When writing songs, you can develop solo ideas as well as signature riffs by creating melodic patterns on a single string. This is a useful and often overlooked...
When writing songs, you can develop solo ideas as well as signature riffs by creating melodic patterns on a single string. This is a useful and often overlooked technique that can greatly aid your creativity.
Yngwie Malmsteen and—his biggest influence—Richie Blackmore have frequently exploited this technique, traversing the fretboard while playing fast licks on one string. You will also hear it used frequently in classical guitar and violin music.
Playing up and down on a single string produces a pleasingly consistent tonal quality that cannot be achieved in any other way. It’s also a great way to work on your scale knowledge on the fretboard, and it can help you build up speed and endurance in both hands. In this month’s column, I’d like to detail a few different patterns that I’ve devised to demonstrate the value of this technique.
FIGURE 1 presents our first single-string lick. Using alternate (down-up-down-up) picking throughout, I gradually move up the B string using notes from the E Aeolian mode (E F# G A B C D), also known as the E natural, or pure minor scale. In bars 7 and 8, I switch from straight alternate picking to double pull-offs, wherein a picked fretted note is followed by a pull-off to a lower fretted note and then an additional pull-off to the open string, phrased as eighth-note triplets. Simple as it may seem, it can be difficult to synchronize the steady alternate picking with quick alternating between fretted and open notes. Start out slowly at first, and gradually increase the tempo. You can also execute these licks with pull-offs to the open strings, which yields a smoother, legato sound.
Played entirely on the A string, FIGURE 2 is based on the A Aeolian mode (A B C D E F G), also known