Introduction
Oh well, hereīs another article about one of my favorite tools, the stretch-pentatonic. I hope you have checked out the first part already...
I just wanted to make it clear that the stretch-pentatonic is not really a different scale... itīs based on the pentatonic scale, and is nothing more than a different way to distribute that pentatonic scale on the strings... by playing three notes on each string...
Last time I mentioned that there are several different ways to make up the patterns... there are different versions of those patterns. Here are the 5 patterns most commonly used. There are five of them cuz the pentatonic scale has 5 notes.
The first pattern starts with the root ( example: G in G major ) on the low E-String. I marked all Gīs ( roots ) red. Here is pattern No.1:
And hereīs pattern 2, starting on the second note of our major pentatonic ( example in G major: A, 5th / 17th fret )
Pattern 3, starting on the major third, that would be B ( 7th / 19th fret ) in G major:
Pattern 4, starting on the 5th, in G major that would be D ( 10th fret )
And pattern 5, starting on the sixth, in G major: E ( 12th fret or open E-String )
Alright, I wanted to introduce you to those, although theyīre actually pretty easy to make up.
Now, in this second issue of articles about the topic, I wanted to give away some even more difficult / wild / crazy licks. These work great in a rock- or fusion context and I guess theyīll attract especially the shred-freaks among you. But the scale can be used in all styles of music, it depends on how you use it... be creative, use your ears...
Anyway, turn the page to see some very advanced "shred-licks" in the style of players like Greg Howe, Joey Tafolla... and myself, obviously...
Licks, Licks, Licks !
Alrighty, here are the difficult ones. Maybe you worked your way through the ones in my first article about the stretch-pentatonic. I hope you liked those. I use them a lot actually, and I think they sound really cool. What I like about this scale is that you get a totally different sound than the one you might be used to from the pentatonic scale...
When I was introduced to the concept of the stretch-pentatonic, I was kinda bored of the same old natural minor- and harmonic minor licks that I used to play back then. The s.p. definitely got me out of that rut, and it gave me a bunch of ideas to create nice licks.
So here are some more licks... check them out... get inspired by them to create your own nice licks, and try to incorporate this kinda stuff into your playing...
The lick above is another one of my favorites. It includes tapping, which makes it a bit easier for you, since you donīt have to stretch your left hand that far... you gotta tap the top notes on each string. This really is a cool-sounding lick, at least in my opinion. I used to make up licks similar to this one before I knew the s.p. Back then, I just memorized two adjacent patterns of the stretch-pentatonic, and played in one with my right hand, while my left hand was fretting notes from the lower pattern.
When I learned patterns of the stretch-pentatonic, it got easier ( at least for me ), cuz I just had to memorize one pattern of the stretch pentatonic ( as opposed of two from the regular pentatonic )... just tapped the top note on each string.
Of course, after a while, you have every pattern memorized, but when youīre improvising, you wanna keep it simple and you donīt wanna think too much. So thinking in one s.p.-pattern made it way easier for me.
In the licks in the first article, we had a lot of string-skipping going on, to compliment and emphasize the cool, leaping sound of the s.p.
The same is happening here... we skip the string in between and get a cool, quite dramatic-sounding lick...
Alrighty, here is the next one:
This one is quite similar, but we repeat each three-note pattern. This shouldnīt be too hard and sounds really cool, especially once you speed it up.
I didnīt include the Tap-symbols, because I recommend you play this in different versions... first, tap the first note, then pick those notes instead. Decide which one you prefer and which is easier to play... the version with picking demands big stretches of the left hand, be careful with those !
Lick No. 3:
This one is quite similar to one of the licks I showed you in Part I... this time we include a cute little trick that guys like Paul Gilbert and Joey Tafolla use(d to use ) quite a bit:
We tap the highest note, then we slide the right hand finger up to the next note, and slide back again. This is followed by a pull off to the left hand again.
The little tap / slide creates a pretty wild little sound, very fluid. Sounds great at high-speed...
OK, turn the page for more cool examples...
Wrecking Ball and Rainy Night
OK, on this last page Iīd like to show you two cool parts from actual compositions... well, kind of...
"Wrecking Ball"
"Wrecking Ball" is an awesome, light-speed-solo by Joey Tafolla. It was recorded for the "Infra Blue"-record. In this solo, Joey used two of his trademarks... the stretch pentatonic and chromatics. I previously did a transcription of the whole thing, and here is one example which is very much in the style of what Joey played in "Wrecking Ball"... it kinda combines many of the things you can do with the s.p.
Here it is... a neckbreaking lick a la Joey Tafollaīs "Wrecking Ball"...
This one has a lot of leaps, position shifts and the aforementioned "tap-slide". Check out Joeyīs "Infra Blue"- and "Plastic"-albums for more examples of his awesome style...
"Rainy Night ( Missing You )"
OK, finally itīs time for another shameless plug *grin*. As you might know already, Iīm currently working on an instrumental album called "Talking Hands". The finished album will feature a ballad called "Rainy Night ( Missing You )".
Itīs a quite melodic tune, but throughout two of the verses and the uptempo-passage I kinda cut loose on the solos, using some pretty wild, fast licks as a musical contrast to the rather slow melodies that are the core of the tune.
I used to play an early version of this tune during some of my workshops a while ago ( the solos on the recorded version will be pretty similar to the solos I played back then, though ), and during the third verse I played what you see here:
Click HERE to hear a MIDI-version of this
In the TAB you see both the rhythm guitar ( lower staff... arpeggiated chords ) and the solo I used to play ( upper staff ).
In bar 1 ( of 4 ) I play the ascending run I showed in Part 1 of my s.p.-articles. I use lots of hammer-ons, and the string-skipping involved made it difficult to get this up to speed... but itīs a great opener for a solo.
In bar 2 I play a tapping-lick on the high E-string, then I descend again in bar 3, using a tapping lick similar to the first two licks in this article.
Finally, in bar 4 I do have some double-stops to finish off that section of the solo. ( I incorporated the C here, which is actually not part of the G major pentatonic )
Alright, I hope you liked those examples, and maybe you got some cool new ideas from those. Be creative and try to incorporate the s.p. a bit into your playing... itīs a cool tool beyond your regular modes, and itīs fun to create some licks with it.
"Rainy Night ( Missing You )" written by Eric Vandenberg.
Đ 2001 Talking Hands Music