When David Arnold said, “Fancy playing some guitar on the new Bond film?”. I said, “Yes please!”.

My main contribution is to the ‘Boat chase’ scene which is pretty rocked out. The idea was to double up the orchestral parts David had written to generally beef things up. Lots of tempo changes, time signitures, low tunings and double tracking later it was done. Finally last week I went to the mix and it sounds massive!!!! Can’t wait to see it in a cinema!

I got this picture off a blog. Apparently that’s their boat in the background! Random!!!

Many thanks and much respect to David for giving me a chance to do this. Also Rob Playford and Steve Hilton who work with David on the scores. It really doesn’t get much bigger or cooler than working on a Bond film. It’s part of cinema history and probably the first thing I learn’t on the guitar.

To top it it all off on Saturday night I went along to the recording of the theme tune for the credits. Written by Monty Norman it has to be one of the most recognisable pieces of music ever and being in the room while a 76 piece orchestra played it was totally overwhelming.

All in all probably one of the best musical experiences so far!!!

‘The Quantum of Solice’ is out in cinemas November 2008. Go see it!

Anyway MusicPlayer.com has a great set of interviews with the awesome Chris Poland. This guy is a great guitarist with a really unique style and sound. If your not familiar with Chris’ work he used to play in Megadeth and currently plays in a band called OHM. His bending and vibrato techniques are totally cool. If your into fusion guitar this could be the guitarist for you!!

Go check it out here.

Needless to say I’m absolutely shattered. I took the ‘Extreme Rock’ class with sixteen students with fast fingers and loud amps!!! Good lord!! For our final performance we played ‘The Trooper’ by Iron Maiden and ‘Crazy Train’ by Ozzy Osbourne. It was awesome. They worked really hard and melted some faces with some great solos.

Couldn’t have done it without a great staff. Here’s a pic of me and fellow tutors having a well earned beer. From left to right. Me, Daniel Johnson (Level 1 guitar), Andy Moore (Level 2 guitar), Cath Stephens (Vocals), Jamie McCredie (Level 3 guitar)..Missing are Mathew Browell (Bass) and Ian Halford (Drums).

Everyone worked really hard and made it a great week for the kids. Now I need to sleep!!!

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!

Here’s the tab. Enjoy!