As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, when I’m soloing, I like to combine a variety of flashy techniques—such as sweep picking, fretboard tapping and legato articulations—that allow...
As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, when I’m soloing, I like to combine a variety of flashy techniques—such as sweep picking, fretboard tapping and legato articulations—that allow me to play very fast lines.
These techniques can be heard in my solos to the songs “Good Girls, Bad Guys” and “Don’t Mess with Ouija Boards” from the Falling in Reverse album The Drug in Me Is You. For this month’s lesson, I’d like to go over portions of those solos.
The “Good Girls, Bad Guys” solo is based primarily on a combination of the D Dorian mode (D E F G A B C) and the D blues scale (D F G Ab A C), but I also throw in the major seventh, C#, which I use as a chromatic passing tone between D and C, on the D string’s 11 fret. Figure 1 illustrates the closing section, which is my favorite part of the solo.
I begin with a quick hammer/pull on the high E string that moves between the 10th, 12th and 13th frets, for which I use my index finger, ring finger and pinkie. As the solo progresses, I stick with these finger/fret assignments across the top three strings. When I get down to the D string on beat three, I move quickly between the ring, middle and index fingers to play the chromatic passages on the D and A strings.
When playing this run, strive to use a legato phrasing approach—hammer-ons, pull-offs and finger slides—as much as possible in order to achieve a smooth, seamless sound. When I do pick, I use standard alternate (down-up-down-up) picking. It will take some practice to get these kinds of licks to sound fluid and effortless, which is what it’s all about. If you