-[LESSON 2: Evolution]-
Evolution is a two part lesson where instead of just showing you my coolest ideas I try and show you how I came up with them. The licks in the end actually took me years to come up with because I did not consciously ask myself how far I could push the idea in one sitting. Instead I came up with an idea and played with it for many years, decided to tweak it a bit, played that for a while, than tweaked it some more, etc. That's why I call the lesson Evolution. The licks that I am showing you evolved over along period of time, but if you actually take the time to study the thought process you can actually speed the whole thing up and come up with incredible ideas of your own in only days, not years.
The whole thing started with a sweeping/tapping combination that I was doing. Example one is just a straight forward A minor arpeggio done in a typical sweeping pattern. Example two was a minor adjustment I made to a Greg Howe lick. I love Greg's sweeping/tapping combos but I noticed that he stuck to just the chord tones. I slipped the minor 7th in and suddenly I had a whole pentatonic shape available to me on the top string. I played that for months before realizing that if I skipped to the G string with tapping I could do a killer run starting with a sweeping arpeggio and than going into a string skipped tapping pentatonic line. Again, I was thrilled with this idea and played the lick for a couple of years before it dawned on me to skip another string, going to the A string, and suddenly I had a full pentatonic pattern available to me. These licks are naturally very fast and smooth because they are tapped. I later learned that Jennifer Batten has been using the same pattern for 8 finger tapping. She divides the notes evenly between the left and right hand where as I do three with my left and one with my right doing the Van Halen style approach to tapping. There is loads of potential with this lick and I haven't even scratched the surface with it yet.
In part two you will see how I evolved from the pentatonic ideas presented here to 7th arpeggios, and than back to triads. Ironically, I finish up right where I started, triad arpeggios, the only difference is that I started with sweeping arps and ended with tapped arps. These things are a lot of fun and when people hear me do it they always ask "How'd you do that?" I never get sick of hearing that question.
Click to hear Evolution Ex 1.mp3
Click to hear Evolution Ex 2.mp3
Click to hear Evolution Ex 3.mp3
Click to hear Evolution Ex 4.mp3
Click to hear Evolution Ex 5.mp3
Click to hear Evolution Ex 6.mp3
That's all for this lesson. See ya next time!
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