« | Home | »

How To Play Awesome Country Runs That Will Impress Everyone

By Mike Hayes | June 26, 2010

I’ll bet you have been at a concert where the guitarist plays an
unbelievable long run that absolutely brains you and while you
are sitting there stunned and dazed the only though that is going
through your head is ‘he or she must have more notes on their
guitar than I have!”

I know it’s happened to me, and when it did I came up with all
sorts of reasons why they could do that and I couldn’t! They must
(a) have a different tuning, (b) have more strings on they
guitar; (c) must be using some type of effect pedal etc., and so
the list went on and on; of course the truth was I didn’t have
the faintest idea how they were doing it!

The good news is … I’ve now worked how it’s done and I’m going
to share it with you.

The trick with country guitar playing is to incorporate lots of
open strings, hammer-on’s and pull-off’s which create the
illusion on extra notes being played; another thing that helps
create interest and excitement in country guitar solos is the use
of the blues scale and the chromatic scale.

By playing solos with heaps of open strings you create the effect
of musical ’space’ between the notes which has the effect on the
listener as if you are actually playing more notes than you
really are playing.

Here’s is a sample of the type of long ascending country run I’ve
been talking about using open strings, hammer-on’s and  pull-
off’s plus some notes from the blues scale and chromatic scale
laced into the run for good measure.

I’ve presented the run in sections containing three to four notes
since that’s the way the best guitarists learn all their music;
learn each section by playing slowly and carefully making certain
you are playing each notes cleanly and accurately.

Remember: speed comes as a by-product of accuracy.

Section 1: Notes = G – A – Bb – B

———————-
———————-
———————-
———————-
—–0-h-1-h-2—
–3—————–

Section 2: Notes = D – E – F

———————-
———————-
———————-
–0-h-2-h-3——
———————-
———————-

Section 3: Notes = G – A – Bb – B

————————
—————–0—–
–0-h-2-h3———
————————
———————–
———————–

Section 4: Notes = C – D – E

————-0—-
——————
–5-h-7——-
——————
——————
——————

Section 5: Notes = F – F# – G

——————-
–6-h-7-h-8—
——————-
——————-
——————-
——————-

The musical resources for this run are:

G Mixo-Lydian: G – A – B – C – D – E – F – G

G Blues: G – Bb – C – Db – D – F – G

G Chromatic scale: G – G# – A – A# – B – C – C# – D – D# – E – F
- F# – G

This country run was based on the G Mixo-Lydian mode, see if you
can find were I added the other scales.

There you have it, of course you can add echo, chorus and reverb
to enhance and color your solos but these electronic effects can
only enhance your musical content they can never replace your own
individual creativity on guitar.

Topics: Country Guitar, Modes, guitar scales | No Comments »

Comments

You must be logged in to post a comment.