Hello, and welcome to my new Guitar World instructional column.
...
In the coming months, I’ll share with you some of the guitar-playing concepts and approaches that have helped me develop my
Hello, and welcome to my new Guitar World instructional column.
In the coming months, I’ll share with you some of the guitar-playing concepts and approaches that have helped me develop my technique and overall playing style. I’d like to start off with an examination of ascending scalar shapes that, by design, cover the majority of the fretboard.
I have found such patterns to be very useful for both melodic and shred-style playing and also very helpful in regard to the “greater mission,” which is to gain a fuller and deeper understanding of the construction of musical ideas within the framework of the guitar’s fretboard.
The following examples are built from phrases made up of three notes per string that are played across two strings, resulting in various six-note shapes. I play these shapes in a rhythm of straight 16th notes, however, so there is an inherent “threes on twos” kind of rhythm that is alluded to throughout.
All of the phrases in this lesson are based on the E natural minor scale (E F# G A B C D), also known as the E Aeolian mode.
In FIGURE 1, using alternate (down-up-downup) picking throughout, I ascend the D and G strings, beginning on the note E on the D string’s second fret, fretted with the index finger. I follow with two more notes on the D string, fretted with the ring finger and pinkie, and then I move over to the G string and play three ascending notes fretted in exactly the same manner—index to ring to pinkie.
On the upbeat of beat two, I shift up to the next fretboard position of E natural minor and use my index finger, middle finger and pinkie to sound three notes per string