Free Guitar Lesson-Open string country lick
Here’s a quick Brent Mason style country lick for you. It starts out with a rather nifty open string run. I’ve played around with these for a while and you can get some pretty cool ideas going with this technique.
The basic premise is that every time you go to fret a note that is the same pitch as an open string you use the open string instead. This creates some really nice cascading runs. It’s also cool as you get some weird dissonance’s too. The idea is leave the open string ringing into the next note.
Below is a simple example of an Em one octave scale.
Now check out the same scale using this idea.
Notice how the fingering of the first three notes has been completely modified to accommodate them all ringing together. Get the idea! Remember to get your hands positioned correctly so you don’t choke any ringing notes.
Obviously the trick is to play in a key that contains a lot of these notes. G is going to work great as it contains all the open strings. C is also good, A and D work really well and Bm. Eb probably isn’t going to work too well!
Note in the tab below I’m using my middle finger to play the open string with a hybrid picking style. Don’t forget to start slowly and build the tempo up. This can feel really odd at first as getting your head round picking out open strings this quick can be strange, but keep going. Try it with loads of scales in different positions.
The second half of the lick has a little pedal steel move followed by some pretty staple country double stop ideas. Try to get some spank into it. Use your middle and ring fingers to pick the double stops.
This doesn’t just have to apply to country although it works best with clean sounds…or not, depending on your taste. Check out Brent Mason if you haven’t already. It’s quite frightening.
This was played on a Strat - Bridge pick-up with some slap delay and some compression.
It should sound a bit like this!
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Here’s the tab. Enjoy!
This is funky Toby, we did stuff like this in lessons didn’t we? i didn’t really get the hang of it then but I’m coping with this one okay, don’t have it all up to speed yet though.
keep it real