Sight-singing is the art of looking at a piece of written music and singing it. First, you identify the key center, and then you sing the written pitches, using the “doe-ray-me” phonetic structure, just like that song in the movie The Sound of Music. “Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do” (pronounced “Doe-ray-me-fa-so-la-tee-doe”) represents a major scale; there are other monosyllabic sounds that represent the other pitches that reside within a 12-tone octave. These solfege classes in college were difficult courses, but they were well worth the time invested. A thorough study and analysis of solfege within the confines of this column would be impractical, so I can only encourage you to investigate it on your own.

I’ve always considered transcribing to be an invaluable tool in the development of one’s musical ear and, over the years, I have spent countless glorious hours transcribing different kinds of music, either guitar-oriented or not. The most well-known example of my guitar-based transcribing labors is The Frank Zappa Guitar Book (Hal Leonard), for which I transcribed, among other things, the entire Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar series of recordings. Many musicians, however, do not have the ability to pull the sounds — guitar solos, rhythm parts, melody lines, etc.—off the records that they love. Transcribing is an art that takes a lot of practice and a study that I encourage everyone to experiment with.

But fear not: you do not need to have the ability to sight-read or transcribe in order to practice ear training exercises. If you are just sitting there with a guitar, there are still a great many ways to develop your ears, in the quest to strengthen the connection between your head and your fingers. Below, I have outlined some of the ways a guitarist can work on ear training exercises using just the guitar.

As guitarists, there are certain things that most of us do that are simply part of the program: we learn some scales, develop some exercises intended to improve our physical abilities, work on chord forms on different parts of the neck, etc. I believe it is extremely important to put aside some time dedicated solely to focusing on ear training.

One of the easiest ways to begin working on ear training is to sing what you play. For example, you can play a C major scale (C D E F G A B) in any position — preferably one that is physically comfortable for you—and sing each note of the scale as you play it, being very careful to sing on pitch as accurately as possible. Start with one note: play the note, sing it, and then play and sing the note simultaneously. Then go to two notes. Once you feel comfortable, take a little piece of that scale, say, the notes C, D, E and F, and create a very simple melody with these notes for you to sing simultaneously, à la jazz guitarist George Benson.

This is an easy way to get your ear in sync with the sounds your fingers are creating. Whether you’re soloing over a rhythmic vamp or are playing alone in free time, you have to really stick with it, and don’t allow yourself to slip up or drift into something else. The idea is to endlessly improvise and sing what you are playing, using any key.

Another good thing to do is to record a simple one-chord vamp to play over. First, only play/sing notes that fall within the key, staying within a basic note structure of a five-, six- or seven-tone scale. Don’t start wandering off into your favorite guitar licks to play; save that for another time, when you’ve developed your ear to the point where you can sing just about anything you can play. This is an exercise in discipline: do not play anything that you cannot follow perfectly with your voice. Whether you stay within one octave of the guitar, or you sing the notes an octave lower than the sounding pitches, or you use falsetto to hit the high notes, you must be able to recreate all of the notes played on the guitar with your voice.

If you work on this every day, you’ll find yourself getting better and better at it, and it will become easier to do. The cool thing that happens is that you’ll begin to hear music more clearly in your head, allowing you to formulate musical ideas—write music—within your head, without the aid of a guitar. When you finally do pick up the instrument, you will discover that you will instinctively be able to play these ideas that have taken form in your mind.

To take this a step further, try this exercise: without a guitar at your disposal, picture the guitar’s fretboard in your mind, and then envision playing something so that you will “hear” and “see” the notes as they are played. It may be helpful to sing the notes as you imagine them being played. This is an excellent exercise that will fortify your mind-fretboard relationship and actually improve your ear by strengthening the acknowledgment of “pitch relativity” (how one pitch relates to another, in terms of sound and placement) on the guitar’s fretboard. You may discover some cloudy areas in your mind’s eye/ear, but if you work through it, the picture will soon become clearer and clearer.

These techniques do not address the act of playing one thing on the guitar and singing something completely different. Someone like Jimi Hendrix had the uncanny ability to play very complex rhythm parts and single-note riffs while singing complementary parts. This technique requires a whole different set of brain muscles and is very difficult for many players. Playing one thing while singing another must be worked on as an independent field of study. If I could play the guitar and sing at the same time, hey, I might have a career! I’ll be back next time with some more effective ways to help you to develop your ear.

Additional Content

Deep Water: Add Some Color to Your Sound with This Fake 12-String Technique

Dave Wronski — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:40:04 +0000

A while back, I was thinking about the sound of a 12-string guitar, and how much I liked it, but really would like to hear it used on only certain notes and melodic lines within a song.

When you're recording, you can use all kinds of exotic instruments for embellishing sections of a song. But you probably would like to be able to recreate your recorded performance live. It would be cool to be playing something on a six-string and have certain notes of the melody jump out with a 12-string sound and attack.

I like to use a flat pick held with the thumb and first finger, and use the middle finger for the high-octave sound. This is a good start for rock guitar players to get into branching out into some new sounds and adding some color. You're also in position to play rockabilly-style alternating bass notes on the fly within your rock riffing.

The 12-string sound works well with all types of amp sounds, from clean to high gain. It works well with a high gain sound because octaves are "perfect" intervals. An example: "A" is 440 cycles per second, and an octave up from that is 880 cycles per second.

It really helps to grow your fingernails out a bit, so the sound of the octave can sound the same as the picked note, and you can get some nice-sounding attack. I've become so dependent on the sound of this technique, that now, certain songs I write cannot be played without this sound. So to help insure that I could make it through a tour without breaking a nail, and not sound like I'm making a lame excuse for not playing certain songs, I go to manicure shops to get a clear, hard coating put onto just my middle and third fingernails. You rockabilly cats are probably already doing this!

Give this an honest try, and I think you will be rewarded by the results. To get into this, start with this descending melody. This is in the key of C, starting and ending on G. Some of the fingering may seem odd, but doing it as I've written it helps to make smooth transitions possible:

Here it is, changing notes on 1/4 notes:

Fake Twelve String Effect 1

Here it is, half-time:

Fake Twelve String Effect 2

Fretted G on the first string, third fret, use third finger ~ Open G on third string
Fretted F on the first string, first fret, use first finger ~ Fretted "F" on fourth string, third fret, use middle finger
Open E on first string ~ Fretted E on fourth string, second fret, use middle finger
Fretted D on second string, third fret, use third finger ~ Open D on fourth string
Fretted C on second string, first fret, use first finger ~ Fretted C on fifth string, third fret, use middle finger
Open B on second string ~ Fretted B on fifth string, second fret, use middle finger
Fretted A on third string, second fret, use middle finger ~ Open A on fifth string
Open G on third string ~ Fretted G on sixth string, third fret

Then try going up using the same fingering as you did going down:

Fake Twelve String Effect 3

Here's an example of how I used this technique in one of my songs, "Bird Bone," from the album Into The Blue Sparkle by my band, Slacktone:

Fake Twelve String Effect 4 - "Bird Bone"

Guitarist Dave Wronski is one third of Slacktone, a Southern California-based modern surf band that has toured the world and elsewhere. He also has written and recorded music for TV-show themes, commercial soundtracks and films.

Pickin' & Grinnin': 20 Tasty Country Guitar Licks

Gary Potter — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 11:27:38 +0000

Exploring the world of country guitar is a diverse and exciting journey, one from which a guitarist of any background can benefit, while having fun.

Modern country guitar is an amalgam of traditional and not-so-traditional playing approaches borrowed from several related homegrown American styles. As such, it includes elements of blues, bluegrass, rock and roll, and even jazz, and it offers a tasty mix of expressive and challenging playing techniques.

The key musical building blocks that form country guitar’s foundational vocabulary are the major and minor pentatonic scales, the major scale and the Mixolydian mode, major and minor chords and their corresponding arpeggios, dominant sevenths and ninths, and the judicious use of chromatic passing tones.

Mainstay country guitar-playing techniques include flatpicking, fingerpicking and hybrid picking (pick-and-fingers technique); the exploitation of open strings and licks played in the “open position,” which have a characteristic “twangy” tone; and lots of string bends and finger slides.

[[ For an interview with GW's King of Country Guitar, Brad Paisley, check out the May 2013 issue of Guitar World. The issue also includes features on the 10 Essential Country Shred Guitar Songs, 10 Pieces of Gear Essential to Modern Country Guitar Tone and more! Check out the issue at the Guitar World Online Store. ]]

The go-to ax for most country pickers is a solidbody electric guitar, particularly a Telecaster-style design, equipped with single-coil pickups and fairly light-gauge strings (.009s or .010s). More-traditional country guitarists, such as the legendary Chet Atkins, came of age playing a semi-hollowbody guitar equipped with humbuckers, and country-rock players, like the Kentucky Headhunters’ Greg Martin, prefer Gibson-style, humbucker-equipped solidbodies.

Classic American-style tube amps, such as vintage Fenders, are the rig of choice for many country guitarists. Most players eschew the use of high-tech, high-gain amps or psychedelic effects and opt instead for a more “honest”-sounding bright-clean and/or “organically” overdriven tone with some spring reverb and compression.

Interestingly, country guitarists tend to approach soloing in a way similar to jazz musicians, often crafting licks that either melodically describe the underlying chord changes via arpeggio-based ideas or emphasize chord tones. (By comparison, the rock-oriented approach to soloing involves finding a scale or mode that “agrees with” a chord and playing licks and patterns based on that scale.)

Country guitarists will often strive to emulate the signature licks of fiddle, banjo or pedal-steel players, cleverly borrowing a variety of techniques and musical approaches from these instruments and adapting them to the guitar. As is the case with any style, the best way to get a grasp of country guitar is to listen to its most celebrated pickers past and present and learn some of their signature licks and playing approaches. Check out old-school country guitarists such as Atkins, Merle Travis, Hank Garland and Jerry Reed, acoustic bluegrass flatpickers like Doc Watson and Tony Rice, and modern electric country players such as Albert Lee, Brent Mason, Brad Paisley, Johnny Hiland, Keith Urban, Jerry Donanue and Vince Gill, to name a few.

In this lesson, Guitar World presents 20 country licks designed to teach you how to play authentic country guitar. Each lick incorporates techniques and stylistic elements that are characteristic of either a specific artist or a subgenre of the greater country guitar style.

FIGURE 1, based on the A Mixolydian mode (A B Cs D E Fs G), with the minor third, C, added for a bluesy twist, is played in second position and utilizes lots of double and single pull-offs to open strings, which create an instant country-twang vibe. You’ll want a good, strong attack on the picked notes, as this will give you plenty of momentum to make the pull-offs and hammer-ons as loud and clear as possible. When pulling off, be sure to pull the string in toward the palm as you release it.

The bend toward the end of the lick can be tricky to perform. Because it’s on the A string, you’ll want to bend the string downward, pulling it in toward your palm, as opposed to pushing it away from the palm. (This is a good general rule of thumb when bending on the bottom two strings.) Make sure you’re bending the B note up a half step, to C, as indicated. You can check your pitch by comparing it to that of the unbent C note at the third fret. Use this lick as an ending to a solo or song.

Performed with hybrid picking, FIGURE 2 cascades down the C major pentatonic scale (C D E G A) in four-note groups, with pull-offs used at every opportunity. The right hand alternates between plucked upstrokes with the middle finger and downstrokes with the pick. When plucking, really snap the string so that it smacks against the fretboard, producing a sharp accent, which will create that signature country guitar “spank.”

This bluesy lick sounds great over an E or E7 chord. It incorporates double-stops (two notes played together), hybrid picking and the use of the f3 from the minor pentatonic scale, in this case, the note G in E minor pentatonic (E G A B D). Another way to reckon the f3 is as the s9, which is a very bluesy/jazzy-sounding altered-tension tone. Begin this lick on the upbeat of beat one, plucking the G and B strings together with your pick hand’s middle and ring fingers. Barre your fret-hand ring finger across these strings at the 14th fret and pull it off to an index-finger barre at the 12th fret. Alternatively, you could fret the 14th-fret notes with the tips of your ring finger and pinkie. At the end of bar 2, bend the G string at the 12th fret up a quarter step by pulling the index-finger barre slightly downward, in toward the palm.

This lick is commonly found in what could be referred to as a modern “country cha-cha” groove. Try to make all the notes in the first bar very staccato (short and detached) by releasing your fret-hand grip on each note immediately after you play it. The easiest way to perform the picking in this bar is to attack the D string with the pick and the G string with the middle finger. To sound the double-stops in bar 2, pluck the B-string notes with your middle finger while simultaneously picking the G string with the pick. You can alternatively pluck the two strings with your middle and ring fingers. The challenging part is at the end, where you’ll want to keep the fifth-fret E note on the B string ringing while bending and releasing the Cs note on the G string’s fifth fret. Try to get a good pick-hand attack on the bend, as this will give the notes momentum to clearly ring through the release.

This is a common bluegrass-style run in the key of G, played in first position and flat-picked throughout, with the brief exception of a grace-note finger slide in bar 2. The second note, Df is the flat five of the key, which is known as a “blue note.” Notice how the B and the Bf notes (the major and minor third, respectively) ring together in bar 1, producing a fleeting dissonance. This combined ringing of picked notes—called a floatie by bluegrass players—is a clever move that emulates the ringing licks that banjo and fiddle players like to play. The slide in bar 2 is best performed with the middle finger.

This flat-picked single-note lick outlines a C chord on the lower strings in first position. The line’s dancing contour and use of open strings, hammer-ons and pull-offs give it a nice rolling, swinging feel. The f3, Ef, is added in a couple of places for a bluesy feel, and the move from F to Ef to E on beat three of bar 1 (4-f3-3) is a classic “hillbilly blues” move. Bar 2 jumps over to the G string with a bluesy tumble back down to the C root note.

This banjo-style lick is played with hybrid picking to better emulate the rolling sound of that instrument and facilitate the nearly continuous string crossing. The key here is to allow as many notes as possible to ring together, so be careful to not inadvertently mute the open G string with the sides of your fretting fingers. You may find it helpful to practice the lick in four-note segments, then put them all together.

Incorporating open strings into ascending or descending scales to create a harp-like effect is a common country guitar “trick.” This lick is designed so that, wherever possible, an open note replaces a fretted note. To get that harplike effect, try to keep as many notes ringing together as you can, at the same volume. Notice how the pattern moves across the strings in three-note “waves.” There are a couple of wide stretches involved, so make sure your fret hand is limbered up before attempting the lick, and ease into the stretches, angling your wrist as you see fit to optimize your reach.

This lick draws upon common elements of jazz guitar single-note phrasing, such as a swing rhythm, alternate picking and use of chromatic “neighbor tones.” The f3 (Bf) and f7 (F) are used as passing tones over a G7 chord to create a bluesy feel. The position shifts in the middle of the lick might take a bit practice, but they provide the most practical fingering scheme.

This lick is a repeating phrase that uses hammer-ons, repeated notes and palm muting to create a percussive sound. The initial four-note pattern repeats three times in bar 1, followed by a quick pull-down bend at the third fret, best performed with the middle finger supported by the index. Bar 2 switches from hammer-ons to double pull-offs, resolving on an open D5 power chord. Use alternate picking for the palm-muted notes, and make sure your hammer-ons and pull-offs are strong and clear.

This sweet, pedal steel–like lick is built around sixth intervals played on nonadjacent strings and features lots of slippery-sounding ascending and descending finger slides. Notice the half-step approaches going into the A and E chords. The challenge here is to get all the notes to ring as close to the same volume as possible. You’re looking for a seamless transition from chord to chord, so practice it slowly at first and strive for a smooth flow of notes. This bouncy single-note line [FIGURE 12] dances around chord tones with “upper and lower neighbors” and is perfect as a fill or for ending a tune. Take note of the position shifts involved, especially in bar 2. Use whichever fingering feels right and doesn’t tie your fingers in knots. FIGURE 13 is a first-position bluegrass lick that sounds equally good on acoustic or electric guitar. Flat-pick all the notes that are not hammered-on or pulled-off, and strive for a seemless flow of notes. If you’re having trouble connecting the whole phrase, try practicing bars 1 and 2 separately, and then put them together. Demonstrating an approach often used by many of today’s most skilled country guitarists, this lick emulates the celebrated “weeping” sound of a pedal steel, with lots of oblique bends (a technique in which one note is bent while another, unbent note is sounded on another string). Use your pinkie to bend the B string in bar 1, supported by the ring finger, and use your ring and middle fingers for the G-string bends. The final bend is a tricky half-step bend with the middle finger. You’ll want the notes on the D and G strings to continue ringing while you bend the A string upward with the middle finger. An essential technique for country lead guitar, chicken pickin’ is an application of aggressive hybrid picking and left- and right-hand muting techniques that creates a hen-like clucking sound. Begin this lick by fretting the G string’s seventh-fret D note with your ring finger, then pick the string and bend it up a whole step with the assistance of the middle finger. Hold the bend and pluck the same note with the ring finger of your pick hand while muting the string with your fret hand. This should produce a pitchless snapping sound (indicated in the notation by an X) as the muted string ricochets off the fretboard. The second half of the lick consists of a roll across the top three strings with a held bend on the G string. Let all the notes ring together here until you pick the final note, the A root. This traditional Western-swing pedal steel–like chord phrase features a series of shifting triads with chromatic approaches from a half step below. A good way to practice this lick is to first learn each chord shape and then add the slides. Pick each three-string group with the pick and your middle and ring fingers to achieve a simultaneous note attack. It’s important that the slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs ring clearly. The C13 shape at the beginning of the final bar requires a bit of a stretch. You might find this chord shape easier to finger with your thumb rotated further down the neck to give you a little more reach. This country-rock lick incorporates a mix of double-stops and bends similar to what Keith Urban uses in a lot of his solos. Play the opening bends with your ring finger, supported by the middle. There is a quick position shift on beat three of bar 1, at which point you barre your index finger across the top two strings at the 10th fret. This part of the lick has a very percussive, yet flowing, fiddle-like vibe, with oblique hammer-ons and pull-offs on the high E string sounded together with alternate-picked 16th notes on the B string. End the lick in the same place it began, in seventh position, with a bend-release on the G string’s ninth fret followed by the D root note at the seventh fret. This lick is a hybrid-picked, “reverse-roll” pattern with pull-offs that moves down the neck chromatically across two chords. A good way to practice it is by playing one beat, or four 16th notes, at a time. Your index finger will barre across the top two strings in each position. Even though the lick is played over the chords G and D, there is a different implied dominant-seven chord substitution in each eight-note sequence (G7 C7 F7 Bf7) that will add color to any solo. Inspired by Nashville “hired-gun” studio legend Brent Mason, this slick, challenging lick combines the use of hybrid picking, double-stops, hammer-ons, open strings and single and double pull-offs. Played over an A chord, bar 1 is built around the fifth-position A blues scale “box” pattern. Bar 2 has you moving down to second position with some open-string usage. Break this lick into pieces and slowly work it up to speed. This is a flashy lick that combines the third-position G minor pentatonic box pattern with open strings that serve to double notes played at the fifth fret, creating a slinky feel and unusual melodic pattern with repeating notes. The pick hand pits the middle finger plucking the G string in opposition to picked downstrokes on the D and A strings, creating a lightning-fast wall of notes. At the end of bar 2, the rhythm speeds up to 16th-note triplets, facilitated by the use of double pull-offs to open strings. The final note is a half-step bend from Fs on the D string’s fourth fret up to the G root note, which may be performed by either pushing or pulling the string with the middle finger (supported by the index). For an interview with GW's King of Country Guitar, Brad Paisley, check out the May 2013 issue of Guitar World. Also includes features on the 10 Essential Country Shred Guitar Songs, 10 Pieces of Gear Essential to Modern Country Guitar Tone and more! Check out the issue at the Guitar World Online Store.

All That Jazz: Hitting the Pocket — The Importance of Dynamics and Grooving When Soloing

Mike Stern — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 18:36:00 +0000

The following content is related to the July 2013 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now, or in our online store.

Two of the most important and effective elements in creating expressive improvisations are the incorporation of dynamics and groove. Dynamics—the use of variations in volume and articulation that can span from quiet, delicate and gentle to loud, forceful and aggressive—and groove—the way in which a player chooses to place the notes against the backbeat—are both key aspects of musicality that come into play.

Awareness of one’s rhythmic pacing, or time, and the way in which it connects with a rhythm section is among the most important aspects of ensemble playing. It’s very beneficial to record yourself both when practicing and when playing with other musicians. When you listen back, you’ll be able to listen more objectively and hear if you’re playing in the pocket or if you’re rushing or slowing down, and this will serve to heighten your awareness to your groove overall.

PART ONE

PART TWO

Video: How to Play Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl"

Guitar World Staff — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 18:00:07 +0000

Learn how to play Neil Young's classic track from his 1970 album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

PART ONE (Tuning/Intro)

PART TWO (Verse)

PART THREE (Bridge)

PART FOUR (Arpeggiation)

PART FIVE (Solo)

PART SIX (Outro)

Additional Content