UNPLANNED DOWNTIME: 12th Oct 23:45
I'm fascinated by this 'fusion' playing, can anyone dissect it for me?
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I realise that this sort of playing is not most people's thing, hopefully the 'fusion' tag will deter negative people who don't like it!
OK, so I've posted this video before some years ago, but I still keep coming back to it. It is Per Nilsson improvising and it just blows my mind. I'm someone who is perpetually trapped in the simple blues scale so this sounds like a foreign language to me.
I'm wondering how one would play like this? Presumably he's using a major scale mode? It is very melodic so he's maybe playing around the chord changes?
So if it is those things, you would need to know what mode to use I guess, and that depends on the chords? So .... you look at a chord chart ..... or do amazing guitar bods kind of know what chords are going on and therefore what mode to use without information?
Likewise, I guess you need to know all the notes all over the fretboard to know where to be at any given time? I er ... don't know fretboard notes at all! Is there a good way to learn?
So yeah, I'm just trying to find out how to get that sort of 'sound' playing over a backing track. Any pointers gratefully received!
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im really looking forward to hearing someone on here break down the theory of it
Anyway, yep the bits over the dominant chord (chord 5), which is D7 - he's playing D phrygian dominant. Then when it resolves to the tonic chord (chord 1), which is G, he's playing a mixture of G major, like you said, and G mixolydian.
Quite unusual to go from phrygian dominant to the major tonic - normally it's a minor piece that commands phrygian dominant. Anyhoo, that's what it is. At least in the first minute - I didn't listen to all of it.
In terms of playing, it's just a matter of getting the scales and runs and arpeggios under your fingers; he's using plenty of distortion so you don't have to worry too much about awesome technique. Though pretty cool to play without a plectrum.
Lots of Satriani is like this - have you tried it?
I love Satriani, I have tried learning a few pieces in the past but I am very poor with tab plus my technique is short of the level required. Thanks for the info here though, I love the sound of that early bit, which I assume is the Phrygian dominant.
It's classic Yngwie backing track - it's in A minor and it's got loads of E Phrygian Dominant ("PD"), like basically every Yngwie song ever.
The first 44 seconds are E(PD)
Then the next bit is a "Still Got The Blues, "backwards cycling through the circle of 5ths"" progression from D minor all the way to A minor.
For the E(PD) section, you play 1 b2 3 4 5 b6 b7 8, or E F G# A B C D E.
For the backwards cycling bit, you should theoretically play the changes - Dm, G, C, etc; but you can also just stick to Am throughout. Am has A B C D E F G A.
But you do have to flip briefly to A harmonic minor (or E PD, which has the same notes) when you get to the E chord near the end of the progression, because you need that G# over the E chord to get the Yngwie feels.
This guy is actually professing to play E(PD) throughout, but in fact over the progression he doesn't choose to play a G or a G# until he gets to that E chord, so the majority of it is just as much in Am as it is in E(PD).
Great vid and many thanks to @steamabacus and @viz for the insightful edification
I still don't get how people know what scale is appropriate 'on the fly'???
Big smile on my face now I need to explore this a bit more.
Not dismissing Viz's abilities here- quite the opposite, he's done this so much that it is second nature.
Also check out Steve Morse and David Torn- they do a lot of Phrygian dominant style runs.
And Dream Theater.
In order to get there you need to play the harmonic minor scale and the modes of it.
Much as you have modes of the major scale, you also have modes of the harmonic and melodic minor.
Easiest to start harmonic in the key of A, because it is close to the natural minor mode.
A B C D E F G# A
If you start that mode from the 5th note E you get
E F G# A B C D
Map that across the fretboard- I mostly use three note per string patterns but you can also modify CAGED fingerings, it is just one note different to A Aeolian.
You want to be able to play this at a minimum in three positions and be able to link them up.
Five positions would be better.
I suggest starting at 5th (or slide from the 4th to the 5th on the 6th string), 7th, 10th, 12th frets and starting at open E too,
Drill the hell out of that for a week or two, play as scales and then move to creating melodic lines with it shifting between positions.
You can't do the second thing without doing the first thing (ie learn the alphabet, then create words).
Then (like a year down the line) work on transitioning in and out of chord progressions where you shift from other parent scales into phrygian dominant ideas.
The great thing about modes is once you learn one parent scale you have tacitly learned all the modes too, you just need to do the not-inconsequential work to link them all up.
Modes of Harmonic Minor:
1: Harmonic Minor: A B C D E F G# A
2: Locrian ♮6: B C D E F G# B
3: Ionian ♯5: C D E F G# A B C
4: Romanian Minor: D E F G# A B C D
5: Phrygian Dominant: E F G# A B C D E
6: Lydian ♯2:: F G# A B C D E F
7: Altered Diminished: G# A B C D E F G
Great tune- it gets tasty as fuck at 4:30.
But Phygian dominant is the main one used in fusion after harmonic minor.
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I'm not saying that's a bad thing ......but I have tried and can't get an amp/guitar/pedal to sound anything like this.
Even a very high gain amp with a seriously strong drive pedal just sounds like a load of interference like trying to tune in an old radio
How do they make that sound ?
Right hand muting, tone pot roll off, picking is softer than you think, but with precision.
Lots of legato and years of playing 5 note rolls to a metronome.
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Not a very learned person, but one thing I noticed when I tried this out is that if you add a note between the seventh and the root (there are reasons why you might want to do this) - in this case an Eb - you get two dominant seven chords a semitone apart - in this case E7 and F7. Which also sounds good if you weave them together.
Also, the equivalent of minor pentatonic in Harmonic Minor would be A - C - D - E -G#, which also gives some fun sounds.
(One thing I try out on scales is to use the Pentatonic Generating Algorithm - the root, third, fourth, fifth and seventh. This isn't a real theory thing, or it could be a real thing, but I didn't read it anywhere, I got it from misunderstanding something completely different that someone said, but you get some interesting stuff.)
x x x
4 3 2
5 1 2
3 x 2
0 2 0
x 0 x
F7 E7 A
Voice leading may be putting it a bit strongly, but there it is. No help at all with the widdly, but it's the sort of thing that entertains me.