This week's riff:
The lesson.
Hey everyone. I hope you all had a good week. This weeks riff is a fairly straight ahead
movement. It’s very short and can easily be built upon. It’s also very versatile in that it
can be used in various music styles. This one is built from a simple A minor pentatonic
scale which, of course, puts us in the key of A minor. The first point of interest is the rake
into the C note found on the G string at the 5th fret. Rakes are a great way to add
emphasis and expression to a note. For those of you unfamiliar with this technique, a
rake is done by lightly strumming across a couple of muffled strings (usually muted with
a finger on your fretting hand) and into a cleanly fretted note. It takes a reasonable
amount of control with the fretting hand but can be incorporated with some practice.
Depending on which finger you are fretting the note with, it may be more practical to
muffle the strings with a palm mute.
The next thing I want to point out is the fairly shrill vibrato I threw in on that C note. If you
are going for a mellower tone, you can use a slower and more subtle vibrato. The next
few notes are fairly quick. I chose to pick every note but a pull-off may serve you well if
you prefer. Next, I paused for a moment using that quick vibrato again, just before
resolving to the root, A. Notice the staccato (literally translates as “short note”) on that
final A.
That’s it for this week. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
-Tim
Audio And Video at the bottom of the page.
If you’d like to learn more about melodic phrasing, resolution, scale structure or any of
the other ideas presented in these riff sessions, click HERE and fill out the feedback
form. I am tossing around the idea of creating a course on basic improv ideas and
application. With enough requests, I may be persuaded to do so…
Good luck and have fun!
This program is provided by Tim Kierstead, the owner of Music Your Way and the
founder of musiclearningtools.com. To check out some of the other programs and
services that Tim and his team of professional teachers provide for us, or to find out
more about studying with Music Your Way, click HERE.
To hear the audio clip, click HERE.
To see the video clip, click HERE.
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