The return of the burning fingers

Well dudes and dudettes, it cannot be denied; and I say it with a smirk and forked-index-and-pinky-fingers: Burning hot guitar solos are on the come-back.

Yeah, sure; for years Kurt Cobain’s two-chord-wonder hits dominated the rock airwaves (and don’t get me wrong, I dig the songs, and it was a nice break) but all things get old after a while. It seems that more and more people are picking up the guitar, learning those few strum-a-dum chords and wondering, “Is there more to this, or will I one day just lay this guitar and it’s Boy Scout camp chords right on that old cracklin’ bonfire out of mind numbing boredom?”

Forget it, there’s LOTS more. This addition to the living, breathing “Master the Guitar” eBook is going to have your fingers blazing brighter than any old campfire in no time. The original section on “The need for speed” is fine, but this will take you up a few incendiary notches further.

To really get cooking, we’re going to need a couple of mental utensils.

First, a reminder about the way octaves appear on the fretboard. If you’ve forgotten the “Two strings up, two frets up (three across the B-string) rule”, then go all the way back to page 9 in the main text and have a look.

Second, we’ll need a collection of scale shapes set up with three notes per string. When we have three notes on each string, legato techniques (hammering-on and pulling-off) are much easier to facilitate, immediately leanding our solo lines that liquid, Satriani-and-Vai flair. We will, naturally, look at possibilities for originality as well; there's nothing worse than a straight-up copycat!

So, let me hit you with a few scales.

This first batch of scales starts on the low E-string and consists of three notes per string, and just six notes per octave. They are more than penta-tonic, but still have one note less than the usual major/minor shapes you may know. The reason for this – and you’ll notice this as you look at the shapes – is so that the shape repeats exactly in each octave! This makes for fast learning and even faster fingering! Here goes:

Major scale (no 7th) form:

Minor scale (no 7th) form: Minor w/#6th (no 7th) form:

So, now that we have these easy to remember forms, we can free our brain cells from the task of scale shape memorization and really let those fingers fly! Let’s look at (and hear) some ways we can use these scales to inciner-ate our defenseless guitar fretboards:

Listen to the major scale pattern in A - First slowly, over an A chord, and then really smokin’.

Same pattern, same deal, but now over an F# minor chord. Yes, it works just fine! F# minor is the relative minor of A major. In fact, this pattern off of an A note will work more or less over any chord in the key of A.

Now, let's check out the Major shape being used to create some se-quences. By repeating patterns of notes, we note only get more mileage out of the shapes, but also create the kind of rapid-fire runs that have made players like Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhodes, Zakk Wylde, and John Pe-trucci famous. Since I touched on groups of four in the main text, we’ll fo-cus on groups of six here. Sixes have a nicer flow than the machine-gun like four note groups.

This first sequence is a simple idea, but immediately brings EVH to mind. Using legato technique (hammer ons) we ascend three strings, then jump back one and repeat. It makes a great exercise, but be sure to work frag-ments of it into more melodic ideas so your solos don't sound mechanical. Notice the tapped notes at the 17th fret of the high E- and B-strings as well as the 16th and 14th of the G-string. Practice, practice!

(LISTEN) (slow)

Here is a sequence using the minor shape (here on F#). It starts with the F# minor arpeggio, and descends to the root again before ascending to the next octave. Shades of Randy/Yngwie – it’s a real picking challenge. Start slow and work it up to speed!

(LISTEN) (slow)

This one’s from the Jerk-God of Guitar, Yngwie Malmsteen. Attitude aside, the guy’s faster than anyone else, and that’s what we’re talking about here, isn’t it?! He adds the raised 7th (leading tone) to the minor scale – the A# note, in this case – for that classical vibe. The great thing with the repeating octave shapes is that once you have one octave practiced, you can trans-

pose it very easily, and the speed comes naturally – Yngwie takes advan-tage of it! I can’t quite get it up to Swedish-speed, but you’ll get the idea:(LISTEN) (slow)

The next sequence uses some wide finger stretches to ‘expand’ on the idea – no pun intended. Come up with your own variations, and practice them slowly until you can really burn:

(LISTEN) (slow)

This next set of scales was given to me during my first (and only!) private lessons many years ago. At that point, the teacher referred to them (some-what in error) as “The Seven Modes of the Major Scale”. I’ll explain modes

in a minute. For now, just look at these shapes as seven great three-note-per-string shapes. In some cases, there is a root note added on the low E-string to help you visualize the chord shapes within. Remember – even when shredding up the guitar neck at Mach 2, you should keep a reference chord in mind, as we learned early on in the book:

Root position Second step Third step

Fourth step Fifth Step Sixth step

Seventh step

These forms can also be considered shapes for the modes, if you relate them to the first note of the pattern (lowest note on the A string) harmoni-cally. More on this in the nest section “Modes: Misunderstood and Mis-used”. In this case, shape one (root position) is known as “Ionian”, shape two as “Dorian”, three as “Phrygian”, four “Lydian”, five “Mixolydian”, six “Aeolian”, and seven is called “Locrian”. The forms then repeat starting in the next octave... The Seven Modes of the Major Scale. Here's a line over a D minor chord, ala Satriani. It connects shapes seven and one of the above shapes, allowing the use of hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides for a sound smooth, rolling sound. It is played almost entirely le-gato:

(LISTEN) (slow)

By using the three note per string shapes, legato lines in the style of Joe Satriani are a breeze – you just need to start off slowly, hammering onto notes firmly to build finger strength. When performing pull-offs, be sure to pull away slightly to the side, in effect plucking the string again, thereby keeping the string in motion.

Notice that in the above example, the notes which are held longer are part of the D minor chord. This is the ONLY reason this line sounds like D minor. The scale being used makes NO DIFFERENCE - it’s the chord tones which make the sound. If you focus on other notes, the sound of the lines will shift.

Here another example using the same principles. It is played over an Ami-nor – Amin/G – Fmaj7 – Fmaj7 progression, so the chord tones to focus on are mainly A, C, and E (A minor = ACE, Fmaj7 = FACE). It’s meant to sound like Satriani, so you can get your fingers into some of his favorite methods. Notice:

• The opening half step bend is repeated an octave lower. Repeating a phrase in octaves is always a good way to create continuity.

• The long legato phrases in bars three and four with the focus on the ‘E’ and ‘A’ notes – again, created by holding these notes longer than the surrounding ones. The last phrase in bar four is also a “lower echo” of the one before it.

• In bars six and seven there are a few grace note slides – quick slides from one note into the next, where the first note is barely heard. They create a certain vibe often associated with Vai and Satch.

• The little pentatonic “falling off” phrases in bars seven-into-eight and ten. Again, the repetition in octaves comes into play.

•

(LISTEN)

Don’t worry – you needn't be constantly aware of the name of every note you are playing. Imagine what would have to be running through Paul Gil-bert's head as he plays "Frenzy", or Satriani during one of his liquid legato lines - there would be no brain power left to run those fingers!

What these players are ALWAYS aware of are the intervals they are playing relative to the root. These interval relationships are the real sound of the note. Thinking of a line as, for example, "F#, G#, A, C#, F#" is less useful than knowing that you played the root, 2nd, minor 3rd, 5th, and then the oc-tave of an F# minor chord, for example.

The name of the notes will be different if you play the same contour of line over a Bb chord, but if you know the shape (and more importantly, sound) of a "root, 2nd, min 3rd, 5th, octave" line as it appears on the fingerboard, you can translate it to any chord you need, regardless of what the notes are called. This is key to maintaining melodic awareness at high speeds. Otherwise you're just going full bore down the on-ramp to the Autobahn with your eyes (an ears) closed...

Marty Friedman (again) is a great example for this kind of thinking. His con-trol of the use of intervals to communicate a particular vibe in his lines is highly developed. He freely mixes intervals (he’ll often use major and minor seconds or sixths within the same context) when aiming for a particular sound.

Let’s look at a couple of ways to spice up this arpeggio, a straight A minor arpeggio at the 12th fret:

(LISTEN) (slow)

Adding another interval to a straight triad arpeggio is a favorite technique of Marty’s, and makes for a unique sound. This is a tradition that dates back to Charlie Christain and Django Reinhardt - the first shredders ever. Try these on for size:

A minor with a major 6th (#6th) (LISTEN) (slow)

A minor with 9th (LISTEN) (slow)

Now, here’s a way to make an arpeggio a little more interesting by running a four note sequence through it. You should practice this with any arpeggio you can get your hands on, and especially ones that appeal to your ear! Also try three note and other groupings:

Minor with sharp 6th (LISTEN) (slow)

Minor with 9th (LISTEN) (slow)

Now, try this example on for size. By combining the minor #6th arpeggios and one of the fast legato runs it starts to sound like something! I guess I’m into a Marty Friedman kind of vibe at the moment – this reminds me of something he would have played in Megadeth.

Ideas to observe:

• The minor arpeggio with a raised 6th sequence is the same as the one in the example presented above, but again, in the interest of keeping the phrases from sounding mechanical, the ideas starts off the a beat other than the ‘one’. By starting the phrase early, is sounds more “off the cuff” and energetic.

• The rapid legato run does start on beat one after a pause, which may be a bit square, but it extends into the first half of bar eight, thereby at least not ending on a first beat of the bar.

• After the legato run, the extended A minor arpeggio comes into play again, this time even more fragmented. In the words of Eddie Van Halen, this entire phrase is like “falling down the stairs and landing on your feet”. It starts in on beat three of bar eight – an atypical place to begin a new idea, but through the sequence of pull-offs, it resolves to beat one of bar 11, giving it a sense of completion; of “landing on it’s feet”.

It’s good to try building solo ideas in the direction of guitarists you respect. It’s much better practice than just wheedling through scales and arpeggios - it forces your to turn those building blocks into ideas and phrases.

(LISTEN)

For you Satriani fans, here’s a wicked arpeggio from the song “Mystical Po-tato Head Groove Thing”. The trick here is to mute the strings with your right hand above the 7th fret, this keeps open strings from ringing (and looks cool). You’ll need to have a very strong left hand – every note is hammered, not picked - so work on getting each note to come clear before speeding it up:

(LISTEN) (slow)

As Satriani showed us in that last lick, there are still a lot of ways to put a fresh spin on playing arpeggios – I hope this inspires you to look at them with a new perspective!

Pentatonic IdeasNow, using the “octaves across each set of two strings” principle, let’s look a pentatonic scale set up with three notes per string. The cool thing with pentatonic scales in a shredding context are the wide intervals within the scale, we can take advantage of this to create lines with a more ‘air’ in them, alá Eric Johnson. Remember to relate these to your ‘box’ shapes based on each chord form!

Pentatonic Major Pentatonic Minor

Here’s a pentatonic shape with the b5 worked in. The chromatic steps 4th, b5th, 5th add a smooth little corner within the wide leaps:

Here's an idea that reminds me of Paul Gilbert, using the pentatonic mior with the b5th. The challenge is to cleanly pick every note, as Paul is apt to do. Please keep a CO2 fire extinguisher handy for those fingertips – water is bad for the guitar. (LISTEN) (slow)

Eric Johnson’s cascading pentatonic lines often superimpose rhythmic groupings of four notes against descending fives and sixes. This way, the rhythmic groups don’t line up exactly with the number of descending notes, breaking up the monotony of sequences. An excellent idea:

(LISTEN) (slow)

I have to throw this one in - Kirk Hammet used it somewhere on "...and Jus-tice for All" (I’ve forgotten exactly where). Although note strictly pentatonic, it takes advantage of repeated notes and wide intervals as the pattern crosses strings and sounds very cool:

(LISTEN) (slow)

Modes: Misunderstood and Misused

Let me straighten this out from the get go. A mode is NOT a scale. A mode is a relationship. As in, “I know what you want, you want it every night! But what about our relationship?!”

You see, it doesn’t matter what you want – it’s about what your partner wants. You see, if you think you’re playing a mode, it’s not because of what you are playing, but because of what the rhythm section is playing. If you play loads of G Mixolydian (Mixo-what? - hang in there just a moment – explanations on the way!), but the rhythm section is focusing on D minor, your lines will sound more like D Dorian.

The truth is that the rhythm section creates more of a sense of the key cen-ter than your solo lines do. It’s just a matter of what the listener tends to fo-cus on.

So: Keeping in mind that it’s up to the rhythm part to determine the key center, let’s look at the seven modes and what they mean. We’ll take the key of C (no sharps or flats) to start:

A C major scale goes: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C’, D’, E’... and so on.

This will create a bright, upbeat tonality when played over a C major chord, or a chord progression which centers on C major (like “Cmajor, Fmajor, Cmajor, Gmajor”). The return to the ‘C’ note is the important part. ‘C’, the root of the major chord, sounds like home.

But what would happen if we focused the progression on a different chord? What if we made a progression using the chords in the key of C major, but picking a different chord as the ‘home’ chord?

Aha! That would be a MODAL PROGRESSION!

You see, the naturally occurring chords in the key of C are:

C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, and B diminished.

We create these chords by stacking up notes from the C major scale in thirds (take a note, skip a note, take a note, skip a note, take a note: C ma-jor = C, E, G. D minor = D, F, A. And so on.)

If we were to use a chord progression such as: D minor - F - G - A minor and play lines using the C major scale, we would likely focus on the return to D minor – the D note as a root – within those lines. So, even though the KEY is C major, and the scale is C major, we are really in a different ‘mode’ of thinking. We are in fact in a different Mode! The D Dorian mode.

D – E – F – G – A – B – C – D’ – E’ – F’ etc...

We should, most importantly, recognize each mode in terms of the intervals it contains. Even better, since this is a minor mode (has a minor third, giv-ing it a minor sound) how it is different from the natural minor scale!

The natural minor on the white keys of the piano is from A to A’:

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – A’ – B’ ....

The intervals relative to the root are:

root – maj2nd – min 3rd – P 4th – P 5th – min 6th – min 7th – octave

In the D dorian mode (D – D’ on the white keys) the intervals in relationship to the root are:

root – maj2nd – min 3rd – P4th – P5th – major 6th – min 7th - octave

The one difference between the intervals in these two modes of the C ma-jor scale is that the Dorian contains the major 6th. So, we can think of Dorian as minor with a major sixth. This is one of the most commonly used modes; favored by blues and rock players for the strength of the major sixth over a minor chord.

Basically, modes are still major and minor, they just contain a few different intervals - which have different relationships to the root note - lending a dif-ferent ‘color’ or ‘flavor’ to the lines you write or improvise.

Here’s a little overview:

C – C: C Ionian (Natural Major)

D – D: D Dorian (minor mode) minor with a raised 6th (#6)

E – E: Phyrgian (minor mode) minor with a lowered 2nd (b2)

F – F: Lydian (major mode) major with a raised 4th (#4)

G – G: Mixolydian (major mode) major with a lowered 7th (b7)

A – A: Aeolian (natural minor)

B – B: Locrian (diminished) minor with a b3 and b5

Keep in mind that the above examples are just in the key of C. In the key of Bb, for example, the modes are Bb Ionian, C Dorian, D Phrygian, Eb Ly-dian, F Mixolydian, G Aeolian, and A Locrian. The root notes change (obvi-ously) from key to key, but the relationship stays the same.

The most important thing is to get to know the sound of the modes. By do-ing this, you get to know the characteristic sound of the different intervals over a given root note. This is true power in playing and improvising. When you know how a note sounds before you play it, you are in control of what you wish to express.

A few listening tips in the use of modes:

Dorian is the sound of that spicy raised 6th – hear it in Santana’s “Black Magic Woman”. There is also a famous jazz composition named “Kind of Blue” which progresses from the D Dorian and Eb Dorian modes as an al-ternative to standard chord progressions.

Phyrigian has a “Spanish” flavor to it. Strum an open E minor chord and then play a fast E – F – G – A – B – A – G – F – E scale run. You’ll hear the ‘spanish’ quality. Incidentally, Metallica and other heavy bands often use the Phyrigian mode for riffs, due to the half step motion from E – F. It has a dark, brooding sound when played using power chords.

Lydian melodies have a questioning, mysterious quality. David Bowie often uses the motion from the #4th to the P5th in vocal melodies to accent odd phrases and create tension. Joe Satriani uses the Lydian sound in his in-triguing “Flying in a Blue Dream”, as well as other compositions.

Mixolydian is the sound of a dominant chord. The b7th interval creates a tritone (three whole steps - a b5th interval - very dissonant) with the major

3rd in the chord. This dissonance begs to be resolved to the root chord. This is present in almost all western music and is integral to a sense of tension and resolution to push the composition forward.

Aeolian is as minor as it gets. The half step from the 5th to the minor sixth can create nasty dissonance if you sit on the note too long, so be wary and use your ears. If you want sad, you’ve *sniff* got it...

Locrian modal sounds are dissonant, and offer an interesting selection of notes. The minor 2nd and b5th intervals are dark as night and appear prominently in heavy, scary (Yeah!!!) stuff like Black Sabbath. Jazzers also like the dissonance provided by these intervals for far-out improvisations.

So, now you’re a little clever-er in terms of theory – go seek out those sounds, internalize them and apply them to your own music.

Since one of my readers has requested info on the Phrygian mode specifi-cally, here is an audio example of how solo lines using E phrygian sound. The chord progression uses chords from the key of C, but focuses on the iii chord - E minor. The use of the b2nd (F) over the E minor chord empha-sizes the Phrygian quality.

I haven’t tabbed this final example, because I’d like for you to try to work it out for yourself. I used only notes which are in the key of C, so there are no odd surprises. If you really can’t figure it out and would like to know how to play it, just drop me an email and I’ll gladly give you some hints.

If this has piqued your interest, and you would like to know more about al-terations to scales and applications for jazzy notes, check out my website for my books on jazz guitar. The Charlie Christian Method is available now, and a book on Bebop is in the works, due out this winter.

Additionally, an entire method for cranking up your picking, legato, tapping and sweep picking technique is in the works. This will be a complete man-ual on high performance guitar, and will include numerous backing tracks to help you work on all the examples.

Now get back to work!____________________________________________________________all material copyright 2006 joe dochtermann, all rights reserved. this text, document, and/or recorded mate-rial may not be reproduced, redistributed, or cited without express written permission of the author. violators subject to prosecution and will be held financially liable for damages.