Starting in 1996, Guitar World was honored to publish a handful of lesson columns authored by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. The following column, from our April 1997 issue, has been edited for use online.

A mature musician exercises restraint when the situation calls for it. In other words, what you don’t play is just as important as what you do. It actually takes more discipline to stick to an ostinato (repeating) figure for eight or 16 bars than it does to throw in gratuitous fills that don’t necessarily add to the music.

There are times, however, when playing a high melodic figure is most effective. The key is to know when to walk and when to run, or when to “stomp” and when to “noodle.” I’d like to illustrate this concept by citing a few contrasting examples of bass (and keyboard) parts I’ve played, and explain why I chose to play what I did.

First, let’s look at Trampled Under Foot, from Physical Graffiti. For the main verse figure in G minor, I simply stayed on the low G root note and locked in with Bonzo [John Bonham]’s kick drum. I also took this same “four-on-the-floor” approach with the clavinet part. The lesson here is: don’t mess with a great groove.

A fine example of a tune that epitomizes both approaches – “hard” and “soft” – is The Song Remains the Same, which we looked at briefly in one of my previous columns.

For the D-Dsus4 parts I played a tight, punctuated bass figure together with the drums. But when it came to the “floaty” part (:36-:42), where Jimmy Page quietly strums Dm9 and G13 chords, I played a lofty melodic run high up on the neck using the D Dorian scale.

The slow part of the tune (the half-time verse section) also illustrates these contrasting approaches. After hitting the big kicks (C-C-G) with Page and Bonzo (2:02), I played a descending scalar figure (F# Mixolydian) and then an ascending arpeggio (F) behind Page’s jangly F#7-Fmaj7 changes.

For most of Kashmir (Physical Graffiti), I played rather straightforward and repetitive bass and Mellotron keyboard parts. The only exceptions were the sinuous “Arabian string symphony” Mellotron parts I improvised during the two choruses. If you listen to the recording, you’ll notice how those string melodies move independently of the rhythm of the underlying groove.

In quite a different vein is Ramble On, from Led Zeppelin II. Behind Page’s two-bar chord vamp during the verse sections, I repeated an upper-register bass counter-melody that ended up becoming one of the more memorable parts of the tune.

I took a similar approach in What Is and What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin II), but with a bit more variation. Playing in this sort of casual, melodic way seemed like the best thing to do at the moment, considering the fact that Jimmy’s part was so simple and subdued (E9-A13 chords).

Notice on the recording how well all the parts mesh during the verse sections, especially the bass and drums, and how everyone comes together in locked-step fashion for the chorus.

The main point here is that when it comes to playing music, there’s a time and a place for everything. Listen carefully to the overall sound of the rhythm section, and make wise, unselfish decisions as to what you should play at any given moment.

Approaching every arrangement in terms of opposites or contrasts between different sections – loud vs. soft, loose vs. tight, floaty vs. busy – will ultimately make your music more interesting.

The foundation of virtually every genre of modern, guitar-driven music is the blues. I’m known as a blues-rock player, and even within the rockier side of my music, I always start and end with the blues.

For example, if I’m playing in the key of F, I will very often rely on melodic single-line figures that originate from my love of and time spent listening to single-note blues guitar improvisation.

Figure 1 illustrates five bars of improvised soloing that are very vocal-like. I begin in the 6th-position “B.B. box,” which positions the index finger on the F root note on the B string’s 6th fret. The surrounding notes – D, G, Ab, Bb, and C – make reference to both the F major pentatonic (F, G, A, C, D) and F minor pentatonic scales (F, Ab, Bb, C, Eb).

Bars 2 and 3 shift up the board to focus more on F minor pentatonic, but at the end of bar 3 into bar 4, I move from F major pentatonic back into F minor pentatonic. Switching between these two scales is a staple of blues guitar that I learned from listening to all of my heroes: B.B. King, Otis Rush, Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and many others.

With that familiar ground firmly established, it feels like a natural transition to broaden the harmony into other modes. In Figure 2, I add the notes Gb and Db to F minor pentatonic while substituting the major 3rd, A, for the minor 3rd, Ab.

The result is the F Phrygian-dominant mode (F, Gb, A, Bb, C, Db, Eb), which is the fifth mode of the Bb harmonic minor scale (Bb, C, Db, Eb, F, Gb, A), made up of the same seven notes. In bar 3, I move back into blues territory with a phrase based on F minor pentatonic.

I’ll begin most solos with lines rooted in the blues, even if it’s not a blues song. I learned that from Eric Clapton; I saw an interview where he said, “I always start with the blues.” You will certainly hear great examples of this in his recordings with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and Cream.

To my mind, it’s not just about the scales; it’s about the phrasing and how tactile you are in your articulation and execution. The thought process is, which notes should sting, which notes should moan, and how can I effectively express emotion.

Figure 3 picks up at the fourth bar of an improvised phrase, kicking off with an F major triad (F, A, C). This is a good example of how a triad can function as a “stepping stone” when moving from one phrase or area of the neck to another.

In bar 5 and into bar 6 of the figure, I lean a bit heavier into the gas pedal with fast phrases inspired by another one of my big influences, Eric Johnson.

I’ve found it very useful to have built a foundation in the blues, which helps me to move into broader musical territory. Next month, we’ll explore this further.

• The Spirit of Rory Live From Cork is out now via J&R Adventures
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In this lesson, I’d like to share a cool way to add harmonic color to a melody played over a dominant 7 chord, and that is to play a minor 7 arpeggio that’s rooted a 5th higher. To demonstrate, I’ll use Dm7 arpeggios over a G7 chord.

D is the fifth note, or degree, of the G major scale. When playing in the key of G, a D major chord is the V (five) chord, and a D minor chord (Dm) is the Vm (five minor, alternatively indicated by a lowercase v).

Figure 1 shows a 3rd-position G7 barre chord, as well as the individual notes that make up the chord – G, B, D and F. G is the root, B is the major 3rd, D is the 5th and F is the minor, of “flatted,” 7th (m7, or b7).

Figure 2 illustrates a Dm7 arpeggio, built from the notes D, F, A and C. Relative to a D tonal center, D is the root, F is the minor, or “flatted,” 3rd (m3, or b3), A is the 5th and C is the minor, or “flatted,” 7th (m7, or b7). But when you play these four notes over a G chord or G bass note, D is heard as the 5th, F becomes the minor, or “flatted,” 7th, A is the 2nd, or 9th and C is the 4th, or 11th.

Figure 3 begins with a descending riff built from these notes that sounds great over G7. In bar 2, I initially ascend a Dm7 arpeggio and then end the phrase with a descending line that’s based on the G minor pentatonic scale (G, Bb, C, D, F) with the inclusion of the major 3rd, B.

To me, it always sounds pleasing to resolve the Vm7 (or v7) arpeggio to a bluesy line based on the tonic or home key. For example, in Figure 4, the Dm7 arpeggio is moved down to 2nd position and begins on the 5th string, and is followed by a G minor pentatonic line.

A good way to practice incorporating Dm7 arpeggios over a G7 chord is to set up a G7 vamp with a looper. Figure 5 illustrates a simple, funky vamp based on a repeating G7 voicing, with a hammer-on from Bb, the minor 3rd, to B, the major 3rd, each time.

A typical tried and true approach is to play straight blues over this vamp, like the riff in Figure 6, which is based on G minor pentatonic.

Now, let’s kick off the line with a Dm7 arpeggio and then hand off to G minor pentatonic. In Figure 7, I begin with the straight Dm7 arpeggio then end the phrase with a lick based on G minor pentatonic.

Next, we’ll try moving the concept to different areas of the fretboard. In Figure 8, I begin in bars 1 and 2 with a Dm7 arpeggio in 10th position.

In bar 3, I move down to 7th/8th position for the arpeggio and then wrap up the line with G minor pentatonic in 3rd position. Bar 5 starts with Dm7 in 2nd position then gradually shifts up to 6th position, before once again resolving the line to G minor pentatonic in 3rd position.

As you can see, starting on a Vm7 arpeggio and then resolving to the tonic with a more conventional blues phrase sounds really cool and satisfying and offers a great way to add harmonic depth to your solo improvisations. Try doing this in different keys.

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Welcome to the world of Manuel Gardner Fernandes, the guitar virtuoso from German metalcore masters Unprocessed. In this band, Manuel is a stunning representative of the new wave of chops-heavy guitarists (think Tim Henson, Plini and Tosin Abasi) impressing guitar fans around the world with their new music and social media content.

These players combine elements of '80s rock virtuosity (legato, tapping, speed picking) with newer math/prog elements such as slap bass articulations, extended use of legato/selective picking phrasing and application of harmonics. It makes for a heavy and impressive brew of sonic wizardy, be it with crisp clean tones or thick saturated distortion.

While his five chosen techniques here are advanced, especially when performed at fast tempos, Manuel has been considerate enough to demonstrate and explain them clearly. Certainly, a key tip is to start slowly when initially tackling each example yourself.

The first technique is fast strumming. This involves using a lot of dead notes (percussive muted notes). To achieve these, simply lay your fretting hand fingers lightly across the strings without pushing them down on the frets. Manuel demonstrates the strumming directions and we have written these in the tab for reference.

The second technique is hybrid picking (pick and fingers). Manuel likes to use the pick for downstrokes and then adds in the picking hand's second finger (shown as m under the tab) and third finger (shown as a under the tab). This makes playing adjacent strings and wider string skips a lot easier. Using the fingers to pluck the strings also helps the notes to sound percussive, like the sound of a slapped bass. Again, Manuel walks you through the order of picking.

The third technique is tapped harmonics, created by tapping the string directly above the fretwire. This works especially well when tapping 12 frets above the fretting hand's note. So if you are fretting a note on the 1st fret, it's the 13th fret that needs to be tapped.

We recommend starting with just one finger of the tapping hand to get dialed into the technique (the second finger - m - makes most sense so you can still hold the pick conventionally). Then it’ll be possible to add in other fingers of the tapping hand to increase the facility.

Manuel's fourth technique choice is his James Hetfield-inspired downpicking. For the fast flourishes, he advises a snap of the wrist as opposed to using the whole of the strumming arm.

The final technique is inspired by players like Tosin Abasi from Animals As Leaders. Manuel refers to this as 'selective picking' and involves picking a note and then tapping/hammering-on other notes with the fretting hand. If these techniques are combined with light palm muting, stunning percussive guitar parts can be created.

Many thanks to Manuel for his time and creativity and be sure to check out the latest Unprocessed album, Angel.

Example 1. Percussive strumming

This example uses percussive strumming to create a fast and impressive latin/flamenco-esque performance. The picking pattern for the fastest rhythm is down, down, down, up, down, down.

Manuel strums some great-sounding chord fingerings that make effective use of the open strings. Start slowly and then build up speed, as you emulate the pattern and feel it dialing in.

Example 2a. Hybrid picking riff

This example is inspired by the sound of slap bass players and uses hybrid picking. The pick is used to play the notes on the sixth string with a key part of the sound being the muted notes.

These are produced by laying the fingers of the fretting hand lightly on the string and then picking it. The notes on the fourth string are plucked with the second finger (m), and the harder these are plucked, the more it will sound like a slap bass.

Example 2b. Hybrid picked lick

Here, Manuel elaborates on the benefits of hybrid picking by playing a fast lick that uses natural harmonics.

To produce the harmonics, lightly rest your fretting hand finger directly above the fret (wire) indicated in the tab. As the note is plucked, the fretting hand finger can be lifted to release the harmonic.

Example 2c. Hybrid picked chord

Here is another exciting way to exploit the benefits of hybrid picking. The picking pattern here is three down picks followed by a second finger (m) pluck.

Example 3. Tapped harmonics

This next example is tricky and may take a little experimentation to get right. The harmonics are created by tapping the string directly above the fret. This works especially well when tapping 12 frets above the fretted note.

We have notated the fretting hand positions in the tab (diamond encased fret numbers) and then the tapping positions above the tab (eg TH15 = tap a harmonic at the 15th fret).

For this example, the tapping positions can always be found 12 frets above the fretted hand. We recommend using just one finger of the tapping hand at first to get used to the technique. Add other fingers of the tapping hand when you're more comfortable.

Example 4. Down picking

This next example is inspired by Manuel’s love of James Hetfield's playing. All the notes are down-picked or hammered onto. This makes the example relatively easy to play at slow tempos. As with all the other examples, add the speed in once the technique is perfected at the slow tempo.

Example 5a. Selective picking and hammer-ons

This final technique is inspired by guitarists like Tosin Abasi from Animals As Leaders. Manuel refers to this as “selective picking”, which involves picking a note and then tapping notes with the fretting hand.

We recommend using a light palm mute for the open B note on the second string. Once you get this dialed in, vibrant percussive guitar parts can be created.

Example 5b. Selective picking with chords

To finish off, Manuel adds in more tapping positions all over the fretboard to create a pleasing chord progression.

Hear it here

Unprocessed - Deadrose

This contextualizes a couple of the techniques covered in this article. The introduction and verse sections feature a part created with fast arpeggios played with the tapping harmonics technique. This is followed by some of that fast snappy strumming. Towards the end the down-picking technique is used to play a percussive, heavy riff.

Unprocessed - Perfume

This is taken from the latest Unprocessed album, Angel. The introduction uses fast chord arpeggios played with the hybrid picking technique featured in Example 2c. The second finger and third fingers of the picking hand can get involved. This makes playing adjacent strings at speed more economical and also provides some variety in the tone.

Although the 7-string guitar is my go-to instrument for virtually all of the music I write for Spiritbox, there have been instances where I was inspired to expand my range to 8-string guitar.

Even though I’m not all that familiar with the 8-string, I look at it as a cool tool that can enable me to compose riffs that are lower than anything else I’ve ever played.

To that end, I used an 8-string to come up with something powerful, to serve as the opening track to our 2025 album Tsunami Sea, Fata Morgana. We’ve been opening our sets with this song for the last year, and it has proven to be a fantastic way to kick off the show.

The 8-string tuning I use here is standard 7-string tuning down a whole step, and the eighth string is tuned down to a very low B. So, low to high, it’s B, A, D, G, C, F, A, D. In this tuning, I can play a B octave with the open 8th string and the B at the 2nd fret on the 7th string, using what looks like a power chord.

Figure 1 shows the song’s primary riff, which revolves around that low B octave figure sounded along with the tritone, F, sounded at the 3rd fret on the 6th string.

In bars 1-6, I alternate between this Bdim(no3) voicing and a high natural harmonic (N.H.) sounded between the 2nd and 3rd frets on the 7th string, notated as 2.4. In bar 4, I sound natural harmonics in this same position across the top seven strings with a quick upstroke rake.

While lightly resting a single fret-hand finger across these strings at the theoretical 2.4 location, I drag the pick in an upward motion, resulting in an aggressive “scrape” sound.

To me, the articulation of the Bdim(no3) chord needs to create a specific type of bloom wherein all of the notes morph together in an effective way. It needs to sound warm, heavy and disgusting! This is achieved by positioning the pick-hand with a slight amount of palm-muting while striking the strings in just the right place, which is above the bridge pickup.

At the end of bar 6 into bar 7, I play a series of big two-and-a-half-step bends on the 8th string, moving between the 4th and 3rd frets. Figure 2 offers a look at these bends and releases.

Proper intonation of these bends is essential; as shown in Figure 3, the notes we are looking to sound are G#, followed by a half-step bend and release on G one fret lower.

The manner in which you strike the strings when performing these bends and releases is very important, in order to achieve the type of clarity necessary for the phrase to jump out. The way to attain the right sound is by picking very hard. This is also true for the natural harmonics, in order for them to properly cut through the mix.

Overall, focus on your pick-hand attack throughout, and strive for consistency in sound as you move from one pattern to the next.

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Last month, I delved into the world of fingerpicking in the Piedmont/Mississippi John Hurt/Rev. Gary Davis/Blind Blake style, with a look at the basics of this technique.

As I detailed, it’s built around alternating-bass figures picked with the thumb in a steady eighth-note pattern while rhythmically syncopated melodies are fingerpicked on the higher strings.

A great example of this technique is heard on the Blackberry Smoke song Ain’t Got the Blues, from The Whippoorwill. I’d now like to continue covering this technique and demonstrate an unusual Csus2 tuning that opens up a whole new world of sounds and chordal possibilities.

This tuning was taught to me by my good friend Levi Lowery. He grabbed a guitar and strummed it, and I said, “What the hell tuning is that?” As he explained, it’s a slight variation on an open C tuning, which is Csus2.

As shown in Figure 1, start by tuning your A string down a whole step to G, your D string down a whole step to C and your low E string down two whole steps to C. Leave your G string as is.

Finally, tune your B string up a half step to C and your high E string down a whole step to D. Strumming all six open strings in this tuning yields a Csus2 chord, as shown in Figure 2. Since most of the strings are tuned down, you might want to put medium-gauge strings on your guitar to avoid it sounding like a mousetrap!

When Levi played in this tuning, he said, “You can just use one finger!” He used mostly barre chords on the bottom three strings while leaving the top three open, as demonstrated in Figure 3. He said, “There’s not a bad chord anywhere – everything works!”

I developed a fingerpicking pattern based on this tuning and came up with Azalea, which we recorded for our 2024 album Be Right Here.

As shown in bars 1-3 of Figure 4, I thumbpick alternating eighth notes on the open 6th and 4th strings below a syncopated melody on the higher strings.

In bars 4 and 5, I switch to Eb and F chords, for which I thumb-fret the 6th string and barre my index finger barres across the top three strings. The 4th string, tuned to C, remains open throughout.

Figure 5 illustrates the alternating bass pattern, after which the full fingerpicking pattern from Figure 4 is added.

Figure 6 focuses on the Eb and F chords formed with the thumbed bass notes on the 6th string and index-finger barres across the top three strings. The droning C note on the open 4th string ties the whole pattern together.

You might think you’re “stuck” in this tuning – surrounded by C notes – but there are other great voicings to discover.

Figure 7 shows the song’s bridge, which starts on the V (five) chord, G: these chord shapes are built from pairs of notes played at the same fret on the 4th and 2nd strings along with the open 5th, 3rd and 1st strings. In bar 3, the pattern resolves back to C.

It takes practice for this fingerpicking pattern to become second nature, so take your time with it. Start slowly and gradually increase the tempo until it sounds smooth and even throughout.

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As a guitarist that plays a lot of blues, I find myself performing many different kinds of shuffles, from slow to medium to fast. One of my all-time favorite blues recordings is Steppin’ Out, as covered by John Mayall on Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton. (The original version is by Memphis Slim and features Matt “Guitar” Murphy, of The Blues Brothers fame, on guitar.)

Steppin’ Out is a hard-driving medium-up shuffle in the key of G, and Clapton’s guitar playing on that track is just incredible. He plays with so much fire and creativity, as well as this distinctly youthful British exuberance.

Figure 1 is a two-bar phrase along the lines of the signature lick in Steppin’ Out. It’s played in the key of G and is based on the G minor pentatonic scale (G, Bb, C, D, F), with an abundance of quarter- , half- and whole-step bends on the G string.

I love the way Eric draws from his Freddie King influence, in terms of his melodic phrasing and articulation, as demonstrated in the pickup bar and bar 1 of Figure 2, into the Freddie-style reverse-rake “slurs” at the end of bar 2 into bar 3. Throughout the example, notice all of the subtle, expressive bends on the top three strings.

In bars 8-12, the melody and phrasing is so simple – just swinging eighth notes – but the lines are delivered in a way that is also a nod to the great T-Bone Walker, in the use of hammer-ons from the minor 3rd, Bb, to the major 3rd, B, as well as the inclusion of the 2nd, or 9th, A.

In bar 12 into bar 13, I switch to G major pentatonic (G, A, B, D, E), moving back into G minor pentatonic in bar 16. In bar 17, I play a series of D notes on the B string, all on the eighth-note upbeats, that are bent in increasing increments, ending with a one‑and-a-half-step bend that is shaken. In bars 19 through the end of the example, I move freely between G minor and major pentatonic ideas.

Clapton also loves to go up high on the neck and hit you with aggressive unison bends on the top two strings, a la the phrases that kick off Figure 3. This lick begins with F, at the 18th fret on the B string, bent up a whole step to G while a G note at the 15th fret on high E string is strummed together with the B string, ultimately adding aggressive vibrato to the unison bend.

The remainder of the example is played in the 15th-position G minor pentatonic box and features fast hammer-ons and pull-offs as well as vocal-like, wide and fast vibratos.

When soloing over a shuffle like this, it’s wise to hold back some ideas at first, so that you don’t play everything you know in the first chorus! Take your time, hold and shake some notes and let the solo build in a musically natural way. Follow your stream of consciousness and use dynamics to tell a musical story.

Just about every blues show I attended in the ’80s and ’90s started with an uptempo shuffle like Steppin’ Out, and the Mayall-Clapton version is a great vehicle for learning what blues soloing is all about.

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In crafting the primary riffs for Spiritbox songs, I’ll often combine aggressively strummed, atonal power chords with fast single-note phrases and some hammer-ons and pull-offs. A good example of this approach is heard in Angel Eyes, from our 2023 EP The Fear of Fear.

I play this song on a seven-string guitar in the tuning I use most often, which is drop-A transposed down a minor 3rd, commonly referred to as “drop F#” (low to high: F#, C#, F#, B, E, G#, C#).

Angel Eyes is an unapologetically heavy track that’s pretty simple, in terms of the fret hand. It’s more of a pick-hand exercise, in terms of the rhythmic precision required to give the riffs the right amount of intensity.

Figure 1 shows the verse riff, which combines eighth- and 16th-note rhythms. In bars 1-3, I play palm-muted two-note chords on the bottom two strings, with the 6th string open and the 7th string fretted at the 1st fret. These two notes form a b5 interval (Bb and E), which has an atonal sound.

In bar 4, on beats 3 and 4, I perform a series of hammer-ons and slides on the 7th and 5th strings that roll into bar 5. I follow this with a pair of strummed natural harmonics (N.H.) on the top three strings, located a point a little ways past the 3rd fret, as indicated by 3.2.

I use a moderate amount of palm-muting here, so that the strings aren’t too choked. I like the notes to sustain a bit, which goes hand in hand with how much force I’m using while striking the strings. My suggestion is to pick really hard and dig in with the pick hand.

Figure 2 focuses on the quick hammer-on/slide phrase from bar 4 of Figure 1. I fret the notes on the 7th string with my index finger and the notes on the 5th string with my middle finger. To make the riff “pop,” I palm-mute the 7th string while allowing the notes on the 5th string to ring.

Figure 3 illustrates the chorus riff. In bars 1-4, after initially sounding the open low A note, I play Bb octave shapes on the 7th and 5th strings, followed by Bb octaves on the 6th and 4th strings, sliding up to the 6th fret on the 6th string each time. In bar 4, the phrase ends with a gradual whole-step bend at the 5th fret on the 6th string.

In bars 5-8, I drop the phrase down a half-step, sounding an A octave on the 7th and 5th strings, followed by additional A notes higher up the fretboard, including a fast slide up to the 12th fret of the 7th string.

The first seven bars then repeat, and in bar 9 of the example, I close out the phrase with alternating two-note b5 power chords on the bottom two strings, before restating the first two bars of the verse riff.

There’s a lot of string-skipping here. Strive to jump between the strings with economy of movement. The goal is to make the octaves sound as clear and seamless as possible. Try to keep your pick hand moving quickly and decisively throughout the figure.

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A great way to break away from the typical blues soloing sound of pentatonic scales is to incorporate dominant 7 arpeggios into your improvised lines. As the name implies, a dominant 7 arpeggio is sounded by playing the notes of a dominant 7 chord, such as G7, C7 or D7, individually and in succession.

Let’s use the key of G as our point of reference: in Figure 1, a G7 chord is shown in 3rd position, followed by a G minor pentatonic scale (G, Bb, C, D, F) played in the same position.

What I often like to do, in order to create more interesting solo lines, is combine the notes of the minor pentatonic scale with those of a dominant 7 arpeggio, which, as you’ll notice, share three notes – the root, 5th and minor, of “flat” 7th.

Figure 2 illustrates a G7 arpeggio, built from the notes G, B, D and F. The first three notes give us a G major triad, and F is the minor, or “flatted,” 7th, which provides the dominant 7 sound. Figure 3 shows the same notes played in a descending manner on the lower strings.

Articulation devices like finger slides and string bends offer great ways to incorporate the dominant 7 pitches into phrases.

For example, Figure 4 begins with a series of slides into the notes G, B, D and F, all from a half step below, after which I finish the phrase with more typical blues lines based on the G blues scale (G, Bb, C, Db, D, F).

A great way to practice improvising with dominant 7 arpeggios is to loop a rhythm part then solo over it. Figure 5 shows a simple shuffle-based rhythm part that sits on a G7 chord.

Figure 6 sounds the notes of a G7 arpeggio played over the loop, first ascending then descending.

To some people, this is more of a “jazzy” sound; the reason for this is, as is often the case in jazz, the chord tones are emphasized when playing arpeggios. The inclusion of B, the major 3rd, in addition to F, the minor, or “flatted,” 7th, builds a strong connection to the harmony of the G7 chord.

Figure 7 offers a longer example of how to combine phrases built from the G minor pentatonic and G blues scales with G7 arpeggio shapes. Bars 1 and 2 emphasize the G blues scale, followed in bars 3 and 4 with emphasis on the major 3rd, B, which brings in the dominant 7 arpeggio sound.

In bars 5-8, I move back and forth between straight G minor pentatonic and blues scale phrases and the inclusion of the major 3rd, B, in order to bring the arpeggio sound back to the forefront. Throughout the remainder of the example, I move freely between the two approaches, striving for musicality in the way the different elements work together.

As you work with this dualistic approach, think of it as an ongoing hand-off between scales and arpeggios. Use your ears to discern the differences in the musical effects created and to inform your note choices.

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I consider fingerpicking to be essential to my playing, as it’s a technique I have utilized in a variety of ways for many years. When recording, I often use my 1945 Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar. If you’re familiar with this instrument, you know how wonderful it is to play and how great it sounds.

Figure 1 illustrates a very basic fingerpicked pattern: while holding an E chord, my pick-hand thumb basically alternates between the 6th and 4th strings while the index, middle and ring fingers pick the higher strings.

The open low E bass note alternates with the higher notes in an eight-note rhythm. Note that the thumb often catches the next higher string, as demonstrated here.

Years ago, a friend of my dad’s came over and played some beautiful fingerpicking on a Martin D-28 acoustic, and I was blown away. He said, “That’s Mississippi John Hurt.” So I thought, well, I need to listen to more of that!

When I got hipped to this music, I discovered that the patterns were rooted in alternating bass notes sounded by the thumb while melodic patterns were fingerpicked on the higher strings in a syncopated rhythm.

Figure 2 offers an example of this style: bars 1 and 2 establish an eighth-note thumbpicking pattern, and in bars 3 and 4 a fingerpicked melody is introduced on the top three strings. As shown in Figure 3, the thumb always keeps the rhythm of the bassline going, in this case in the key of G.

It will take dedicated practice to get the coordination together to execute the low-string/high-string syncopations properly, so start out slowly and focus on how the two parts work together.

The Blackberry Smoke song Ain’t Got the Blues, from our 2012 album,
The Whippoorwill, is built from this style of fingerpicking. As shown in Figure 4, bar 1 establishes an alternating bass pattern on the tonic G chord, and in bar 2 I introduce a melody played on the G and B strings.

In bar 4, I move to C, the IV (four) chord, and the melody is transposed up a 4th and played on the top two strings. In bars 7 and 8, the pattern is played over the V (five) chord, D, and in bars 9 and 10 I return to the tonic, G.

Another good example of this style of fingerpicking is a section I play in our song Holding All the Roses, which is in drop-D tuning (low to high: D, A, D, G, B, E). Figure 5 illustrates the similar manner in which this is played.

I asked my dad’s friend where guitarists like Mississippi John Hurt got the idea to play in this way, and he said. “I think they’re trying to imitate the sound of a player piano on a riverboat.”

I think that’s a good theory, because the type of fingerpicking you hear from the great “Piedmont”-style players, like Blind Blake, Blind Willie McTell and Reverend Gary Davis, does work in the same way as stride piano, with consistently alternating bass notes driving the rhythm and joined by syncopated melodies in a higher octave.

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Brett Garsed is one of the guitar world's most revered triple threats. His virtuosity with legato, hybrid picking (he picks with his fourth finger, too) and slide is nothing short of masterful. His reputation goes all the way back to the '80s when his growing reputation resulted in him playing on John Farnham's 1986 album, Whispering Jack.

Handling all guitar duties on the biggest-selling album by an Australian in Australia's history, Brett's guitar chops were well used. None more so than the solo at the end of the album's huge hit single, You're the Voice.

How huge?

On last check, the numbers were 259M plays on Spotify and 35M views on YouTube.

You’re the Voice is a rousing anthem written by British songwriters Chris Thompson, Andy Qunta and Maggie Ryder that incorporates rock and Celtic influences, plus an actual bagpipe solo. Asked to provide an outro guitar solo, Brett incorporated bagpipe-style phrasing, chord tone driven melodies and a blazing string skipped arpeggio.

Up until now, this stunning solo has gone unnoticed due to being so quiet in the mix. To remedy the situation, Brett agreed to deep dive what he played for Guitar World.

“What you hear on the album is the first take, the only take we did,” Brett explains. “It’s a little haphazard in structure, but that’s the spontaneity of the moment. The fast section in the middle is an old faithful lick I used to simulate sweep picking arpeggios, but I did it with string skipping.”

Brett provides further insights into his solo: “I was, and still am, a completely ear-driven player, and I was trying to follow the chord progression F - Eb - Bb/D. Everything I’m playing is trying to follow those chords.

“You’ll hear a sliding ascending line in the solo featuring my old black Strat with a 21-fret neck. I bent up to the high F from the 21st fret and broke the first string! Since the Strat bridge couldn’t be pulled up it stayed in tune, so I played the rest of the solo with one less string!”

F major arpeggio - the fundamental shape

This outlines the basic string skipping F Major arpeggio (F A C) that Brett utilised for part of his solo on You're The Voice. Using the fourth (D), third (G) and first (high E) strings, it's a shape favoured by various players (including Paul Gilbert and Nuno Bettencourt) to replicate the sound of one note per string sweep picked arpeggios.

A useful approach to familiarize yourself with the shape is to play the first note on each string first before adding the higher notes on the third and first strings.

Brett utilizes hybrid picking as shown under the tab (m = second finger pluck), along with hammer-ons and pull-offs.

Example 1 - F major arpeggio phrasing (4:35 in the video)

This is what Brett demonstrates in the video, improvising around the F major arpeggio in a similar way to what he played during his You're the Voice solo. Hybrid picking makes crossing from the third string to the first string efficient and smooth. Pay close attention to the way the different rhythmic subdivisions and legato phrasing give this example a feeling of acceleration and excitement.

Brett Garsed in action

John Farnham - You're The Voice

At 3:45 Brett's guitar solo begins. Masked by the big production and wall of euphoric vocals, he builds his phrases with masterful melodic moves with that stunning F major arpeggio happening at 4:09. The huge C# to F bend (21st fret to a virtual 25th fret!) which broke his first string occurs at 4:24.

In his GW video, Brett demonstrates this bend (without breaking a string!) using his fourth finger with other fingers behind to strengthen it. To make this even more daunting to play, Brett uses 0.011 gauge strings in standard tuning. Gulp.

Brett Garsed - Breathe

Breathe featured on Brett's Big Sky album from 2002. Throughout the performance, Brett demonstrates masterful melodic phrasing, tasty string bends, bluesy licks and impressive speed bursts.

Brett Garsed - Slam Bam

Here's Brett in an funk fusion workout, written for him by Jason Sidwell as part of a soloing series in Guitar Techniques from 2016. Brett twists, darts and blasts through this funk groover with an array of slippery legato and hybrid picked moves using bluesy licks, altered scales and tension/release note choices. Slamming indeed!

A topic that’s near and dear to guitar players everywhere is pickups – what to use, what we love about them, and how to set them up for optimal performance. For our discussion, I’ll be using two examples of what is essentially the same guitar — a 1958 goldtop Gibson Les Paul Standard with PAF humbucking pickups and a 1956 goldtop Les Paul Standard with P-90 pickups.

Let’s first talk about setting up the pickups. I like the pickup height to be close to the strings, especially the bridge pickup. This results in the most output and brightness, which is the kind of attack I like to hear.

Pickup height is adjusted by using a screwdriver to turn the mounting screws clockwise or counterclockwise. With humbuckers, I like the front, or neck, pickup to be “wooly” – fat-sounding and with some distortion – but clear.

Be careful, however, not to raise it too close to the strings, as the magnets can start to interfere with the strings’ vibrations and cause notes to sound out of tune.

Figure 1 is an E minor pentatonic-based phrase played with the neck humbucker. When I switch to the bridge pickup, as I do in Figure 2, I like the output to be balanced with that of the neck pickup, so that the only thing changing is an increase in the amount of high end, which serves as a sort of solo boost.

In Figure 3, bars 1-5, I have both pickups on, which produces a nice blend between the fatness of the neck pickup and the “cut” of the bridge pickup. This example is played in the key of A, with lines based on the A minor pentatonic scale (A, C, D, E, G), with the inclusion of the major 3rd, C#, alluding to an A7 chord. In bar 5, I switch to the bridge pickup only.

With some P-90-equipped guitars, the neck pickup is too close to the strings and the bridge pickup is too far away. If you were to leave it that way, the instrument will never sound sonically balanced, so follow the same height adjustment guidance given for humbuckers.

P-90s are single-coil pickups, so their overall sound is more sparkly and clear than that of humbuckers, especially with a clean tone. But when overdriven, they will deliver a fat sound that’s killer. Being single-coil pickups, however, they can be prone to noise and hum, so you have to try and address that.

Figure 4 is played with the neck P-90, featuring lines based on the C# minor pentatonic scale (C#, E, F#, G,# B).

In Figure 5, I switch to the bridge pickup, and move from B7 to E7 with lines based on E minor pentatonic.

Both humbuckers and P-90s have their ideal applications, and for many players, including me, the variations in sound, feel and texture are indispensable.

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A key element in many of the riffs I write is rhythmic string bending. A good example of this can be found in the main riff to Holy Roller, which I recorded with Spiritbox for our 2021 album, Eternal Blue.

As was the case last month with Jaded, I perform this song on a seven-string guitar tuned to drop-F# (low to high: F#, C#, F#, B, E, G#, C#), which is drop-A tuning transposed down a minor 3rd, or one and one half steps, so everything sounds a minor 3rd lower.

Figure 1 illustrates the main riff to Holy Roller, which I play during the intro and outro. The first six bars are performed entirely on the 7th string and feature repeating pull-down bends and releases.

I begin in bar 1 with two unbent eighth notes at the 12th and 9th frets, followed in beats 2 and 3 by two quick ¾-step bends and releases at the 13th fret, phrased in a 16th-note rhythm. The bar ends with a return to the unbent notes.

Syncopation (emphasizing the upbeats, or “weak” parts of the beat) comes into play in bar 2, where, on beat 3, I bend the 9th-fret note up a half step and hold the bend into beat 4. The final note in bar 2 is tied (held over) to the beat 1 of bar 3, which creates more syncopation, then bent up a half step. Bars 3 and 4 mostly replicate bars 1 and 2, but bar 4 ends with a pair of palm-muted eighth notes on an open A5 chord.

Bars 5 and 6 essentially restate bars 1 and 2, after which I play a big F#sus2 barre chord across all seven strings, which I shift up and down the neck in a syncopated dotted-eighth rhythm, holding each chord for one and one half beats, which, when done in succession like this, creates a jarring effect.

The riff ends with another pair of palm-muted open A5 chords, followed by high natural harmonics (N.H.) chords on the top three strings, strummed as 16th notes with alternate (down-up) strumming.

To sound the harmonics, lightly rest your fret-hand pinkie across the top three strings at the “3.2” location indicated, which is a little ways past the 3rd fret.

As is the case with many of the riffs I write, without the added bends, this riff would sound a little stale and boring. When performing the 13th-fret bends here, strive to consistently raise the pitch 3/4 of a step, which is midway between a half step (equal to one fret) and a whole step (equal to two frets).

Figure 2 shows the song’s breakdown verse riff, which is built from a two-note F/A chord played on the bottom two strings and strummed in a syncopated rhythm with palm-muting (P.M.). I use all downstrokes here, except for the pairs of 16th notes, which are strummed down-up.

The syncopation is created by accentuating certain eighth-note upbeats (the “and” counts) and holding the chord into the following downbeat. To properly feel and internalize the phrasing, play through the figure while tapping your foot squarely on each beat. Start out slowly then gradually ramp up the tempo to that of the recording.

In bar 8, I play “3.2” natural harmonics again, this time across the top six strings. I strum the harmonics with upstrokes on each eighth-note upbeat. The key to getting the desired sharp pick attack here is to get a little bit of the flesh of your thumb into the strum. Doing so will also help bring out the harmonics.

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Hello, and welcome to my new column for Guitar World! Over the course of these lessons, I will be sharing many of the techniques and approaches I use for creating effective melodies and rhythm guitar parts for both recording sessions and live performances.

I’d like to kick things off with a look at some of the ways in which I incorporate the technique of hybrid picking into my playing. As you may know, hybrid picking combines flatpicking with fingerpicking and can be used to create and perform otherwise impossible sounds and techniques.

Hybrid picking is a big part of country guitar playing, and I’ve studied a lot of country players, but I’m primarily a blues-rock/Americana player, along with R&B and jazz. I’ve developed an approach to hybrid picking that I think you will be able to apply fairly quickly to what you’re already comfortable with.

A good place to start is with chords, as demonstrated in Figure 1. For each chord – Dm, A and C – the low root note is flatpicked with a downstroke while the higher three notes are picked upward with the bare middle and ring fingers and pinkie.

This produces a piano-like simultaneous note attack and a different sound than a strum, which is an arpeggiation, no matter how quickly you perform it.

For single-note playing, a great way to practice hybrid picking is to play a simple A minor pentatonic scale (A, C, D, E, G) and alternate between the pick and a finger repeatedly.

In Figure 2, all of the notes that fall on the downbeats are flatpicked and all the notes on the upbeats are picked with the middle finger. My goal here is to achieve a smooth, uniform note attack, so that there’s almost no difference between the sound of the flatpicked and fingerpicked notes.

In Figure 3, I demonstrate how I can get some speed with hybrid picking. Alternating between the pick and a finger in this way can be at least as fast as straight flatpicking, if not faster, and also easier to do.

My incorporation of hybrid picking started when I was about 15 years old. I’d been emulating Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan with licks like Figure 4, using only a pick. I then switched to using fingerpicking on the top two strings, with my middle and ring fingers, respectively, as shown in Figure 5.

I find hybrid picking especially useful for faster tempos, such as the country/rock-type riff shown in Figure 6. As I play the solo line in Figure 7, I articulate the notes on the lower strings with the pick and the notes on the higher strings with my available fingers.

Hybrid picking also works very well with double-stops (two-note chords), especially if I want the sound to be very pinpoint and accurate.

In Figure 8, I fingerpick the double-stops on the B and G strings and flatpick the single notes on the D string. In Figure 9, I move more freely between flatpicking and fingerpicking, which I think yields an expressive sound.

This is a great way to get started with hybrid picking; move from scales into more inventive lines, and you will discover many great sounds that this technique will facilitate.

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When I was about 12, my friend’s dad was hipping me to all kinds of incredible music.

He gave me the 1974 Gram Parsons album Grievous Angel, which includes Ooh Las Vegas, a song that features some really cool pedal steel guitar licks that can be replicated with a Parsons/White B-Bender-equipped Fender Telecaster, which I talked about last time. In this column, I’d like to share what I learned from all this.

The track kicks off with a lick played in the key of E, along the lines of Figure 1. Here, I begin with a slide up to B on my G string’s 4th fret, followed by a C#-to-D hammer-on the B string then the open high E string.

I hybrid-pick this lick, flatpicking the G string and fingerpicking the notes on the top two strings, and allow the notes to ring together as much as possible.

There’s another part of the song, also performed with hybrid picking, along the lines of Figure 2. Here, the open low E string repeatedly alternates against E-to-D pull-offs on the D string, followed by a double pull-off at the end of bar 2, C#-B-A.

What I didn’t know at the time was that that particular lick was not played on a conventional guitar, but rather on a pedal steel, by Al Perkins. I had assumed it was played by James Burton on his Telecaster.

The tone of the pedal steel on this track is so clear, clean and bright and sounded to me like a Tele! Figure 3 is played in the style of this solo, kicking off in bar 1 with a quick ascending lick based on the E major pentatonic scale (E, F#, G#, B, C#) and followed in bars 2-4 with a phrase based on oblique bends.

An oblique bend is performed by combining bent and unbent strings. Here, the G string is bent up a whole step while notes on the top two strings remain stationary. Essential to playing this lick is the use of hybrid picking, as the notes on the top two strings repeatedly alternate with the bent G string.

What makes the lick challenging to execute is the note on the high E string is at the 10th fret, while the note on the B string is at the 12th fret.

At first, I thought, “Is the guitar in open G tuning?” But I soon discovered that it wasn’t a standard guitar at all – it was the pedal steel. And this was the beginning of my journey of trying to replicate pedal steel licks on Telecasters.

At the end of the tune, James comes in with a funky chordal lick based on an E7 voicing, not unlike Figure 4.

When I got a hold of a B-Bender guitar, I started to write songs with it, such as Pretty Little Lie [from The Whippoorwill].

Figure 5 replicates the opening B-Bender lick on standard guitar; many of the slide and hammer-on articulations here were actually sounded by pulling down on the B-Bender. Our song Lonesome for a Living features both B-Bender guitar and pedal steel.

If you want to hear some great B-Bender playing by Clarence White, check out the Byrds’ Live at the Fillmore – February 1969 and Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde.

White’s guitar now belongs to the great Marty Stuart, who has taken the art of B-Bender playing even further. And for a B-Bender masterclass, listen to Albert Lee’s playing on Dave Edmunds’ Sweet Little Lisa.

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Few blues guitarists are as fiery on the fretboard as Philip Sayce. Having worked with many great artists (from Jeff Healey to Jimmy Barnes) and been influenced by more (SRV, Hendrix, the three Kings all spring to mind), Philip has recorded 11 outstanding albums as a bandleader and stuns wherever he plays.

To coincide with his upcoming live album, Scorched Earth: Volume 2 Live in LA / London, Philip took time out with GW to cover the five vital components that make up his signature style.

Throughout, Philip is in Eb tuning (Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb) for the video performance – like standard tuning (E A D G B E) but detuned by one semitone. This provides a fat Stratocaster single coil tone and reduces the string tension – an approach favoured by many greats including Jimi Hendrix and SRV.

In the video, the licks are played in free time with no backing track or metronome click. We have used a 4/4 time signature with all the rhythms 'rounded up' so it's easier to learn from. If you're keen to duplicate Philip's micro rhythmic nuances after referencing the tab, consult the video.

The five core elements are based around various tonalities including C# and B. He skilfully combines the major and minor pentatonic scales with color tones added. Throughout, you'll see how he combines these with fretting hand slurs, bends and vibrato with hybrid picking that blends pick attack with snappy finger picking.

Philip tours the UK from May 19th to June 3rd. For more on his album and tour visit www.philpsayce.com

Example 1. Warm-up stretching (0:46 in the video)

While Philip is in Eb tuning for all examples, we're presenting in standard E tuning as E major or E minor is easier to read than Eb major or Eb minor. The tab is exactly as Philip plays on the fretboard so detuned or in standard, the examples should prove very beneficial to work from.

If you are a pro athlete you always stretch, and guitar playing is no different. Here, Philip demonstrates his favorite warm-up stretching. This comes in the form of a five-string chord that is played over an open sixth string pedal note. The chord is first played high up the neck and then as the fingering is moved down the neck the stretch increases.

We recommend pointing the headstock up in the air so the neck is at 45 degrees – this will help promote good posture.

Example 2. Singing vibrato (2:00 in the video)

Here, Philip demonstrates how he uses a singing finger vibrato to grab the ear of the listener. The finger vibrato can be added to a string bend or to a normally fretted note. Adding finger vibrato whilst bending can be tough initially (ie speed of bend, when to apply vibrato), so we recommend developing your finger vibrato technique on a normally fretted note first. The action of rubbing the string against the fretwire aids sustain - explore how hard you press down and the results of different finger pressures.

Example 3. Enhanced singing vibrato (3:09 in the video)

Here Philip demonstrates an Eric Clapton style singing finger vibrato. For this one the whole of the fretting hand grip can be removed from the neck, so the only point touching the neck is the finger on the fretted note.

This allows for a free flowing, vocal style vibrato. The only issue with this technique is it can be difficult to maintain control and consistency during the early stages.

Example 4. Galloping rhythmic lead (4:06 in the video)

This one is inspired by guitarists like Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and is a combination of rhythm and lead. Philip uses a great sounding fingering for C#7#9 with an octave in the bass. The thumb of the fretting hand can be used to fret the sixth string.

The galloping rhythm is the key here and we’d recommend building this up slowly so you can build stamina and be accurate at higher tempos.

Example 5a. Burning blues lead (pick only) (4:38 in the video)

These two examples are closely linked. Philip plays the first fully picked example to provide an example of how the phrase sounds with all picking.

Example 5b. Burning blues lead (pick and fingers) (4:51 in the video)

The second version uses hybrid picking (pick and fingers together), so Philip uses the the picking hand's second finger (shown as 'm' under the tab) to pluck various notes, especially for string crossing moments. This provides some tonal light and shade and helps the notes to pop out. We have notated sections of picking (shown under the tab) so you can duplicate what Philip plays.

Philip Sayce in action

Philip Sayce - Morning Star

Taken from Philip's new live album, Morning Star features his trademark tone, burning bends and singing vibrato. As for the solo at 2:43 - phew, what a scorcher!

Philip Sayce - Morning Star and Spanish Castle Magic

This two song mashup showcases his stunning guitar chops that blend Jeff Healey, Hendrix, SRV and Freddie King influences to create his own arresting style. Tone, taste and fire in equal measure!

Hello everyone, and welcome to my new Guitar World instructional column. In this series of lessons, I will be sharing and demonstrating some of my approaches to playing seven-string guitar and the various ways I use the instrument to craft the riffs that I write for my band, Spiritbox.

I’d like to kick things off with a look at some of the technical and musical elements I employ in our song Jaded, which we recorded for our 2023 EP, The Fear of Fear.

Essential to playing Jaded correctly is the tuning I use, which is drop-F# (low to high): F#, C#, F#, B, E, G#, C#. This is drop-A tuning (A, E, A, D, G, B, E), down one and one half steps, or a minor 3rd.

When transposing a tuning like this, some players prefer to think of the notes “normally,” meaning as if their guitar were in drop-A, with the understanding that everything sounds in a lower key.

Others acknowledge the absolute, concert-key pitches. I myself just visualize the shapes on the fretboard and play by ear without thinking about the note names.

As shown in Figure 1, I perform the intro riff that begins at 0:22 on my guitar’s bottom four strings, using mostly downstrokes – the only exceptions being the pairs of 16th notes, which I pick down-up.

As you can see, there’s a lot of string-skipping between the 7th string and either the 5th or 4th string. Doing so requires both precision and stamina with the pick hand, and it will take time to build up the accuracy that the riff demands.

I begin high up on the neck, at the 15th fret, and proceed to jump back and forth between high and low notes, with some very wide intervals, which I think creates an interesting, angular melodic contour that “pops” nicely.

Notice that I briefly apply palm-muting (P.M.) to the 16th notes on the open 7th-string, which makes them sound tight and percussive. Also notice, in bars 1, 3, 5 and 7, the long finger slides on the 5th string, from the 8th fret to the 14th, which is another important articulation element of the riff.

So, in addition to all the string-skips, there are a lot of quick position shifts, especially with the octave jumps in bar 9, which make the riff challenging to perform cleanly and consistently.

Figure 2 illustrates the song’s pre-chorus riff (0:59), which is very similar to the intro. There are slight differences between the first ending (bars 7 and 8) and the second ending (bars 9 and 10). Both times, I play strummed octaves on the 7th and 5th strings, again with some sliding and shifting, but notice that I change the order of the notes in the final bar, adding a slight twist to cap off the riff.

When playing both figures, strive for accuracy and economy of movement with the pick hand while also delivering the desired intense, aggressive feel. As with anything, practice it slowly at first, to establish the muscle, visual and auditory memory, then gradually increase the tempo to match that of the recording.

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Paul Gilbert is a rare example of a musician who has pushed the envelope of his instrument while also achieving commercial success.

He's a virtuoso guitarist who is respected worldwide for his work with shred metal pioneers Racer X. He's a bona fide rockstar who has topped the charts and filled arenas with Mr. Big, as well as maintaining a prolific and varied solo career. His latest album, WROC (which stands for Washington's Rules of Civility), could be his most outlandish offering to date.

Before all this though, Paul was a student and a tutor at LA's G.I.T. (Guitar Institute of Technology, later Musicians Institute) who stunned and informed '80s students with his speed and precision. He was the Yoda of rock for countless Jedi Padawans.

We asked him to look back at his trademark G.I.T. era licks, taking them from technique-building exercises to effective musical phrases. So grab your guitar and amp for this fun deep dive into the heady days of '80s shred licks to boost your chops and musicality!

Example 1a: A Dorian lick (0:21 in the video)

This example features the A Dorian mode (A B C D E F# G) and is played using legato (fretting hand hammer-ons and pull-offs) and outside picking (up-pick the first string, downpick the second string – the pick to string contact is outside the strings).

The sequence stays the same on the second string while the note on the first (high E) string moves up and down the scale. For the highest note (C on the 8th fret, first string), you will fret with the fourth finger and then roll it across so it frets the G note (8th fret, second string).

The first string notes are played with an upstroke, while the lone picked note on the second string is played with a downstroke. Paul suggests digging in hard to the picked notes to draw out pinched harmonics. This lick also works great with every note picked using strict up-down alternate picking.

Example 1b: A Dorian Lick, version 2 (6:35 in the video)

The same phrasing and picking articulation from exercise 1a can be extended to other note groupings from the A Dorian mode. Moving the sequence up a minor third introduces larger stretches that Paul frets with the first, third and fourth fingers again.

Experiment with the second finger in place of the third finger if this is uncomfortable, but be sure to pay attention to the wrist and elbow positioning.

As Paul points out in the video, the whole arm and hand play an important role in accessing speed and dexterity, a commonly overlooked part of good guitar technique.

Example 1c: Chromatic lick (7:50 in the video)

To demonstrate that this concept can work with any scale or set of notes, we have a chromatic version of the original exercise. Consider expanding this by starting on the third or fourth strings and introduce string skips.

Example 2a: E minor pentatonic lick (8:33 in the video)

This begins with an ascending E minor pentatonic (E G A B D) sequence favored by Jimmy Page and Ace Frehley who were big influences on Paul. It moves into classic Gilbert territory by adding the second degree of the minor scale, and a repeating pull-off motif on the top two strings.

The wrist roll from the first exercise is again employed. The liberal use of pull-offs makes the picking less of a concern, but players who want to replicate Paul’s approach (he often uses outside picking to cross strings) will want to play close attention to the pick strokes indicated below the tab.

Example 2b: E minor blues lick (14:45 in the video)

Here's a great minor blues companion to exercise 2a that features rolls, bends, hammer-ons and pull-offs. Mr. Big recordings and Paul's more recent solo albums feature plenty of ideas like this, and players such as Nuno Bettencourt, Zakk Wylde and John Sykes use similar concepts.

Take your time and work in small sections before piecing it all together – a common approach to shred guitar creativity.

Example 2c: E minor blues lick, version 2 (15:00 in the video)

This variation of Paul's previous minor blues lick breaks up the phrasing with strategic rest strokes and staccato picking. All three exercises here demonstrate the power of rearranging familiar pentatonic box shape with select notes from the minor, Dorian and blues scales. Lots of fresh options and lots of fun!

Example 3a: The Hip A7 scale: A Mixolydian+b3+b5 (16:48 in the video)

Paul’s creative approach to playing over dominant chords often features a hybrid Mixolydian, Dorian and Blues scale he simply calls 'The Hip A7 Scale'. It's A Mixolydian (A B C# D E F# G) plus b3 (C note) and b5 (Eb note).

The example below simply lays the notes out on the fretboard - learn this first then you'll appreciate the next example on a deeper theoretical level. This fully rounded approach to tuition was a key element of G.I.T – expand student's theory and technique for wider musical expression.

Example 3: The Hip A7 lick (15:31 in the video)

Paul's Hip A7 lick is a perfect example of venturing beyond rigid scale shapes and embracing the bluesy foundations of rock guitar, where conviction and style reign supreme.

Building on the ingredients from exercise 3a, this sequence sounds sophisticated by contrasting chord tones from A7 (the notes are A C# E G) with extensions and alterations like the minor third (#9 - C), flattened fifth (#11 - Eb) and sixth (13th - F#).

Adding these notes to a dominant 7th chord's notes (or even the minor or major pentatonics) is a great way to morph rock and blues licks into jazz and fusion lines.

Paul Gilbert discusses his fretting hand technique

How did your fretting hand’s third and fourth fingers get strong and independent of each other?

My first two years on guitar were all self-taught. For some reason, I only used my middle finger. When I finally started taking lessons, my teacher suggested an exercise to get my other fingers moving. The exercise was one-finger-per-fret, across all six strings, starting on the 1st fret. I had big hands as an 11-year-old, so I could handle playing F, F#, G, G# with all four fingers on the sixth string. That became a habit.

So when I learned an A minor scale with A, B, C on the first string, I used my first finger, third finger, and pinky (fourth finger). It worked right away, so I never considered an alternative. I must admit that few of my '70s guitar heroes use this fingering, and I certainly wouldn't have them change anything. In most cases, I don't think there is a particular advantage. It's more a personal quirk. But once in a while that fingering will offer something unique, plus I'm just used to it.

How did you develop strength and stamina for big stretches?

I used to play [Van Halen's] Spanish Fly over and over again when I was a teenager. That was my daily warm-up. I also practiced trills between all my fingers. A trill between the third finger and fourth finger takes some doing! And I would even practice these on a bass, to build more stamina. I was 18 years old. Now if I need stamina, I just use 7s!

How did you develop your fourth finger vibrato?

I do pinky vibrato all the time, with help from the other fingers! And it's actually the wrist (a much larger and powerful body part) that's driving the whole thing. I wouldn't dare send the energy of my wrist into my pinky by itself. I'd get an injury, fast! So the pinky is just getting the note, and the other fingers are providing more skin and stability.

What is good rock vibrato?

Let's take a look at bad vibrato first, as we can learn from it. The most common bad vibrato is when the vibrato starts fast... then freezes. To fix it, just flip the order around. Start with no vibrato. Then gradually speed it up. Then you need to have a stylish transition out of it. That can be a slide, a pitch scratch, an intentional stop, or a muted sweep into the next chord. Use anything to get out of the vibrato before it freezes!

In terms of technique, frozen notes typically come from the wrist being in a classical position under the neck. Look up some photos of the vibrato masters of the '70s. Jimi Hendrix, Brian May, Gary Moore, Jimmy Page, Ace Frehley, and Leslie West all have their thumbs hanging over the top of the neck. This is an indication of where the wrist is. The wrist drives the vibrato. The wrist is powerful! Frozen notes disappear!

Nobody told me any of that when I was a kid. I just wanted to look and sound like Jimmy Page. And the low-slung guitar helped, as it banished classical hand position. For rock vibrato, the low-slung guitar gets the wrist in just the right place. I wear my guitar up a bit higher these days, but my vibrato technique was honed with a long guitar strap and '70s heroes in my ears.

What is a common fretting hand problem you could help everyone solve?

So much of my style is dependent on a "wrist up" rock wrist position. Besides the power and control of wrist-driven vibrato, it also makes it easier to do finger rolls from string to string on the same fret. It makes noise-control easier, as it gets you in position to mute adjacent strings to the one you're playing. And I believe the rock wrist position gives extra strength and speed to hammer-ons and pull-offs as well.

The only time I make an exception is on barre chords, or big stretches on the lower strings. For those, I just tilt the neck up a bit to get my wrist in temporary classical position until the phrase is done, and then I'm back to rock wrist. For all of this, the most important part of your hand is... your ears!

Paul Gilbert's new album, WROC, is out now.

More Paul Gilbert!

Racer X - Street Lethal

While Mr Big launched Paul to bona fide rock god status, the title track of the debut Racer X album established him as a shred superhero. Blistering three-notes-per-string sequences, intense vibrato and surgical diad riffing make Street Lethal stand out!

Paul Gilbert - Go Not Thither

Paul channels the pentatonic swagger of Mahogany Rush, Pat Travers and Montrose with this uptempo groove from his latest album WROC. The solo seamlessly blends Mixolydian, Dorian and blues scale phrases with a syrupy tone and vibrato which highlights the influence of Robin Trower.

One of the standout tracks from my new album, B.B. King: Blues Summit 100, is a cover of the iconic tune When Love Comes to Town, which is a song King had recorded with U2 in 1988, an unlikely pairing that worked out phenomenally well and became very popular when it was released the following year.

Bono had written the song specifically with B.B. in mind, and they recorded it together at Sun Studios in Memphis. B.B. would subsequently perform the song live with U2 nearly 50 times.

There are many really cool guitar parts in this song, not only from B.B. but also from the Edge, who played a solo, which was delightfully surprising, as it is very unusual to hear him play in this type of blues context.

The Edge’s solo has his signature ethereal sound, so in approximating it, we plugged in a TC Electronic 2290, an AMS reverb – using anything we could find from that era at Sunset Sound in L.A. – and the results are sonically appropriate.

Using that sound, I played a solo in his style, along the lines of Figure 1. The solo is based on simple combinations of quarter and eighth notes, incorporating the open low and high E strings and the open B string, as well as a strummed E5 chord, with all notes allowed to ring into each other.

When it’s B.B.’s turn to solo, he gets right to classic B.B.-style phrasing, like Figure 2. Played in the “B.B. box,” the fret-hand is rooted in 5th position, starting with a big vibrato on an E root note and followed by succinct phrases that draw notes from both E major pentatonic (E, F#, G#, B, C#) and E minor pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D).

Figures 3 and 4 are based on the same approach, this time moving from the tonic chord, E, to the IV (four) chord, A, without changing positions. All of these improvised melodies are played in the same 5th-position box.

The original track offers a great lesson in the power of simplicity in the parts of both guitarists. The Edge played in his style and B.B. played in his, and the two work so well together.

When we set about to record our version of the song, we invited Slash, Miles Kennedy and Shemekia Copeland to contribute their talents, and they all did a fantastic job, putting their own stamp on this classic song.

There are many approaches Slash could have taken for his solo, and I thought it was cool that he did his own thing, utilizing his signature “rock” approach along the lines of Figure 5.

In this example, the first three bars are based on E minor pentatonic in 12th position, shifting in bar 4 up to 15th position then back to 12th position heading into bar 5. Moving into bar 6, the lines shift up to 17th position then back down to 5th position at the end of the bar.

The beauty of soloing over this song’s progression is you can stick with E-scale riffs the entire time, moving simply between the I and IV chords, as the tune never goes to the V (five) chord, B. I encourage you to make it your own, which is the approach Slash took quite effectively here.

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Last month, I discussed some of the advantages of playing in a power trio, such as the open harmonic canvas that it affords me as a guitar player. Threw Me to the Wolves is a song of mine that presents many opportunities to explore and exploit the creative freedom that the three-piece ensemble allows.

With the song’s solo section, my mindset is that we’re at the start of a musical journey, and it’s my mission to “tell a story” that will take the audience from one place to another. In this lesson, I’d like to share how I go about doing that.

Let’s first look at the solo section’s chord progression. As shown in Figure 1, we’re in the key of A minor, and the progression begins with the bVI (flat six) chord, F(sus2), which moves to the bVII (flat seven) chord, G5, then resolves to the tonic, or root, chord, Am. Each chord lasts for two beats, so the first bar is Fsus2 to G5, and the second bar is Am to G5. This two-bar pattern then repeats throughout the solo.

For the F and G chords, no 3rd is played, which gives me more melodic freedom when soloing. This sense of “open harmony” allows me to hold long, sustaining notes over all three chords, and then travel through the progression with melodic freedom, in my quest for memorable, singable solos.

Figure 2 illustrates how I get into the solo. Taking an Eric Clapton/Albert King-inspired approach, I begin with a whole-step bend from D, the 4th, up to E, the 5th, which I hold and shake, after which I slowly move back down to the A root note via the notes D and C, as well as the 2nd, B. The overall scale I rely on here is A minor hextatonic (A, B, C, D, E, G), which is A minor pentatonic (A, C, D, E, G) with the note B, the 2nd, or 9th, added.

Another thing I love to do here is reference the chord progression with double-stops, specifically 6th intervals, or 6ths. Figure 3 has me sliding into a C-A double-stop over Fsus2, a D-B double-stop over G5 and an E-C double-stop over Am.

Figure 4 demonstrates a neat little trick I picked up from Joe Bonamassa: when playing a 6th or 10th interval as a double-stop, instead of fretting the higher note normally, play it one fret lower then bend it up a half step and add some vibrato, to make it really sing.

Another cool way to elaborate on 6ths is to create a “pedal tone”-type melody. In Figure 5, I begin with straight 6ths over Fsus2 and G5 then use the lower note as a rearticulated pedal tone against a melodic line played on higher strings.

I also like to reference each chord with simple triad arpeggios. In Figure 6, I play F, G and Am triads on the top three strings while adding vibrato in an Otis Rush-type manner.

Figure 7 and 8 illustrate a tremolo strumming technique I picked up from Stevie Ray Vaughan: Figure 7 shows Am, Bm, Csus2 and Dsus2 triads played on the top three strings. In Figure 8, I create a tremolo effect by lightly strumming the strings with the tip of my pick-hand index finger as quickly as possible.

This is the last installment of Hardwired for now. I hope you’ve been able to incorporate some of my ideas into your own playing and hope to see you at a show soon!

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A staple of many great country and country rock songs – and, in the hands of Jimmy Page and Albert Lee, rock songs – is the sound of the B-Bender.

For those unfamiliar, a B-Bender is a string-pulling device built into a guitar, most often a Fender Telecaster, that allows the player to raise the pitch of the B string by simply pulling down on the guitar strap. This enables one to emulate the pitch-bending sound of a pedal steel guitar, which works in a similar way, with pedals used to raise the pitches of individual strings or groups of strings.

The B-Bender was originally known as the “Parsons/White Pull-String,” because it was the brainchild of guitarist Clarence White and drummer Gene Parsons of the Byrds and Nashville West.

Legend has it that, while recording, Clarence said, “Hey, I need another finger to play this chord! Gene, come over here and push down on my B string behind the nut to raise the pitch.” Gene reportedly said, “You know, I can build a device that will do that for you.” And thus the Parsons/White B-Bender was born.

Part of the guitar’s body is hollowed out for a pulley system: a rod is attached to the strap button above the neck, and when this rod is pulled downward (by pulling on the strap), the pulley system raises the pitch of the B string inside the bridge up to one whole step.

As a young guitarist, I was completely under the spell of all of the fantastic B-Bender players, including White, Marty Stuart, Lee and Page, who used a B-Bender guitar brilliantly on the 1979 Led Zeppelin album In Through the Out Door.

Like most players, I was forced to learn how to attain the B-Bender sounds on a standard guitar long before I attained one equipped with a B-Bender.

As shown in Figure 1, while holding down the notes B and F# at the 7th fret on the top two strings, I can bend the F# up to G#. This technique, where one note rises while another remains stationary, is known as an oblique bend.

We have a Blackberry Smoke song called Sleeping Dogs, in which I play B-Bender-type licks on a standard guitar. As shown in Figure 2, there’s a turnaround in the song that goes D5 - E (or E7) - G7 - D.

Figures 3 and 4 illustrate the licks I play over these chords, for which I bend my G string downward to raise an E note up to F#.

Years ago I’d go see Rick Richards from the Georgia Satellites, who played a Les Paul Junior through a dimed Hiwatt amp. He was the king of Chuck Berry-style licks, like the one shown in Figure 5, and he’d play beautiful licks like Figures 6 and 7 that emulated the B-Bender sound by bending his G string while holding two-note forms on the top two strings.

In Figure 8, I begin by bending into an E major triad (E, G#, B) and then play a lick based on E major pentatonic (E, F#, G#, B, C#) combined with the E blues scale (E, G, A, Bb, B, D).

In Figure 9, the oblique bend technique is applied to the top two strings with the bends on the B and G strings.

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One of the coolest and most badass-sounding things a guitarist can do is double a long, complex bassline an octave higher. This was my approach for the song Dean Town, which I recorded with Vulfpeck for our 2016 album, The Beautiful Game.

The tune was inspired by legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius’ Teen Town, which he recorded with Weather Report on the 1975 album Heavy Weather.

Like Teen Town, the bassline in Dean Town is a through-composed melody, which means it’s a continuous and non-repetitive piece of music.

The melody was written by our keyboard player Woody Goss and “made famous” by bassist Joe Dart. I decided to octave-double Joe’s intricate bassline through the long initial section of the tune, which was challenging!

Before launching into the melodic line, let’s take a look at the basic underlying chord changes, outlined in Figure 1. In the song, each of these notes – F#, C#, E and B – is played for two full bars, as steady 16th notes. So it’s an eight-bar loop. The tune’s melody is 16 bars long and is played over the eight-bar progression two times.

The first time the 16-bar melody, or “head,” is played, it’s performed by the bass alone. The second time through, I octave-double it on guitar.

This 16-bar melody is shown in Figure 2. Using palm-muting throughout, I begin with a one-beat pickup, and bar 1 starts with the 16th notes E-D#-C#-A, followed by the root note, F#, which falls on beat 2. Right from the start, this is a little deceptive, as the low F# root note hits you like it’s on “1,” but it is in fact on beat 2.

As you play through the line, you’ll see that it includes some complex, syncopated rhythms driven by eighth and 16th notes and rests, with many “holes” dropped into unexpected places.

Bar 6 begins with a four-note chromatic row, from F# up to A, followed by high melodic notes that bounce off open low-E 16th note syncopations. Bars 7 and 8 circle around B7 with the notes of B major pentatonic (B, C#, D#, F#, G#), which resolves in bar 9 to F#m, with the bar ending with dead-string hits and a high chordal accent on the final 16th note of the bar.

Bars 10-12 offer a break from the barrage of 16th notes with repeated eighth-note accents on the F# root note, only to return to very syncopated lines in bars 13-16.

The biggest challenge when doubling a complex, rhythmically dense bassline like this is precision. It simply will not work and will sound sloppy if I don’t nail every phrase and mirror the articulations of the bass.

Later in the tune, I play a funky rhythm part high up on the fretboard that consists of syncopated double-stops on the G and B strings, shown in Figure 3. Notice that each bar repeats and how the notes work with the underlying chord changes. Utilizing two-note chords like this is a great way to outline the harmony with just a minimal amount of information and textural density.

This is the last installment of my column Follow the Groove for now, so I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these columns and the ideas presented have been useful to you. See you on the road!

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When putting the tracks together for B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100 – my band’s two-disc, 32-track tribute to B.B. King in celebration of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 16, 2025 – we knew that the most essential track would be The Thrill Is Gone.

B.B. originally recorded this song back in 1969 for the Completely Well album, and it immediately became his signature tune and the most successful record of his career.

The Thrill Is Gone is so iconic, in fact, that no one wanted to cover it! I felt that I had two choices: one would have been to approach a young, budding blues artist with no fear about tackling the beast!

Luckily enough, we were able to get Chaka Khan for vocals and Eric Clapton for guitar. They are the crown jewels, two of music’s greatest icons, paying tribute to an icon.

When I listen to B.B.’s original version of The Thrill Is Gone, one of the most striking things is that every lick he plays sounds perfect, like it’s etched in stone. But I’m sure that he simply improvised everything you hear on the track right off the top of his head.

The eternal question is always, “How do I get into the tune?” For B.B., the answer is as simple as the riff shown Figure 1, which is along the lines of what’s heard on the record.

The phrase is based on B minor pentatonic (B, D, E, F#, A), with the 2nd, or 9th, C#, added here and there, as well as the major 7th, A#, when playing over the F#7 chord in bar 9. And the stabs on the high B note in bar 6 are elemental to B.B.’s signature style.

This figure is indicative of B.B.’s purely melodic and effortless approach, which is almost like jazz. His lines are so strong that they’re melodies unto themselves. Along with his distinctive touch, tone and phrasing, his solo lines are as integral to the tune as the chords and lyrics.

This is borne out by the fact that any time The Thrill Is Gone is covered, the guitar player will “quote” B.B. with a phrase like Figure 2. What you hear are long, sustained notes with heavy vibrato, followed by elegant melodic phrases.

When you listen to the great masters of this craft – B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Albert King – you realize that these phrases just flow naturally. There’s no thought involved. I very much doubt B.B. sat there and worked out a phrase like Figure 3.

On the recording, B.B. used a very clean tone, like a Fender Twin that’s barely turned up. Figure 4 is meant to be played in a subtle and delicate way. There’s no sustain coming from the amp, but there’s so much feel.

You can hear the tactility of his fingers, and you should aim for that feeling and mindset when playing a phrase like Figure 5. Notice the use of pull-offs, slides and quarter- and half-step bends, all of which make the lines that much more vocal-like.

The Thrill Is Gone is not just a beautiful piece of music, it’s a track that features some of B.B’s most iconic playing on that particular take. He never played the song the same way twice, but every version illustrates his brilliance as a true blues master.

• B.B. King's Blues Summit 100 is out now via KTBA Records.
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Ally Venable is an award-winning blues-rock guitarist and singer-songwriter who is adding new sounds and colors to contemporary blues. Her latest offering, Money & Power, continues that trajectory. Integral to her success is her guitar style, which combines hot Texas blues licks reminiscent of Buddy Guy and Albert King along with modern funk, pop, and soul influences.

For her Guitar World lesson, Ally uses the blues form as a canvas in the key of G. This means she's playing the classic I-IV-V blues chords of G7, C7, and D7. She also incorporates an approach chord of B7 into the C7.

The first skill you are going to look at is a funky 16th note-strumming pattern, and we recommend some easy drills to tighten up your strumming hand.

Most music is in 4/4 time, which means four beats to a bar, and the note value of each beat is a quarter note (often also called a crochet). Subdividing each of the four beats, you can play another group of 4 known as 16ths (ie 4 lots of 4 = 16). The 16th note pattern consists of alternating down and up strums from your picking hand, keeping the pick steady and even in tempo and volume. So, let’s first establish the strumming pattern of alternating down and up strums.

As Ally demonstrates, lay the fingers of the fretting hand lightly on the strings to dampen them. The 16th note pattern is counted 1–e-&-a, 2–e-&-a, 3–e-&-a, 4–e-&-a with the number referencing the main 4 beats in a 4/4 time signature groove. Start on a down strum then consistently keep the picking hand moving.

Once you have established this framework, you can mix up the rhythms and create more funky parts with some chords on and off the beats. This is known as syncopation, weaving in and out of the beats, and it's a vital aspect of being a groove based guitarist.

Ally suggests establishing a steady tempo – think of the main pulse in your head before you play – and a groove with just the muted strokes. In the video, she uses the top portion of a G7sus4#9 chord using the notes C-F-Bb.

Start the strumming hand going, and press the fretting hand fingers down when you want to hear the sound. Having all muted strums sounding all the time can sound a little boring, so the final stage is having some of the strums silent.

It is good practice to keep the strumming hand going up and down though, moving above the strings like the hand of a metronome. Remember, the strumming approach remains the same, it’s just the omission of various muted strokes and the fretting hand pushing down on the chord that creates the overall part.

Ally adds in basslines and further percussive elements to compensate for no bass player or drummer playing with her. Certainly, this works great for a grooving solo guitar part and can always be reduced and simplified when bass and drums are included.

To spice up the move from the V chord (D7) and the IV chord (C7), Ally uses a SRV style lick that uses sliding sixths to outline D6 and D9 chords. Alongside all the important chords used in the video, we have included the full chord shapes of these sixth intervals (D6-D9-C6-C9) to provide context as to how the lick works. Experiment with these shapes yourself.

Ally's playing ends with a classic Delta Blues style walk down on the fourth and fifth strings in the style of Robert Johnson. You will notice she hides the pick in her hand in order to pluck the strings with her thumb and first finger.

What follows are the chord shapes featured in her performance for you to learn and then the tab/notation for the playing detail.

When you work on this, we recommend you start slowly so your fingers know what they're doing. Once everything is well learnt, then build up to Ally's final tempo. After this, you maybe inspired enough to explore your own blues grooves. Enjoy!

• Ally Venable tours the UK with special guest Garret T. Willie from September 8-17.

Chords galore from Ally's performance (ordered in groups of G, C, and D plus the slinky B7!)

Example 1 – Ally's Blues Groove in G

For bars 1-4, a G7 based chord riff is played using fragments of C7sus4 and C before resolving to a G7, complete with a quick bluesy hammer-on from Bb to B. The 16th note strumming is played with constant down and up strums while muted strings and chords are created by the fretting hand. You will notice that no bar has the same playing in it, with small variations each time that create excitement and variety.

For bars 5-8, you will move to the IV chord (C7). Extra interest is introduced into the C7 groove with a brief dip down to B7 one fret lower. The walking bass line from E back up to G is classic blues fare. You then repeat the part that was established in the first four bars.

For bars 9-13, you move to the V chord (D7). To spice this up, Ally employs a SRV-style lick that uses sliding sixths on the third and first strings. This provides tasty upper D6 and D9 colors and contrast to the lower D7 chord shape. This sixth based lick is repeated two frets lower to outline the IV chord (C7). As the saying goes, if it's nice, play it twice!

Her performance ends with a Robert Johnson style lick, and Ally quickly moves over to fingerstyle to pluck the two notes. Use the thumb and first finger to pinch the two notes, putting the pick between your fingers to keep it out of the way (unless you want to hybrid pick this with pick and the second finger).

Ally Venable songs you need to hear

Money & Power

Money & Power is the title track from Ally’s latest album and features a classic blues-rock groove. The sliding power chord stabs give way to insistent 1/8th note chugging and blues scale riff action. Ally’s heartfelt vocal delivery is to the fore, and there is a ripping wah wah guitar solo to enjoy. Various classic tricks are used, such as a post solo breakdown to one guitar playing the main riff, and then the rest of the band kicking in.

Broken & Blue

Ally’s track Broken & Blue is taken from her 2023 album, Real Gone. This track is a take on a classic minor blues with some great chord changes added in. The 6/8 groove presents a perfect opportunity to play a tasteful arpeggio accompaniment and this is embellished with nice fills. Ally’s vocals are heartfelt, and the track is finished with an extended guitar solo that uses classic blues vocabulary, à la SRV and Joe Bonamassa.

Steve Morse's articulate and expansive technique is admired the world over. His new power trio album, Triangulation, features his versatile picking, colorful riff sequencing and searing string bends – plus two guitar elite friends in Eric Johnson and John Petrucci.

Steve has kindly agreed to this unique tutorial on big intervals, a core component of his trademark style. He defines big intervals as anything larger than using adjacent notes, such as playing a linear scale (eg root, second, third). Typically, big intervals involve skipping strings, and he does this in both his compositions and general playing to outline chords.

Wide intervals often have an ear-grabbing quality, be they quickly played or sustained as long as possible to give the effect of accompaniment and melody happening at the same time. To facilitate this, Steve often uses open strings as they can be left to ring on while the fretted notes change.

For the video performance, five contrasting approaches are stitched together with eighth-note chugging to create a functioning mini etude. We have carved this up into five tabbed four-bar examples. Steve then talks us through these five examples, highlighting all the extra details and we have included all the relevant notation markings in the tab so you can follow along.

There are technical hurdles to overcome when articulating wide intervals, and in the video Steve demonstrates ways to approach string skipping and the use of open strings. He also sometimes frets the bass notes on the sixth string by wrapping the fretting hand thumb over the top of the neck. If you find this awkward, Steve demonstrates that it’s possible to rework the fingering of the chords.

This performance is fairly involved so we’d recommend starting slowly and using the slowdown feature to really focus on the picking hand.

Example 1. Arpeggiating chords

This first example is an arpeggio melody idea using diatonic chord changes from the key of D. The open voiced triads are played with a down, down, up picking pattern as shown under the tab. Steve uses any and all available strings to transition from chord to chord smoothly.

The open first and second string notes are a colorful addition, helping with fluid transitions and tonal contrast to their fretted counterparts. The bass notes on the sixth string are played by wrapping the fretting hand thumb over the top of the neck.

Example 2. Using open strings

For this second example, Steve goes all out to demonstrate the power of using open strings by using all six! You'll start by targeting the open first string and then move down in order to the sixth string. The picking pattern is down-pick, hammer-on, up-pick, and this creates a cascade effect.

Steve goes for a little bit of economy picking here (bar 3, beat 2) either side of an outside picking movement and the double E down picking. We have included all of the picking directions in the tab, but feel free to experiment and find a method that feels comfortable to you.

Example 3. Skipping strings

This starts with an octave interval and then moves in contrary motion: as the top melody note ascends, the bottom note descends. This sounds sophisticated, but as there are only two notes, it is relatively easy to play.

Once again, the open strings are used to create a cascade effect over the C and G5 chords. As with the previous examples, there is some eighth note chugging on the open A5 to take us into next example. Steve uses down-picking to play this.

Example 4. Linear motion with string jumps

This next example is Steve’s favourite as it gives the impression of two parts happening at once. To improve the facility required to make the big stretches, the fretting hand thumb is placed back a little bit on the neck. It’s also good posture practice to keep the headstock of the guitar pointing up to the ceiling whilst maintaining a straight back.

Steve uses alternate picking for three notes on the fourth string and then the high melody note on the first string is played with an up pick. The ability to sustain the high note may feel awkward at first so perseverance – with some fretting hand relaxation/shake off pauses – is the ideal focus for progress.

Example 5. Melodic repetition and variation

Here, we are working on establishing a continuous obligato part (E-D#-E notes on the third string) underneath higher-string melodic motion. The example exploits Steve’s excellent picking technique.

We’d recommend taking this slowly to start with, just to get it under the fingers and to get all of the picking directions dialled in. Steve explains that he slightly changes his pick angle to make this easier to play, so feel free to experiment with the angle of your wrist. It's also worth exploring the angle of the pick when addressing the string: angled makes for an easier 'cut' (but often a raspier tone) while flat to the string can sound thicker (but results in more picking resistance).

How deep your pick goes either side of the string will provide you with further tone and technique realizations.

Example 6. Melodic repetition and variation (part 2)

To finish off you have a bonus example that demonstrates a variation on the previous example. Instead of just changing the top note and keeping the other notes underneath the same, you can also change the notes underneath.

Changing the notes underneath the melody note helps to clearly outline the tonality of the chord changes as they pass.

Steve Morse in action!

Steve Morse Band - Triangulation

Steve's trio in the studio – check out the riff, changing key centres and (of course!) sophisticated intervallic action. While John Petrucci isn't in the studio with them, you can hear his Morse influenced soloing very clearly.

A chief consideration when playing with a slide is the tuning. Many of our favorite slide players – Elmore James, Duane Allman, Johnny Winter, Derek Trucks – play slide almost exclusively in an open tuning, such as open E or G.

One great benefit of using an open tuning is that you can lay the slide across the strings at a given fret and sound a pleasing major chord.

But when playing slide in standard tuning, you don’t have that luxury and lose access to some of those familiar sounds. As a result, more attention and care is necessary in order to avoid unwanted sounds. You have to go “peckin’” to find the right ones!

Therein lies the compromise: standard tuning limits your options for sounding groups of strings together, but you retain all your familiar chord shapes and scale patterns, and you still can play a few sweet-sounding two- and three-note chords. In this way, playing slide in standard tuning is the best of both worlds.

For the Blackberry Smoke song Free on the Wing (Like an Arrow, 2016), which features Gregg Allman, I chose to play slide in standard tuning, albeit with my 6th string tuned down to D (drop-D tuning).

Doing this enables me to play a solid rhythm part throughout the track, and when it’s time for the slide parts, I use both hands to deliberately mute strings I’m not playing on at any given moment, so that only the “right” notes ring out.

The two key elements of slide playing are muting and intonation (pitch centering), and standard tuning raises the challenge for both a little bit more.

Free on the Wing opens with a beautiful D7/D9 keyboard part. Figure 1 illustrates the chord shapes, and Figure 2 shows how the part is played.

To ”answer” the keyboards, I play a vocal-like melody with a slide, as shown in Figures 3 and 4.

I prefer to use hybrid picking when playing slide, combining flatpicked downstrokes with fingerpicking. Duane Allman, Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes strictly fingerpick when playing slide, but I like the versatility of having the sound of fingerpicking augmented with the sound of the pick.

The slide solo comes out of the bridge section, illustrated in Figure 5. Drop-D tuning enables me to barre the power chords on the bottom two strings in measures 1 and 2, after which I jump to the slide solo, which is played over the repeating progression C - G/B - G - D - C - G - D.

As I do with the slide parts earlier in the tune, I play the solo in a very vocal-like manner, phrasing as deliberately and precisely as possible. Throughout the solo, I’m careful to sound only one note at a time as I mute the surrounding strings.

Many guitarists are wary of getting into slide playing because of these challenges, and starting in standard tuning or drop-D is a great way to dive in. Give it a shot! You’ll be surprised and delighted by the many great sounds you can discover and create.

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As I stated in my last column, my favorite band lineup is the guitar-bass-drums power trio. With the guitar being the primary chordal and melodic instrument in the ensemble, there are challenges inherent in the role.

But with those challenges come great freedoms to direct the music however I might feel like doing at any given moment on stage. This is something I strive to take advantage of in just about every song I play with my trio.

A great example of what I’m talking about here can be found in the title track to my 2022 EP Threw Me to the Wolves, which features both electric and acoustic versions of the tune.

Threw Me to the Wolves is a song that I play at just about every live show, and in that setting I like to stretch out and explore the song dynamically, from quiet, unaccompanied fingerpicking to full-on power trio Mountain-style soloing.

Essential to the song is the fingerpicked rhythm part during the verse sections. As shown in Figure 1, I play all 1st-position chords here, starting with Am to C to G5.

At the chorus, illustrated in Figure 2, the progression moves from Fsus2, sounded with the open G string, along with a thumbed-fretted low F root on the 6th string, to G5 then back to Am.

The primary rhythm part is built around a fingerpicking technique known as “dead thumb,” wherein thumb repeatedly strikes an open string in a steady rhythm, with a little bit of palm muting, while the fingers pick melody notes on the higher strings.

As shown in Figure 3, I pick the notes on the G, B and high E strings with my index and middle fingers in a syncopated manner over the thumbpicked open A string.

The verse moves to a C chord and is performed with the same thumbpicking technique (see Figure 4). Figure 5 focuses on the switch from Am to C.

Figure 6 illustrates the complete Am - C - G progression, with each chord presented in essentially the same fingerpicking style. The only difference is, for the G chord, I change the pattern to bring in a C note, sounding a Gsus4 chord. The chorus is made up of Fsus2 - G5 - Am played in the same manner.

The “dead thumb” technique provides a self-accompaniment, so once you have it down, you can explore playing a variety of improvised melodies along with the steady bass pattern, as I demonstrate in Figure 7. This is a great way to expand on the basic approach in a freely melodic way.

The solo section of Threw Me to the Wolves is wide open and lets me “breathe,” musically. With all of the sonic space afforded by the trio, I can really lean into what I’m doing. I like to take my time, use a lot of sustain and allow the music to blossom in a natural way.

As shown in Figure 8, I begin over an implied Am chord with a whole-step bend from D to E, followed by the minor 3rd, C. I then drop down to B, which is the major 3rd of the G chord. Throughout the remainder of the line, I alternate between the notes B, C and E over the F and G chords, which creates a great sound.

There’s something really special about how the song becomes a journey for both the band and our audience. As the guitarist in a power trio, it’s always an adventure to steer the journey down a new musical path.

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By the time you read this the last remaining guitars of Gary Moore’s collection to be auctioned will have proud new owners. Though most of us can only imagine what it must be like to own one of those hallowed instruments, we can all take inspiration from the music Gary conjured from their fretboards.

This example solo is influenced by a couple of landmark performances: first, Gary’s solo on the original (1974) version of Thin Lizzy’s Still In Love With You; and second, it borrows ideas from his live performances of Parisienne Walkways and Still Got The Blues over the years.

Though Gary was capable of great delicacy and accuracy on the instrument, this solo was inspired by his more fiery moments, plugging into an already driven Marshall amp and then boosting further with an Ibanez Tube Screamer. This is a classic combination, similar to how Gary would run his own live rigs.

One popular way to use a Tube Screamer is to turn the level up to maximum and hit the amp’s input hard. You still get the tone-shaping benefits of the boosted mids and attenuated low-end, and you can add more drive with the gain control if needed.

Gary certainly liked to use a lot of drive and was extremely adept at avoiding unwanted feedback/squealing by zeroing the volume knob between phrases. The Patent Applied For pickups on vintage Les Pauls were not wax-potted, so were more inclined to squeal than many modern ones.

Many believe unpotted pickups have a tone of their own, though at those levels, any pickup would be inclined to feed back. Another way Gary handled this was to allow the unused strings to ring momentarily before/between phrases, which gave his playing a rough edge and urgency. Hope you enjoy and see you next time!

Example 1

This opening phrase stays largely within the shape 1 A minor pentatonic, featuring held bends and controlled vibrato. We’re starting low and keeping things relatively simple and melodic for now, leaving some headroom for later on.

Gary was conversant with many styles and his note choice would often reflect this, a subtle example being the B in bar 3, which fits over the Dm/G chord. Soon afterwards, the final note (E) is the result of a slide outside shape 1 pentatonic into shape 2.

Example 2

We start with this ascending C major scale run, ending with a held bend. From here, you could regard this as a shape 4 A minor pentatonic phrase, changing over the subsequent Esus4-E chords to an E dominant 7th arpeggio based phrase (or E Mixolydian if you prefer).

These terms can sound a little daunting, but it’s important to remind ourselves that they are simply names for sounds. We’re staying in the same position on the fretboard throughout.

Example 3

We’re reaching something of a peak with this high-register phrase, with higher speed playing and some push/pull in the timing.

Also, note the brief open-string noise before the ascending A minor pentatonic run. We’re working with shape 1 again here, an octave above the opening phrase.

Keep an eye on the picking directions: some of them may seem counterintuitive at first, but they allow you to reach surprisingly high speeds with relatively little effort. This kind of playing was a big influence on the young John Sykes.

Example 4

Keeping things simple and melodic over the Dm/B chord, there is a final flourish coming over the Esus4-E chords with a return to the E dominant 7th arpeggio/E Mixolydian idea.

This is more of a nod to Gary’s fusion years with Colosseum II, though he does visit this kind of phrasing briefly during the outro of the full length version of Still Got The Blues. It just felt right at the time!

Hear it here

Thin Lizzy – Nightlife

The version of Still In Love With You from this album features Gary’s original solo, which inspired Brian Robertson’s much-loved version from the Live And Dangerous album.

This original solo is at a significantly higher tempo yet starts with a classic blues feel. You can hear where Gary’s playing would head in later years as the solo progresses to those high notes, though. Another version of this solo worth hearing is by John Sykes on Lizzy’s Life: Live album.

Gary Moore – Blues Alive

Taken from recordings of Gary’s then-recent 1992 tour, this album is (of course) full of great playing, but make sure to pay particular attention to the live versions of Still Got The Blues and Parisienne Walkways.

These give us the closest insight into how Gary plays in the heat of the moment. You’ll hear him allow lots of open strings to ring into and between phrases, which helps minimize unwanted feedback and gives his playing an exciting and urgent edge.

Gary Moore – Back On The Streets

This solo album from 1978 showcases Gary’s transition from fusion into his ‘rock’ era, which continued through the '80s.

There is the original version of Parisienne Walkways, featuring some very precise, controlled playing, and What Would You Rather Bee Or A Wasp, which takes a more flamboyant approach but features more fusion-influenced harmonic ideas.

The title track demonstrates that Gary was very aware of the punk explosion but didn’t feel the need to dumb down his playing.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Today, I’d like to talk about the legacy of the legendary B.B. King, as 2025 marked what would have been his 100th birthday. I met B.B. in 1990 when I was 13 years old, and we became lifelong friends. He was the nicest and most generous person I’ve ever known.

I recently recorded a tribute album in B.B.’s honor, Blues Summit 100. Sadly, he passed at the age of 89 on May 14, 2015, but he left behind a trove of the most essential and influential blues recordings of all time. Everything that I and most other blues and blues-rock influenced guitarists play, owes a tip to the hat to B.B.

The title of my tribute album references the guitarist’s 1993 release Blues Summit, which features duets with Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins, and others. Following in that tradition, Blues Summit 100 includes appearances by Buddy Guy, Slash, Marcus King, Jimmie Vaughan, Kirk Fletcher, and a variety of other guests.

When you talk about legendary guitarists and their indelible marks, there are some who can be identified upon hearing them play a few notes. With B.B., all it takes is one note! That’s it! Just one stinging vibrato and you know it can only be him.

B.B.’s soloing style was built on killer melodic phrases, like the one demonstrated in Figure 1.

Played in the key of B and based on a combination of B major pentatonic (B, C#, D#, F#, G#) and B minor pentatonic (B, D, E, F#, A), this lick is played in 12th position, in what’s often referred to as the “B.B. box.” All of the notes fall within that four-fret span, with the 1st finger anchored at the B string’s 12th fret. In bar 1, notice the essential whole-step bend of F# up to G# on beat 2.

In bar 2, I jump up to accent a high B note followed by a slide down to 7th position and a quick descending lick based on B minor pentatonic, phrased in B.B.’s style.

In Figure 2, I again begin in the same box but then shift down to 7th position for faster phrases based on B minor pentatonic, ending with a nod to B major pentatonic with the inclusion of the 6th, G#.

King was faster than he’s usually given credit for, as he would blaze through licks like these in just about every tune.

He also had some jazz influences, most notably Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, which he’d reference with licks like that shown in Figure 3, which begins in the manner of a horn line.

To telegraph a key change, B.B. would suddenly play a lick in, say, Bb, and when the band fell in behind him, he’d play expressive lines starting with a chordal stab, as in Figure 4.

B.B. had such an original catalog of licks, and there are many phrases I’ve learned from him that pop into my playing. Figures 5 and 6 are prime examples.

For me, as a blues player, it always starts and ends with B.B. King. Among my favorite albums are Indianola Mississippi Seeds, with Changing Things, Completely Well, with The Thrill Is Gone, and, of course, the burning Live at the Regal.

B.B. was so original and so powerful a player; his influence can be heard everywhere. He could plug into anything and would always sound like himself. Happy 100th birthday to B.B. King!

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Crafting an appealing guitar solo for a song is always a creative challenge. There are many different approaches one can take: Do I follow the chord changes so that the notes line up perfectly with the progression? Or should I simply strive to “be melodic,” like a singer, even if the notes are a little less “anchored” to each chord?

For me, the best approach is usually to follow the “song within a song” compositional concept, while also being aware of what each chord in the progression affords me as a soloist.

A good example of this can be heard in the track Meditation, from my 2020 album Elevated Music for an Elevated Mood. It’s a song that I play at most of my shows, and I know there are certain things that will always work, but I don’t want to always lean on those things; sometimes I just want to explore and see where the music will go.

Compositionally, the tune is pretty simple, with a clearly defined melody built into a primary guitar part.

As shown in Figure 1, I begin by outlining the chords with 10th intervals, also known simply as “10ths,” starting with an E major chord built from the open low E root note and a major 3rd above it, G#, sounded in the next higher octave, which creates a 10th. I use my pick and middle finger to pick the notes on the low E and G strings.

These two-note forms built from 10ths move up to F#m, G#m and Bm, and then descend to A, followed by an E major chord. At the end of bar 3, I include G major, with the notes G and B, and in bar 4 move down to F#m and E. This is repeated in bars 5 and 6. In bar 7, I play a Jimi Hendrix-style riff on beat 3, followed by the chord changes D - A/C# - E.

Figure 2 shows the slight variations I introduce the second time through. In bar 3, I play Gmaj7 instead of G, and in bars 6-8, I move to higher chord voicings and phrases for the E - D - A/C# - E changes.

This progression sets up a great vibe to solo over, and I’ll usually begin in a reflective or contemplative way. And though I keep the individual chords in mind, I often simply think E Mixolydian (E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D), E major (E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D#), or E major pentatonic (E, F#, G#, B, C#) and sometimes even E minor pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D), depending on where I am in the progression.

Throughout the section, I’ll mostly sit on E major pentatonic, except over the G chord in bar 4 and the D chord in bar 8. In these spots, I try to avoid playing any notes that will clash with the chord, such as G#.

Figure 3 offers an example of drawing from a melodic sensibility first and foremost, which is always a solid approach. In bars 1 and 2, I’m moving freely through E major pentatonic, but at the end of bars 2 and 7, I target a D note over the D chord.

My goal is to make the lines sound like they belong together, “singing” my way through the solo as melodically as I can. And if the ideas are solid, they can become repeatable motifs.

Starting with a contemplative vibe allows me to build a slow arc to increase the intensity in a natural way, so that I can lead the listener on an engaging musical journey. And maintaining the connection to the chord progression can help make the solo sound and feel like an integral part of the song.

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Last time, I spoke about writing heavy-sounding riffs, which is what I’m tasked with when working with Black Country Communion, featuring Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals, Jason Bonham on drums and Derek Sherinian on keyboards.

The music of this band is very much inspired by the classic recordings of bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Free, Mountain and others.

When approaching writing a heavy riff, sometimes simplicity wins the day. Our namesake song, Black Country, was written by accident. I was at Glenn’s house – we’ve written all our songs in the same writing room so far, with me playing a guitar through an old Epiphone amp.

We were just talking and wrapping up the day, and without any thought I began playing the riff in Figure 1, which is based on the E Phrygian mode (E, F, G, A, B, C, D). I play 16th-note triplets with repeating E notes followed by a slide up one fret to F, a slide back down to E and a pull-off to D.

On beat 4, the riff ends with the notes A, B and D played in slower eighth-note triplets. Glenn heard it and said, “What’s that?” I said, “I don’t know!”

Next thing you know, he’s doubling that riff on bass, and the pieces started to fall together into a song. Figure 2 shows the big D5, E5 and A5 power chords we move into, after which the lick modulates up a 4th to A Phrygian (A, Bb, C, D, E, F, G), as shown in Figure 3, before reverting back to the riff in E.

As a heavy song, it coalesces when the band plays it in a tight, precise way. This is where, for my guitar part, palm muting (P.M.) comes into play.

Palm muting effectively reigns in the sound here; without it, the guitar riff would sound like a mess. It’s all about chiseling out the riff: I will alter the amount of palm muting as I play the riff, in order to change the feel and expressiveness of it, and I’ll also rotate my pick to a different angle for a sharper sound.

I take a similar approach with my tune The Ballad of John Henry, as illustrated in Figure 4. This riff is based on E minor pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D), and part of creating it was deciding where to play the open low E note in conjunction with the fretted E on the 5th string.

For the G5 and A5 chords in bar 2, I thumb-fret the 6th-string notes and include all of the strings in the voicing except for the G string, which I mute with my fret-hand fingers.

When playing the song live, I add an Em chord to the riff, as shown in Figure 6. In bars 1 and 3, on beat 3, I fret E and G notes on the A and D strings, respectively, and strum across all six strings to get the open top three strings into the voicing.

Bars 3-8 illustrate the pre-chorus riff, which alternates between B5 power chords and sliding octaves that move between C, B and A, with an Am(add2) chord sounded in bars 4, 6 and 8.

And – are you ready for this? – most of my favorite heavy riffs are played in standard tuning, although Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix and others made things just a little heavier by sometimes tuning down.

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At first glance, it might seem that Marlin Perkins should put rock rhythm guitar on the endangered species list. But on higher ground, it's easy to see there is a lot more rhythm guitar playing than most people think about.

Wah-wah guitar, simple strumming, power chords, and chunky R&B phrasing are just some of the family relations that papa Berry's Johnny B. Goode spawned.

The Seventies produced few if any guitar heroes from the rhythm side. The Sixties of Berry, Richards, Townsend, Lennon, and Hendrix still pave much of the most-traveled roads. And while new avenues are beginning to open up in the hands of Andy Summers, Andy Gill, and Buzzy Feiten, it's still too early to tell how much of a mark they'll make on the grand map of time.

Since the mid-Sixties, the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir has been absorbing and redefining the subtle complexities that link the past to the future of rhythm guitar playing. His most recent insights are shared on [the 1981 album] Bobby & the Midnites.

Weir started by copying the guitar figures of Joan Baez and progressed onto the country blues of Reverend Gary Davis, who for a short time was his only “real” teacher. Today his ideas for rhythm guitar playing come from listening to pianist McCoy Tyner and string quartets.

Tapping those years of experience on stage and in the studio, Bob Weir offers the following insights into developing your skills as a rock rhythm guitar player.

1. Playing With The Band

“Gary Davis taught me how one guitar player could be a whole band. I've never applied this directly on stage. It's too complicated for a whole band to fall behind, especially a band with six members.

“When you play with another guitarist or keyboard player, you're either going to dance around or walk all over each other. It's one or the other. So you have to play with other people you like and who will listen to you. And of course, you have to listen to them. Play long jams together, tape them, and find out who is good at what.

“If you're playing in a band, you have to get over the soloist ego hangup. You've got to listen to the whole sound. When you're first starting to learn, it's especially difficult to not sort of concentrate on what you yourself are doing. It's hard to step away from that and hear what the whole thing sounds like. The tape will do that for you. Go back and listen to see how everything fits together.

“You've got to listen for what a song needs. Even if you've got three guitarists in the band (remember Moby Grape?) at one point two of them have got to be comping behind the third one. They are going to have to work as one instrument.

“If you think of yourself as two lead guitarists working together, then suddenly you have a whole new different approach to rhythm guitar. You might play two or three notes and start thinking in terms of counterpoint. If you're thinking of three notes, you can start throwing in leading tones.”

2. On Developing A Part

“When you get close to a song it will tell you what kind of texture to play. Something that I like to do is try and be a horn or string section.

“For instance, on Sugar Magnolia, I'm a cross between a brass section and a guitar. I'm playing lots of triads punctuated by a line here and there and then another triad.

“There are two separate registers that I play off of. The alto register is the brass section and the baritone register is the guitar. It goes back and forth and I try and get a swing thing happening between the two.

“In this particular case the song developed because I was playing brass licks that I heard on a Delaney and Bonnie record. I was going for brass licks and whatever time I had in between was filled in with guitar. Then I thinned the whole situation down so it wouldn't be a big mess that nobody could play over.

“Once again, when you're playing in a six-piece band you have to be sparse and succinct to get through.”

3. On Strumming

“I use my whole hand to play the strings. I do brush strokes with the back of my nails and I pluck with the front.

“About seventy percent of the time I'm playing each note individually, either arpeggiating or plucking a chord all at once. Once you work up a touch for plucking a chord all at once, you have the ability to bring out a certain note within that chord. I use as many as four notes in a chord and I'll still be plucking it.

“I can bring out a certain note and create an ascending or descending line through a series of chords. I'm just playing the chords but there's that one note which sticks out. Besides a line, you can build the whole motion of the song just around that one idea.

“Again, if you listen to a tape of your band playing, you can find out if there's anyone else playing any of the notes in your inversion. If I'm playing an A chord and somebody else is playing my root, perhaps I'll build my inversion on the third or fifth of the chord. I might just leave out the note A, which is the simplest thing to do. And often times the simplest thing is the best.”

4. Time

“There's a wonderful little machine called the Trinome, which you can order from music stores. The Trinome will play polyrhythms. It has a bell and two clicks.

“Let's say you set the bells at one, one click at eight and the other at three. Then you have three against eight. If you want to learn seven, set the bell at one so it will signal every new bar. Set one click at seven and one at four.

“Times like three, five, six, and seven are not all that common in music but they're all real neat. Seven is a favorite of mine because you get the best of four and the best of three.”

5. Overtones

“Given the nature of electric instruments, there's often a fair bit of distortion involved. The nature of that distortion will generally supply additional notes of the chord you're playing.

“If you're playing the root and fifth and getting a lot of distortion and overtones, a subharmonic will supply the missing third of the chord. That's psycho-acoustics.

“Often times it's just the physics of acoustics. When you go to a root and sixth the subharmonic goes to a fourth below, which will also give you your chord. This is dense harmonic stuff, and given the nature of electric instruments, all of this is always happening anyway.”

6. Tone

“Timbre is real important. If your tone is too fat for a given section it's gonna make everything too thick. Of course if your tone is too thin for a section the whole thing will sound too thin. The rhythm guitar in this regard is very important. In terms of texture for the whole song, it's the most important instrument in the band.

“As everybody knows, guitarists get tired of one sound and go to another. If you start out, as I did, with double-coil pickups, you almost necessarily end up playing a single-coil pickup guitar. Then in another six or seven years you'll probably go back to the double-coil sound.”

Weir is currently playing his own autograph model Ibanez guitar with a coil-tapped humbucker in the bridge position and two single-coil pickups in the middle and neck spots.

He describes his amp setup as being a “huge montage of things.” Weir is thinking of asking Peavey to make him a compact system. He puts all of these elements into practice when the band's on stage.

Summing it all up for Guitar World he said, “Things are going to emerge under fire. That way you know damn well they're going to work. We play three to four hours a night, sometimes more. I study in real time, 100 gigs a year. That comes out to be a great deal of practice.”

• This article first appeared in the May 1982 issue of Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

My favourite ensemble to play in is the power trio. With only three instruments – electric guitar, bass guitar and drum kit – there’s so much freedom to explore concepts like space, time and dynamic range.

There is something really special that can happen when three musicians are playing off of each other and interacting in real time.

Think of all the adventurous, exciting moments you’ve heard in the recordings of the great rock guitar/bass/drums lineups, such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Mountain, Rush, Led Zeppelin, the Who, Free and others.

One of the ways I like to take advantage of what the power trio lineup affords me as a guitar player is when we are in improvisation mode, expanding away from an established song structure in order to venture into uncharted musical territory.

A perfect example of this can be found in my song Threw Me to the Wolves, which is built from a simple progression and arrangement that includes sections where we freely vamp over an A chord.

During these sections, the bass player is pedaling on an A note; because there is no minor or major 3rd provided by another chord instrument, I’m free to move between major and minor phrases at my discretion.

We like to make these sections as dynamic as possible by starting out quietly and reserved and then slowly build up the intensity as the improvisation develops.

Oftentimes, I’ll start out with a motive that alludes to an A7 sound, as in Figure 1. The initial lick is based on the A minor pentatonic scale (A, C, D, E, G), and in bar 2 I repeatedly slide into a two-note A7 voicing.

Once that’s established, I can develop the phrases a little more, as in Figure 2, where I hammer-on from the minor 3rd, C, to the major 3rd, C#.

Laying this A dominant 7 groundwork allows me to move to ideas based on the A Mixolydian mode (A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G), like the phrase shown in Figure 3.

I’ll then elaborate a bit more in this direction with lines like those in Figure 4, taking advantage of the sweet sound of the major 3rd.

What’s really cool is when you then bring in some different harmony, moving from A7 to Am7, as demonstrated in Figure 5. I might play four bars over A7 then change my whole mindset to focus back on the minor 3rd and the sound of Am7.

Figure 6 begins with four bars that revolve around an A7 sound, with the major third, C#, accentuated in the phrases. I then switch at bar 5 to lines that target the minor 3rd, C, by moving into licks based on A minor pentatonic (A, C, D, E, G), played in a bluesy Eric Clapton/Leslie West/Mick Taylor style.

Harmonically, I have the complete freedom to explore wherever I’d like to go. As is standard practice in blues-influenced music, I like to move back and forth between parallel major and minor licks, as these two sounds complement each other so well.

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In this lesson, I’d like to talk about how to solo and create harmonized melody lines utilizing dyads, which many guitarists refer to as “double-stops.”

Although, technically, the term double-stop means two strings held down with a single finger, it is widely used to refer to any two notes sounded together. The most commonly used dyads/double-stops on the guitar are pairs of notes that are a 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, or octave apart.

A great example of how I use double-stops can be heard on the new Fearless Flyers song, Anaheim.

If you’re familiar with my music, you know that a big part of my sound is harmonizing pentatonic scales. For example, as demonstrated in Figure 1, I’m playing the D major pentatonic scale (D, E, F#, A, B) starting on the 6th, B, sounded at the 7th fret on my low E string.

The notes of this scale are harmonized by simultaneously sounding a 4th or a 3rd above each scale tone on the next higher string; these higher notes also follow the structure of D major pentatonic, meaning they stay within the confines of the scale.

A big part of how I attain the desired sound is to strum all of the two-note pairs with downstrokes and palm muting. Figure 2 illustrates another riff performed this way. The downstrokes and palm muting give the riff a very specific sound and feel that’s almost marimba-like, or like pizzicato strings.

When I play a lot of dyad-based melodies, I’ll switch back and forth between muting and allowing the strings to ring freely. As shown in Figure 3, I begin by allowing the strings to ring then briefly switch to palm muting before releasing the palm mute to add finger vibrato to the held notes.

Figure 4 is also built from harmonized note pairs based primarily on D major pentatonic. Here, I begin with pizzicato palm-muted figures then switch to double-stops that I allow to ring.

You may ask, “How do I know what note pairs to play?” In these examples, at times I’m sticking with D major pentatonic, but I will also sometimes broaden the harmony to D major hexatonic (D, E, F#, G, D, B) or even the D major scale (D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#). Most often, I simply follow my ears in choosing what to play, so the end result isn’t always formulaic.

A great way to practice this double-stop harmonizing technique is to move up and down the fretboard playing pairs of adjacent string sets in harmonized 3rds.

As demonstrated in Figure 5, I move up the top two strings playing 3rds, as they occur within the D major scale. Also practice doing this on all other pairs of adjacent strings, such as the G and B strings, as shown in Figure 6.

In Figure 7, I play D major pentatonic double-stops in different areas of the fretboard, moving freely between the different pairs of adjacent strings.

Doing this is a great way to memorize these shapes, so that you’ll be able to easily incorporate this approach and technique into your solo lines and harmonized melodic ideas.

In my last column, I talked about how using open G tuning (low to high: D, G, D, G, B, D) has inspired me to find my own musical and compositional voice as a guitarist and craft some cool and unique chord riffs and slide parts. To illustrate, I detailed how I play the intro and the main riff from the Blackberry Smoke song Ain’t Much Left of Me.

This time, I’d like to provide some additional examples of the benefits of playing in open G tuning, by sharing how I play other sections of the tune, including the slide guitar solo.

The verse section is built from stop-time chord hits on G, followed by F/C to C and then G to F/G to C/E, accentuated by the band with big “crashes.” This is played twice and then leads us into the chorus section.

Figure 1 illustrates the chorus. Starting in bar 1, on the V (five) chord, D, which I embellish “Keith Richards” style, with accents on G/D, bar 2 moves to Am7. In order to play this voicing in open G tuning, one must fret the 5th string at the 2nd fret, to sound the low A root note. Bars 3 and 4 move from G to D, respectively.

Bars 5-9 wrap up the chorus section, starting this time with held C and D chords, after which we return to the intro figure: Fsus2/G - C/G - G, shown in bar 9.

In devising a solo section, I thought it would be cool to get away from the “home” key of G for a minute and bring in a repeating chordal figure of F7 to G7 to solo over, as tabbed in Figure 2.

Because of the open G tuning, the chord shapes are a little different than normal, but therein lies the beauty of an open tuning, as it avails you of all kinds of chord and riff choices that aren’t possible in standard tuning. In other words, the tuning encourages creativity in devising rhythm parts to solo over.

Figure 3 illustrates the slide solo: in bars 1-6, the chords alternate every bar from F7 to G7. After the F7 in bar 7, bar 8 moves to D.

The lines I play in the solo relate specifically to the alternating chords: over the initial F7, I slide into licks based around an F major triad (F, A, C), and over G7, the licks are based around a G major triad (G, B, D). This triad arpeggiation approach establishes a strong connection between the improvised solo and the supporting chords underneath.

Bar 8 depicts the end of the solo, played over D, and bar 9 brings us back to the arpeggiated figures from the intro. And then we do it all again, moving back through the verse, chorus and outro sections.

I find this song to be a great workout in open G tuning, for both chordal work and soloing. As always, there are lots of new things to discover when using any open tuning!

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An essential technique all electric guitarists should strive to master is the art of string bending, which can be used to create personally expressive, vocal-like sounds in unique ways.

String bending first grabbed my attention when I heard Iron Man by Black Sabbath. Guitarist Tony Iommi begins the song by bending his open low E string behind the nut, raising then lowering the note’s pitch to create a spooky moaning sound. When I heard that, my first thought was, “well, you can’t do that on a piano!”

My next pivotal encounter with string bending was hearing Eric Clapton’s solo in Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love. When I heard those opening notes, I thought, “that sounds like a voice!” It’s so soulful!

My awareness of string bending then snowballed through listening to such great blues-rock guitarists as Jimi Hendrix, Leslie West, Robin Trower and Johnny Winter. The takeaway was that, even though all of these players were utilizing the same bending techniques, each was able to create thoroughly unique sounds with them.

A good initial approach to string bending is to first play two separate notes that are a half step, or one fret, apart, then bend the lower note up to match the pitch of the higher one, as demonstrated with the notes E and F in Figure 1.

In bar 2, I then play E and F#, which are a whole step (two frets) apart then proceed to bend the E note up a whole step to F#. In bar 3, I then do the same thing with E and G, bending the E note up one and one half steps, the equivalent of three frets. Listen carefully as to strive to match the “target” pitch of each bend. Let your ears guide and control your fingers.

In Figure 2, I play a two-bar phrase based on the B minor pentatonic scale (B, D, E, F#, A) and bend E, the 4th of B, up a whole step to F#, the 5th. Then, in bar 2, I bend D, the minor 3rd, up a half step to the major 3rd, D#. In Figure 3, I liberally bend several notes, yielding even more of a “vocal” sound.

I take this approach a little further in Figure 4 by starting with a half step bend from D to D#, followed by hammer-ons to D# and E then a whole-step bend from E up to F#. Bar 1 ends with A# bent up a half step to B, and in bar 2, I combine unusual half- and whole-step bends to produce a unique sound and melody.

A great note to bend up to is the b5 (flatted 5th). Sticking with the key of B, that would be an F note. In Figure 5, all of the notes are fretted; in Figures 6 and 7, I use half- and whole-step bends from the 4th, E, to sound the 5th, F#, then the flatted 5th, F.

Great masters of string bending to listen to for inspiration are Buddy Guy, Otis Rush and Albert King. Figure 8 is played in Buddy’s style, featuring a big two-step bend, the equivalent of four frets, and a gradual release. Figure 9 is played in Albert’s style, with five distinct pitches sounded from a single fretted D note on the B string’s 15th fret.

Bending strings may cause your fingertips to hurt a little, but it’s worth it to discover the many expressive sounds that can be attained via this highly expressive technique.

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Hello, and welcome to my new column for Guitar World! Over the course of these lessons, I will be sharing and demonstrating my approaches to rhythm playing, soloing, slide guitar, open tunings and songwriting, all of which have contributed to the music I’ve written and recorded with my band, Blackberry Smoke.

I’d like to start off with a look at open G tuning, which I used to write the Blackberry Smoke song Ain’t Much Left of Me from our 2012 album, The Whippoorwill.

When I started writing songs for the band back in 2001, the very first one I wrote was in open G tuning, a tune called Sanctified Woman. That song kicks off with a rhythm part along the lines of Figure 1.

I begin with a G5 chord fretted on the 6th, 4th and 3rd strings, wrapping my thumb around the top of the neck at the 5th fret to sound the low G. G5 switches to Gsus4 and then G, sounded with the open 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings, followed by D5 and C5 chords sounded by barring across these strings.

This proved to be a great jumping off point for the band. There were just three of us at the time – me, Brit and Richard Turner – and when I played that riff, one of them said, “Oh, I like that! What is that?”

Open G tuning is achieved by tuning your 6th, 5th and 1st strings down a whole step while leaving the 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings tuned normally, resulting in (low to high) D, G, D, G, B, D. Strumming across the open strings in this tuning yields a very full and resonant-sounding G major chord.

I discovered open G tuning when I was about 12 years old, while checking out a transcription of the Rolling Stones song Honky Tonk Women. Keith Richards, as most of you know, has written many classic songs in this tuning.

Open G tuning is also great for slide guitar, as demonstrated in Figure 2. I begin by sliding into a D chord, and then drop down to C, Bb, A and G, followed by a stock G5 voicing played on the top four strings. The Figure continues with more open G-type licks played with the slide.

I became fascinated with the alternate chord forms that the tuning could facilitate. Figure 3 is a great example: fretting the 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings at the 2nd, 3rd and 1st frets, respectively, combined with the open 5th and 1st strings, yields a great-sounding C9/G voicing that’s not possible in standard tuning.

As demonstrated in Figure 4, one can also find unique “grips” for dominant 7th chords like D7, C7, F7 and G7.

As I mentioned earlier, Ain’t Much Left of Me is played in open G tuning. I didn’t want to copy Keith Richards or Rich Robinson from the Black Crowes. I wanted to try to find my own guitar voice, which I’m sure was true for the Delta blues masters like Son House and Charlie Patton.

Figure 5 illustrates the tune’s main riff. Bar 1 is based on Fsus2/G to C/G to G, repeated in bar 2 and then capped off with descending slides on the 5th and 2nd strings.

Bars 1 and 2 of Figure 6 show the basic groove between G5 and F5, and the main lick is revisited in bars 3 and 4.

I’d written another part, shown in Figure 7, that’s based on arpeggiations and sliding chord forms combined with single-note riffs, which became the basis for the song’s intro.

I’ll be back next month with a breakdown of the slide solo. See you then!

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I recently got back off the road with my band Black Country Communion, which features Jason Bonham on drums, Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals – the “Voice of Rock!”– and the master of the keyboards, Derek Sherinian.

The conversation came up about the difference between what I do in my “day job” with my regular band versus when playing and writing for Black Country Communion. BCC is a “heavy” band; the songs are in a hard rock style, as opposed to the bluesier context of my normal band. Much of the difference, guitar playing-wise, comes down to the approach.

Contrary to what one might assume, with the heavier music and chordal work with this band, I don’t need tons of gain on my guitar because everyone else is distorted!

Glenn’s bass is distorted, and Derek’s Hammond organ sound is very overdriven, too (à la Deep Purple organist Jon Lord’s, which was routed into a Marshall amp). So my job is to find the spot in the middle and play cleaner, which results in a big, heavy band sound that also maintains clarity between the instruments.

A good example of this is the song One Last Soul. Figure 1 is played along the lines of the tune’s main riff, which is built primarily from power chords played on the bottom three strings in drop-D tuning (low to high: D, A, D, G, B, E).

In the realm of “heavy rock” guitar, I was very influenced by Paul Kossoff’s sound and playing with the band Free.

Figure 2 offers an example of this that moves through a series of chord voicings sounded on the middle four strings, shifting between A5, D/A, G5/A and Dsus4/A voicings in a manner akin to how Kossoff would craft his rhythm parts.

As you can see, just moving one note in the voicing “tells the story” as I move from chord to chord. I’ve discovered that the music will sound heavier and deeper if I scale back the voicings.

Leslie West’s riffs with Mountain, which are some of the heaviest ever, were often either single-note lines or two- and three-note chord voicings.

Figures 3 and 4 offer two examples of riffs played in Leslie’s inimitable style, exemplified by Mountain classics like Never in My Life and Nantucket Sleighride.

All of these types of chord voicings are really important in making the band sound a certain way. When writing this kind of music, I try to subtract from the chord voicings and eliminate any unneeded notes.

As shown in Figure 5, I mute the 3rd string when playing a low E5 chord, and also mute the 5th string on D/F# and Gsus2. You’ll find that your riffs can sound heavier if you approach your guitar parts from this point of view.

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Direct Flyte is a track from my 2022 album, Power Station, and features the great Victor Wooten on bass. The song has morphed a little bit in subsequent live performances, as we’ve tightened up the arrangement and gotten very specific about the individual parts.

What I’d like to talk about today is how the syncopations of the tune’s primary guitar part work in conjunction with the chordal accents supplied by the keyboard, which I think is a good example of effective ensemble arranging.

When you hear how the two instruments work in tandem, you’ll get a good idea of how I like to approach coordinating various musical elements like an orchestral arranger.

The form of the tune is “AABA.” The three “A” sections are in A minor, and the “B” section modulates up a minor 3rd to C minor. The rhythm guitar part I play during these sections is a four-bar phrase that’s fairly simple.

Following the AABA form, there’s a single-note ensemble (band) section, shown here in Figure 1.

In bar 1, a pattern based on the A minor pentatonic scale (A, C, D, E, G) descends across the bottom three strings in straight 16th notes, followed in bar 2 by octave shapes for F# and G. Notice that I palm mute the entire phrase.

My inspiration for this tune was Flight of the Bumblebee by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, but through a funky lens, as if Tower of Power had written and recorded the melody.

As you listen to Direct Flyte, you’ll hear that the guitar part lands in one place and the keyboard part lands in another. We’re very intentional about that because, when you have a 10-piece band, there’s a high potential for individual parts to step on each other. Communication and arrangement is key to making sure all of the parts are precise, serve a purpose and do not get in each other’s way.

Figure 2 illustrates the primary guitar part: I begin on the A root note and then play C and E together by barring the G and B strings. My strumming hand is moving in continuous 16th notes, so that each single note, dyad or muted-string accent will occur at precisely the right place in the “grid.”

In the spaces left by the rhythm guitar, the keyboard adds chord “stabs.” Figure 3 shows the keyboard part. It begins with a heavy accent on Am7 on beat 1 of the first bar. In bar 2, Am accents are played twice during beat 3. Bar 3 is identical to bar 1, and bar 4 is silence.

The initial keyboard accent adds a lot of power to the downbeat, and the subsequent hits effectively fill the space left by the rhythm guitar. If we pan the instruments left and right, it feels like a musical conversation.

Figure 4 puts the entire arrangement together. In bar 9, after eight bars on Am, we move up to Cm, and in bar 12 a chromatically descending line is played as a band figure to modulate back down to Am, where the four-bar “A” phrase is repeated. This is followed by the single-note descending figure from in Figure 1.

The takeaway here is how every element integrates into a very specific Minneapolis/Prince-style rhythm, with all of the instruments coming together on the chromatically descending line shown in bar 10 of Figure 4.

In my arrangements, I use the mindset of an orchestral arranger for the instruments to play off of one another in a “call and response” manner and then to coalesce into a big, powerful unison part.

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Last time, I demonstrated my approach to soloing over the song Hard Wired, originally released on my 2023 self-titled album. We began with the breakdown section, over which I play simple lines over the D - F - G chord progression before moving into the heavy D minor pentatonic-based (D, F, G, A, C) “theme riff,” over which the main solo is played.

Once that riff is established, I begin the proper solo with some Jimi Hendrix-inspired dominant 7 triads that are tremolo-picked and slid up and down the neck, à la Voodoo Child (Slight Return).

In this lesson, I’d like to discuss what I play next and why. After that, I love to utilize unison bends, which are inspired by players like Ted Nugent, Pat Travers and Johnny Winter.

As shown in Figure 1, I play a series of unison bends on the B and G strings by fretting the primary note on the B string and bending up to that same pitch from a whole step below on the G string, two frets higher.

The initial unison bend is performed by fretting an A note on the B string’s 10th fret while bending a G note up a whole step to A at the 12th fret on the G string.

I then move the unison bend shape down a whole step – two frets – to sound a G unison bend, followed by a move up two and a half steps to a C unison bend at the 13th and 15th frets. Be sure to add some hearty vibrato on the G string to any unison bend that‘s allowed to sustain.

After this series of unison bends, I like to move into sequences, which are phrases that ascend or descend in a specific manner, that I will move to different areas of the fretboard.

As shown in Figures 2 and 3, over a Dm chord, I like to move up and down the D minor pentatonic scale (D, F, G, A, C) with the inclusion of the 2nd, or 9th, E, articulating the line with an abundance of hammer ons, pull offs and finger slides.

The solo section is played at a slow tempo with a heavy feel, so it sounds great to ramp up the intensity by playing these sequences in a rhythm of 16th notes, as shown in Figure 4.

With a fast phrase like this, a little bit of palm muting is very helpful in cleaning up the articulation and making each note sound more distinct. I’ll often jump up an octave to play the same phrase, as shown in Figure 5.

I think of these phrases as being “efficient” because the contour of the melody is so specific, which is something I learned from listening to Johnny Winter.

In Figure 6, I play a similar phrase, also based on D minor pentatonic with the inclusion of the 2nd/9th, E, but played here in a slower rhythm of eighth notes and in 10th position.

In Figure 7, I double it up by playing the phrase in 16th notes.

Phrases like these, which are so specific melodically, work very well against more aggressive, off-the-cuff playing. It’s like a game of “cat and mouse,” where each approach compliments the other very well.

Any “country-style” sounds will work great here, too. Since we-re tuned to drop D, I’ll strike the open low D string and play two-note Figures, 3rds apart, adding subtle bends, as in Figure 8.

Licks like these add a raunchy flavor with a great bluesy undertone.

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In my last column, I discussed the role of the turnaround in a 12-bar blues. To review, the turnaround occurs in the last two bars of the progression. Its function is to set up the return to the beginning of the form by providing a “wrap up” to the musical ideas of the previous 12-bar section.

Every blues guitar great uses turnarounds masterfully, and many have their own signature turnaround phrases.

Turnarounds can also be used to add tension between the I (one) chord and the IV (four), or when moving from any one of the three chords in a I - IV - V (one-four-five) progression to the next. It’s very useful to learn as many of the “tried and true” turnarounds that exist in blues music, but you should also feel free to invent your own.

Let’s stick with the key of E, which we used for last month’s examples. In the key of E, a I - IV - V progression is made up of the I chord, E, the IV, A and the V, B. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate two of my favorite turnarounds in E.

In Figure 1, bar 1, starting on beat 2, I play a simple melody based on E minor pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D) that ascends and then descends, setting up the change to B7. In Figure 2, the only difference is that I include a trill, a quickly repeating hammer-on/pull-off, between D and E.

These licks are based around things I’ve heard Eddie Taylor play in his recordings with Jimmy Reed.

The coolest thing about these turnarounds is, once you learn them, you can expand on them and put your own inflections into them.

In Figure 3, I take the basics of Figures 1 and 2 and, in bar 1, change the placement of the trill, and in bar 2, reference the B7 chord with notes on the 5th and 1st strings only, followed by a slide down the low E string.

Single-note “lead”-type turnarounds are also very important; Freddie King and T-Bone Walker both developed exceptional vocabularies of single-note turnarounds that can be heard in many different tunes.

Figure 4 offers a single-note turnaround in E played in Freddie’s style.

T-Bone loved the key of G, so it’s important to work out a bunch of turnarounds in this key, too.

Figures 5 and 6 are played in T-Bone’s style and are based on G Mixolydian (G, A, B, C, D, E, F). You can also look at these licks as being based on G minor pentatonic (G, Bb, C, D, F) with the inclusion of the major 3rd, B, and the 9th, A.

One of Freddie’s most enduringly popular songs is Hideaway, and he plays fantastic turnarounds throughout it. Figure 7 is based on the Hideaway approach. Notice, at the beginning, the “threes on twos” phrasing, which is three quarter notes played within the space of two quarter notes.

Figure 8 represents the first five bars of a 12-bar blues in E. After three bars of E5 to E6 to E7, I play ascending chords on the top three strings as a means to set up the change to A7.

Listen to and learn as many turnarounds as you can, and use them as elements in your solos. The whole fun of playing blues is finding your own voice inflections.

This is the last installment of One Guitar Woman for now. Thank you for reading! You can check out SueFoley.com for the latest on my tour dates and album releases.

Though obviously not thought of in this way, the Gibson ES-350 is a great instrument to use for rock rhythm guitar playing.

With its hollow body and two-pickup design, it’s similar to the Gretsch 6120, which Pete Townshend used nearly exclusively for the guitar parts on the Who’s seminal Who’s Next album. Those gigantic rhythm guitars you hear on Won’t Get Fooled Again and Baba O’Riley were, surprisingly, recorded by Pete on a 1959 Gretsch 6120.

I will often use the ES-350 in the same manner. The necks on these guitars are skinny and narrow, so the strings are actually a little closer together, as compared to other Gibsons, and it features “narrow-spaced” PAF pickups, wherein the screws are closer together.

These guitars may not be for everyone, but they’re great “power chord” guitars, and I will often use them in the studio for that purpose.

As shown in Figure 1, I put the guitar in the bridge pickup position and play through a series of single-note licks based on the E blues scale (E, G, A, Bb, B, D) before moving into three- and four-note chords played in a syncopated rhythm against the open low E string.

These guitars are great for rock rhythms because they have a great sparkle to them, and the larger hollow body allows a little bit more bass to come out, as compared to an ES-335. In Figure 2, I embellish E5 power chord accents with single-note phrases, switching to sliding 6ths in bar 2, and then move between A5 and D/A chords in bars 4 and 5.

If you turn up the amp and use distortion, these guitars will howl with feedback due to the hollowbody design, so you have to mute the strings as necessary.

Figure 3 offers a long, 13-bar example that begins with power chords in bars 1-7. The single-note riff in bar 1 gives way to syncopated chords played against the open A string in bars 2-6, as I move freely between various voicings of A5, D/A, Gsus2/A, G/A, Dsus2 and Esus4 up and down the neck, pounding out the open-A pedal tone in steady eighth notes.

Pete Townshend was a master of devising rhythm parts played with this kind of “pedal tone against shifting chords” approach.

In bars 7-9, I switch to single-note lines based on the E blues scale, and then in bars 10-13, I move into fast, solo-type phrases based on E minor pentatonic, (E, G, A, B, D), and the E blues scale, with the inclusion of the 2nd/9th, F#, in bar 10.

These guitars are so lively and have a lot of “pop” to the sound, but they also have a lot of body and low-end that fattens up the single notes in a great way.

These guitars are not just for blues lawyers – you can rock with one of these! They may not be thought about that much anymore, and this is why I wanted to bring your attention to the rock ’n’ roll magic of an ES-350.

• Breakthrough is out now via J&R Adventures
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Ace of Aces is the debut track from the 2018 self-titled EP by the Fearless Flyers, which is a side project from the band Vulfpeck that consists of me, guitarist Mark Lettieri, bassist Joe Dart and drummer Nate Smith.

This track all started from a melodic line I had written. Jack Stratton, our producer, had compiled a handful of live performance clips of each of us in the band playing and said, “Let’s work on these musical concepts as different things. We’ll use Cory’s line as the anchor then try to come up with four different sections of playing over one chord.”

I’ve seen people cover the tune, and one thing most get wrong about it is they’re not intentional about the sections in the way they should be. The best way to explain this is to demonstrate how Mark’s and my guitar parts work together in the arrangement, which I think is interesting and informative.

The tune starts with a primary bassline-like riff, shown here in Figure 1, which is based on the E major pentatonic scale (E, F#, G#, B, C#) with some syncopated chromaticism happening on the low E string. Compositionally, that’s actually the most important part of the tune.

Figure 2 illustrates Mark’s rhythm guitar part for the tune’s first “verse.” It’s is based on a 7th-position E9 chord shape, and the top three strings are strummed and move down from a 9th-fret barre, sounding E6, to a passing-chord at the 8th fret then to E9 at the 7th fret.

The strum rhythm is 16th notes, with pitchless, fret-hand-muted percussive scratches between the accented chord hits.

I play baritone guitar on this track, tuned to A standard (low to high: A, D, G, C, E, A). But for this column I’ve adapted my baritone parts for a conventional guitar in regular E standard tuning (low to high: E, A, D, G, B, E).

My approach with the baritone in this tune is like that of a second bassist, as Joe is playing a relatively simple part. As shown in Figure 3, I play a repeating line that’s based on the E Mixolydian mode (E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D) and pick a lot of fret-hand-muted, percussive notes between the pitched notes.

The ways in which Mark’s and my parts weave together is a key element of the arrangement. There are some spots where we play a harmonized line together; my baritone guitar part is shown in Figure 4. This line is recalled at the end of the tune.

After repeating the initial riff, we move to the second ”verse,” for which Mark switches to a rhythm part based around an E7#9 chord, not unlike Shining Star by Earth, Wind & Fire. Then, midway through the verse, we play a different line in unison, which is based on the E minor pentatonic scale (E, G, A, B, D), shown in Figure 5.

While Mark is sitting on that E7#9 chord, I change my baritone guitar part to Figure 6, which accentuates the minor 3rd, or #9, G.

For the third verse, Mark and I switch to a “gospel-y,” downstrokes approach. As shown in Figure 7, his part consists of descending 6ths on the top two strings followed by E9sus4 and E9 chord accents.

Over that, I add, on the baritone, a “gospel quartet” line based on E Mixolydian (see Figure 8). The song then moves to a bass feature then a drum feature and ends with a reprise of the line from Figure 1.

As you can see, Mark and I have very specific parts that we devised to fit together, all while working with the other instruments to create a bigger, wider sound.

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Learning scales and patterns is perhaps one of the less exciting aspects of guitar playing – and, arguably, many of our heroes didn’t approach their playing in this way, either.

However, consider the process of writing and recording material, and rehearsing then touring, which obviously involves playing those same tunes night after night. This in itself can teach us so much about what works and what doesn’t, simply through an intense process of trial and error.

If the old adage about one gig being worth a dozen rehearsals holds true, what are the benefits of a long tour? It’s true to say that many professional musicians (myself included) come off tour able to play the set blindfolded, but feeling a bit rusty on anything else… However, this is temporary and the longterm gains are clear. But where does this leave everyone else?

It’s possible to transform your playing without repeatedly going through the album/tour cycle, but it does take discipline to play and practise every single day and perhaps record yourself (in private – studio quality is not necessary!) then listen back with as objective an ear as possible. Yes, we are often our own harshest critics, but you can make this work for you by taking notes and deciding on positive steps to improve in any weak areas.

This brings us neatly back to the idea of learning scales and patterns, with the emphasis on the latter. A slow minor blues like the example solo gives us plenty of time to think about note choice and phrasing. Some of the ideas in the examples are derived from chord tones or chord extensions.

But, if you prefer, they could also be regarded as embellished pentatonic/blues scale licks. Play these, or similar ideas, often enough and they will become part of your vocabulary. Hope you enjoy and see you next time!

Example 1

In the pickup to this first phrase, I’m spelling out part of an E minor scale, though you could also say it’s an E minor triad (G B E) with an F# added before the G on beat 1 of bar 1. This gives us more detail than sticking solely to the pentatonic scale.

The change to A minor then B minor in bar 2 is followed with an ear for their respective triads (A C E and B D F#) but without needing to change position on the fretboard.

Oddly enough, the last two bars feature more movement between positions over a static chord, playing a similar idea over two octaves using the E minor pentatonic scale.

Example 2

Shifting to A minor, this second phrase targets the 9th (B) in what would otherwise be a regular minor pentatonic phrase, albeit sliding between shapes 1 and 2.

The brief excursions to C and D don’t really ask anything too specific of us in terms of note choice, though perhaps it is worth experimenting with C and D triads? The next main chord is E minor.

Nothing too fancy going on here, but there is a bend from F# to G in bar 3, emphasising the 9th in the key of E minor. Watch out for sneaky staccato notes!

Example 3

Switching to the bridge pickup for dramatic effect, this final example is perhaps the most obviously pentatonic, switching between shapes 4, 1 and 2. Somehow, the unembellished pentatonic sounds ‘tougher’ for this rise in dynamic…

That’s where we stay, being pretty and melodic sidelined in favour of a few more flourishes, before a short chromatic run up to B at the end. We don’t always need to spell out each chord, but it’s good to know what’s going on harmonically so we can pick and choose.

Allow yourself a bit of leeway for timing; this is transcribed as faithfully as possible but need not be set in stone.

Hear it here

John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers – A Hard Road

After Eric Clapton had recorded the infamous ‘Beano’ album and moved on to form Cream, there was a vacancy to fill. Enter Peter Green. On this 1967 release, he shows himself very able to channel the spirit of Clapton on tracks such as The Stumble and Another Kinda Love.

However, on The Super-Natural we really hear him coming into his own, having a profound influence on Carlos Santana, Gary Moore and many others in the process.

Santana – Abraxas

Released in 1969, this second album from the band features a cover of Peter Green’s Black Magic Woman, alongside the well-known tracks Samba Pa Ti and Oye Cómo Va.

In fact, we could probably have cited any of Santana’s albums here, as his distinctive playing remains the centrepiece of his music, combining American and Mexican influences, while frequently using pentatonic lines but just as often adding melody via chord tones, arpeggios and long held notes.

Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon

David Gilmour is a very obvious name to put out there when thinking of melodic-blues-influenced players. Like Santana, you could approach any of the Pink Floyd or later solo material and find lots of examples.

Of particular interest here, though, is how he fits his blues-based style into tracks such as Time and Any Colour You Like where he trades licks against himself in stereo. Money contains some more obviously bluesy licks, though still with lots of memorable melodic lines.

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An absolutely essential element in blues guitar is the turnaround. It is a basic function of blues music that the turnaround happens at the end of the progression and flips it over back to the beginning of the form.

When playing a standard 12-bar blues, the turnaround occurs in the last two bars, 11 and 12, as the tonic chord (rooted in the key you’re in) moves to the V (five chord), which then resolves back to the tonic in bar 1 of the next 12-bar chorus.

When playing a single-note blues solo, players sometimes forget about where the turnaround is and how important it is to make reference to it melodically. Playing these turnarounds as part of your solos will tie everything together and ensure that it sounds like a blues song.

If a guitarist is just riffing away on minor pentatonic licks, it will make their playing sound “scale-y”; you don’t want to sound scale-y! You want to sound like a blues player, and incorporating the following essential blues turnarounds will ensure that you do.

Let’s stick with the key of E and look at a handful of essential blues turnarounds.

In Figure 1, I play the most basic one of all: while repeatedly picking a high E root note on the B string, notes on the A string descend chromatically: D, C#, C, B. In bars 3 and 4, the same turnaround is played an octave higher, starting at the 12th fret and wrapping up with a walk-up to the V chord, B7.

Figure 2 illustrates two more great turnarounds: in bars 1 and 2, I play notes that are 6ths apart on the G and high E strings and descend chromatically, from the 4th fret. In bars 3 and 4, I sound notes that are 6ths apart on the A and D strings and ascend chromatically, from the 2nd fret.

Figures 3 and 4 offer a few more turnaround twists. Figure 3 is built from 10th intervals. A 10th is a 3rd (major or minor) plus an octave. The open low E note and the G# on the G string’s 1st fret ascend to F# and A, G and Bb, and G# and B.

Figure 4 presents two more turnaround options: in bars 1 and 2, 6ths descend on the A and D strings, followed by the V chord, B7. In bars 3 and 4, notes two that are octaves apart, on the low and high E strings, descend from the 4th fret to the open strings.

In Figure 5, I combine three types of turnarounds and bring them all together.

One great approach is to actually play the same turnaround all through a song. This is something that the great T-Bone Walker would do all of the time, as did Freddie King on his classic song, Hideaway.

Figure 6 illustrates a 12-bar example played along the lines of Hideaway. Starting with the pickup bar, there is a melody sounded on the top two strings that runs through the entire form.

In bars 11 and 12, Freddie’s essential turnaround is a very specific melodic line played on the top three strings. This signature lick serves to define the song; when I hear it, I’ll say, “That’s Hideaway!”

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Last month, I talked about how I devised the primary riffs in the title track to my 2023 album Hard Wired, which is played in drop D tuning (low to high: D, A, D, G, B, E). I’d now like to share some of the varied approaches and techniques I use in the song’s breakdown and solo sections.

One of the cool things about the breakdown section is that I take the opportunity to interpret the chord progression in different ways. The first thing I do is switch things up by establishing a progression of D - G - F. But instead of playing straight major chords or root-5th power chords, I like to bring in the sound of open strings to help broaden the harmony, as well as the timbre.

One way I accomplish this is to keep an open D string in the mix for all of the voicings. As shown in Figure 1, I play a G chord by fretting the low G on the 6th string’s 5th fret, played along with the open 4th string and a B note at the 4th fret on the G string.

I then slide this shape down two frets to sound F on the 6th string’s 3rd fret along with the open 4th-string D and an A note at the 2nd fret of the G string. I end with a D chord sounded by the open low D along with the notes F# and D on the D and B strings, respectively. Be sure to allow all of the strings to ring throughout.

While improvising over these sections, I like to emphasize the sound of F#, the major 3rd of D, moving to the minor 3rd, F, which then becomes the root note for the F chord. To me, there ‘s something beautiful about messing with those double-stops of D and F# over the D chord and then C and F over the F chord.

As shown in Figure 2, I slide into fretted F# and D notes, sounded along with the open low D, then move to G followed by a single-note riff that’s based on the D blues scale (D, F, G, Ab, A, C).

In bar 3, over D, I freely move through the D Mixolydian mode (D, E, F#, G, A, B, C) with hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides, followed in the next bar with reference to F then more D blues scale riffs. Bars 5 and 6, are played with the same approach, with all of the riffs freely improvised, as are bars 7 and 8.

By playing two-bar phrases like these, initially establishing the chord changes and then moving into solo lines, I’m replicating the tandem approach of rhythm and lead guitars, as the leads effectively “answer” the chords.

The solo section then kicks off with a heavy riff that sits right on the D chord. As shown in Figure 3, I repeatedly play C and D notes over the open low D and resolve at the end of each bar to an F note that I proceed to bend up a half step to F#.

I then flow into the solo with triads played on the top three strings, either moving chromatically downward, as in Figure 4, or upward, as in Figure 5. In Figure 6, I use my pick-hand index finger to tremolo strum the triads in a Jimi Hendrix-like way.

Next month, we’ll take a deeper dive into the techniques I used to develop the solo section of Hard Wired. See you then.

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Another of the many Gibson guitars that I love (are there any I don’t?) is the ES-350.

This is a semi-hollow “jazz box” type of guitar, deeper than a ES-335 but still kind of skinny when compared to a true jazz box, like an L5 or a Super 400. There are ES-350s that predated this one and were full-bodied, with P90 pickups. In 1955, the guitar was redesigned with the thinner body among other specification alterations.

The upmarket guitar to the ES-350 was the ES-5, made famous by T-Bone Walker – later known as the Switchmaster – which had three P-90s and a big toggle switch that said “1 2 3 ALL,” meaning neck, middle, bridge or all three pickups on at once.

All pickups, all the time! This, unfortunately, never really sounded very good because the pickups would cancel each other out and get muddy. But whatever! It was a cool concept!

Chuck Berry was known to use an ES-350 in his early days, and it’s perfect for playing Chuck’s classic songs, like Johnny B. Goode and Maybellene and double-stop-driven licks like this (see Figure 1).

Figure 2 offers an example of rocking out in Chuck’s style, played in the key of A and starting on the IV (four) chord, D, with typical two-note, root/5th-root-6th voicings. Notice that I barre my index finger across the G string, as well as the lower strings, in order to get the b7 C note in there too.

Following the E7 chord in bar 5, I play some Chuck-type solo lines based on A minor pentatonic (A, C, D, E, G), utilizing subtle quarter- and half-step bends and double-stops as Chuck would in pretty much all of his solos.

These are fantastic guitars if you don’t need to play too loud. There’s no center block, so they can howl with feedback.

I love the front pickup on these guitars too, because it’s also great for blues (see Figure 3).

In Figure 4, I play a 10-bar solo with a slow blues feel, leaning on a variety of scales: in bar 1, I begin with an A major triad (A, C#, E) and then move into lines based around the A Mixolydian mode (A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G). Typical for blues, I move freely between the minor and major 3rds, C and C#. Also, I’m picking near the bridge to get a sharper, clearer tone.

In the second half of bar 4 and into bar 5, I move into the lower “B.B. box” territory – so named for blues guitarist B.B. King – which combines A minor pentatonic notes with some from A major pentatonic (A, B, C#, E, F#), along with a little bit of chromaticism.

In bar 7, over the V (five) chord, E7, I make brief reference to E major pentatonic (E, F#, G#, B, C#) before returning to A minor pentatonic to wrap up the solo.

Gibson ES-350s also make for fantastic rock ’n’ roll rhythm guitars, which I will explore in next month’s column. See you then!

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When I am composing and arranging music, I like to think as an orchestrator. As the guitarist, I try to represent just about everything that’s in the arrangement – the drum syncopations, horn parts, keyboards, etc. – in multiple guitar parts. I might start with a bass-like theme, along the lines of Figure 1.

Playing in the key of G, I begin on a low G and then playing a G one octave higher on the last 16th note of beat 1. After a 16th rest on beat 2, the high G is played again, followed by E to F in eighth notes. I’ve now established a “16th-note grid” that serves to represent the rhythmic syncopation of the music.

My next inclination would be to add a complementary part above that, one that’s intentionally simple and sparse. As shown in Figure 2, I play two-note shapes, 3rds apart, on the D and G strings, that fall on the upbeat of beat 2 into beat 3. Doing this serves to strengthen these accents in each bar, simple as it may be.

A great way to add to these two parts is to virtually double Figure 2 an octave higher. As shown in Figure 3, I begin each bar with a quick accent on G9, followed by the same two-note shapes 3rds apart, played one octave above the previous part.

For a fourth guitar part, I could add a 16th-note horn-like stab, voiced as a unison bend on the top two strings, on the last 16th note of beat 1, as shown in Figure 4.

Right now, everything I’ve played fits into the same type of 16th-note rhythm, so, all together, it feels like one big groove.

My next inclination is to move away from the 16th-note grid and add something that hints at the other parts but supplies a little more momentum via a straight eighth-note feel. This is shown in Figure 5 and is built from other two-note shapes that are 3rds and 4ths apart.

Notice that for many of these parts, I play them as four-bar phrases, as opposed to a repeating one- or two-bar phrase. This way, the parts are less repetitive and also come to a “conclusion” in bar 4 before the phrase repeats.

A great part to add now is something along the lines of a shaker or hi-hat accenting straight 16th notes throughout. Figure 6 is played in this way, devised of muted-string accents along with the interval of 2nds, sounded with F and G notes.

Just as a drum kit has a kick, snare and hi-hats, this high part functions like the hi-hats, while the previous figures are more representative of the kick and snare.

At this point, with all these guitars outlining the rhythmic foundation, it’s good to add a more melodic part, like Figure 7. Here, I play 3rds on the G and B strings, descending and then ascending one fret at a time. Also, I’m getting a pizzicato violin-like sound by using palm-muted downstrokes.

What else is missing? Thus far, everything is quite rhythmic, so, with this new layer, I have the ability to really change the vibe via some ringing chords, treated with a little bar vibrato, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 9 offers another part played with the same approach, similar in vibe to Miles Davis’ Freddie Freeloader.

My objective with all this is to find a purposeful role for each guitar part, and when they’re added together, it feels like one unified rhythmic and harmonic entity.

In this column, I’d like to go over the namesake song of my column, Hard Wired, which appears on my self-titled 2023 album. I wrote this song with my good friend Tyler Bryant, and it grew out of a jam session, as many songs do. It’s played in the key of D and in drop-D tuning.

Tyler and I had this idea to write a bluesy “stomp” type of song, like the old traditional blues of Howlin’ Wolf, but for it to have an intensity and energy that would make it heavy. The main riff, to me, has that classic Mountain/Leslie West, Nazareth/early Blue Öyster Cult vibe.

Figure 1 shows the opening riff, which starts with a pick-up on a low G note, followed by the initial phrase, which is based on the D minor pentatonic scale (D, F, G, A, C). Notice the slight bends on the C and F notes. When playing this lick, be sure to use an aggressive attack, to attain that heavy, “mean” quality. I fingerpick everything, so I’ll snap the strings here.

Figure 2 illustrates the entire main riff. Following the opening two-beat phrase, I answer it with a descending line on the 6th string that’s based on the D blues scale (D, F, G, Ab, A, C). To button up that riff, I end with a chromatically ascending figure built from ascending octaves on the 6th and 4th strings, which are rhythmically syncopated and reinforced by the bass and drums.

As shown in Figure 3, bar 2, beats 3 and 4, I begin with an E octave at the 2nd fret then move up one fret at a time to F, F# and G.

I was sure to leave lots of space in this lick, because, once you start adding fuzz, overdrive and sheer volume, it can be challenging to control the focus. The most important thing to me is for there to be clarity combined with the raunchiness and bite.

All of my favorite players, such as Paul Kossoff, Leslie West and Jimi Hendrix, play with tonal perfection, but it also often sounds like they’re hanging on by a thread! And that’s what gives the music that exciting edge.

For the song’s verses, I was thinking of a Stone Temple Pilots vibe, with the rhythm guitar less as a melodic instrument and more as a “pulse” that’s driving the riff.

As shown in Figures 4 and 5, I simply hit big open Dsus2 power chords on all six strings. Figure 6 includes the single-note phrase that falls in bars 2 and 4.

Figure 7 depicts the pre-chorus chords, which consist of just three notes each but sound huge: in bar 1, I play a Bb voicing on the 6th and 3rd strings, including the open D note on the 4th string. I then move that two-finger shape up two frets to C, while still including the open D note, which creates a Cadd2 chord.

The chorus riff, shown in Figure 8, is very Free/Bad Company-esque, as C5 slides up to D5.

As shown in bar 3 of Figure 9, I vary the riff by playing the major 3rd of each chord instead of its root – E and F#, in place of C and D.

The chorus wraps up with the low chords shown in Figure 10, which double the vocal line, a la Leslie West.

Next time, I’ll share my approach to soloing in the song. See you then!

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On my latest album, One Guitar Woman, I pay tribute to many of the female pioneers of the guitar, all of whom are among the biggest influences on my approach to playing the instrument.

On the album, I cover material by Maybelle Carter, Elizabeth Cotten, Memphis Minnie, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Ida Presti in classical guitar, and even Charro, to whom I dedicate a flamenco piece.

I learned a lot working on this album because I had to study many different techniques, which was fun but also challenging. I already had my hands around the Piedmont fingerpicking style, also often referred to as “East Coast” guitar, as it was popularized in a region known as the “Piedmont plateau,” which runs from Richmond, Virginia, to Atlanta.

Some of the most well-known and influential Piedmont-style players are Elizabeth Cotten, Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Blake.

The Piedmont style is built from alternating bass figures, picked with the thumb, and syncopated melodies fingerpicked on the higher strings, as demonstrated in Figure 1.

While holding an open G chord, the thumb alternates between the low G note and the open D string while the first two fingers pick the open G and B strings in a syncopated rhythm. I always use a thumbpick and have acrylic nails on my other fingers, which produce a strong, clear pick attack.

For the entire album, I used a Negra nylon-string acoustic guitar, crafted in Paracho, Mexico, by Salvador Castillo. I bought this guitar specifically for the album, but I play everything on it, from blues to classical to flamenco to Piedmont style to the Maybelle Carter “scratch” style.

As shown in Figure 2, the thumb alternates between the 6th and 4th strings while the index and middle fingers pick the syncopated melody.

The first single from the album is Oh Babe It Ain’t No Lie by Elizabeth Cotten.

Figure 3 is played in this style. While alternating bass notes with my thumb, I play a melody on the higher strings and move down the high E string chromatically, from G to F# to F. This is followed by similar fingerpicking patterns applied to C and E chords.

Over E, I bring in hammer-ons to sound the G# and D notes. In bars 4-6, I use hammer-ons and slides over the F chord to set up the change to C/G. Bar 7 ends with “double octaves,” as pairs of G and A notes, two octaves apart, set up the resolution from G to C.

Cotten’s signature song is Freight Train, which she plays pretty fast. Figure 4 is played in this style. Cotten’s technique is particularly difficult to replicate because she played “upside down” on a guitar strung for a righty but played left-handed.

Figure 5 offers an example along the lines of Memphis Minnie’s In My Girlish Days. It’s played in a more traditional country blues style and with a capo at the 3rd fret. I’m playing as if I’m in the key of E here, but everything sounds in the key of G.

This type of playing does not follow any regimented fingerpicking patterns, as I alter my picking approach to accommodate how the melody lines are balanced against the bass notes.

• One Guitar Woman is out now via Stony Plain.
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