Hello, and welcome to my new Guitar World column. It’s great to be doing this again, after more than 30 years. Over the course of the next several months, I look forward to sharing and illustrating some of the many various concepts and techniques for both soloing and rhythm playing that are at the core of my multi-faceted approach to music and guitar playing.
Let’s begin with a look at legato phrasing. The term legato means “smooth and connected,” and for guitar players, this generally refers to an abundant use of hammer-ons and pull-offs, with minimal use of the pick, in terms of the way notes are articulated.
The focus of this lesson is a lick that I first played back in the early ’90s and have since used in a variety of contexts. I played it in the Testament song So Many Lies, from our 1992 album, The Ritual. At the time, I was discovering and studying the playing of legendary jazz-fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth, who was without doubt one of the greatest legato-style players ever.
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Along with the legato phasing, the lick is based on the fourth mode of the B melodic minor scale (B, C#, D, E, F#, G#, A#), which starts on E (the scale’s fourth degree) and is known as E Lydian-b7, or E Lydian-dominant.
Figure 1 illustrates this fast one-bar lick, which is played in a steady succession of 32nd notes played across all six strings. I begin on E (1st string, 12th fret) and hammer-on to G# at the 16th fret then pull-off to F# and back to E.
I then move one string lower and sound the first note, D (2nd string, 15th fret) by hammering my pinkie down onto the string “from nowhere.” the pick is not used to sound this note or any of those that follow, all of which are articulated with either hammer-ons or pull-offs. I fret all the notes on the top two strings with my 1st, 3rd and 4th fingers.
The sequence then migrates over to all of the remaining strings, staying within the framework of E Lydian-dominant. Notice that, when playing the notes on the G and D strings, I switch my fret-hand fingering to 1, 2 and 4, moving back to 1, 3 and 4 on the A string and then to 1, 2 and 4 when I get to the low E string.
Let’s look at the scale itself one octave at a time: Figure 2 illustrates E Lydian-b7, played in the lower octave, moving between the low E and D strings. Figures 3 and 4 offer two ways to finger the scale in the next higher octave.
The best way to get this lick under your fingers is to break it into smaller pieces: Figures 5 and 6 focus on the first part, played on the top three strings.
Figures 7 and 8 show how it lays on the bottom three strings.
Now that you have an understanding of the lick and how it’s executed, let’s move to a different key and part of the fretboard.
Figure 9 shows this same lick played in 7th position and transposed to B Lydian-b7 (B, C#, D#, E#, F#, G#, A), which is the fourth mode of F# melodic minor (F#, G#, A, B, C#, D#, E#).
As you will find, this lick offers a great way to get a handle on legato phrasing, as well as the intriguing sound of Lydian-dominant.
