The Police’s slightly cranky guitar shaman dodges gear questions before expounding on the looping strategies and anything-goes approach on his new solo album, Triboluminescence.
In a career spanning half a century, Andy Summers, who rose to mainstream prominence in the late 1970s with the Police, has clearly been a sound seeker. The range of tonal colors and atmospheres he’s achieved on Police songs like “Every Breath You Take,” “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” and “Roxanne”—not to mention on a long series of solo albums, beginning with 1987’s XYZ—is stunning.
Summers’ deep mastery of effects is especially apparent on his latest solo effort, Triboluminescence, the follow-up to 2015’s Metal Dog. On the album, Summers uses what sounds like a whole shop’s worth of effects to create instrumentals that by turns reflect guitar-hero antics and non-Western influences, and which seem to exist entirely in their own place.
Listening to a cross section of Summers’ work, one gets the impression that he must be quite the gear head. So, it was a little surprising when Summers deflected questions, in an appealingly grumpy Englishman’s way, about the tools of his trade. (His right-hand man and engineer, Dennis Smith, later filled us in.) Luckily, though, Summers was much more forthcoming about the methodologies and concepts at play in his uncanny soundscapes.
What guitars did you play on the record?
That’s the worst question. Mostly I play a Strat. I have a sort of standard working guitar that’s just always there [in the studio]. I might reconsider the sound of the guitar and use another as the track gets more detailed.
What kind of Strat is it?
The one I usually use is a copy of my 1962 Strat—a great guitar that a friend made for me in 2008.
What are you stringing it with?
What? [Incredulously.] Your kind of questions are ridiculously lightweight. Should we talk about the music, not strings? This is like a classic bozo interview. What strings do you use? Are you serious? I don’t fucking know. Somebody else puts them on. Amazing. I can’t believe you just asked me that. I don’t really want to talk about it. This is insulting.
I’m so sorry to have offended. Yes, let’s talk about music. The title track on Triboluminescence shows a gamelan [a traditional Balinese or Javanese ensemble] influence.
Well, yeah. I’m looking for different sorts of sounds that will conjure up either through looping or guitar pedals until I find something fresh and original. I've been influenced by world music—particularly gamelan sounds from Indonesia. So, I’ve made quite a lot of loops with different setups as a starting point for these tracks.
Can you talk a little bit more about the process of discovery when you’re making these loops?
Well, you get a looping device and plug it in and you start making loops. What can I tell you? You know, that’s what it does. Sometimes you get good loops; sometimes you don’t. It’s all very experimental until you get something that catches your ear and might inspire some good melodic content to go on top of it.
Do you start by hearing a melody in your head or do you arrive at that through experimentation?
I don’t sit there and go, “Okay, I’ve got to get a certain sound.” It’s much more subtle than that. Mostly I’m sitting in the studio, improvising my way around with a bunch of pedals. I do things different ways. You’re sometimes sort of looking for the unexpected thing that suddenly just pops out of nowhere, and you go, “Wait a minute.” It sort of happens by accident—much better than what you were originally trying to do. And the sum of that is you make those judgment calls based on your aesthetic choices, your playing experience, what sounds fresh and unexpected to you. It depends on whether or not you’re a real musician, I suppose.
“Gigantopithecus” sounds vaguely Middle Eastern.
Yes. I had a baritone guitar in the studio and I immediately happened upon the melody—kind of a bass-line melody that’s got a lumbering quality. And that’s where it started. There was a raging guitar solo at one point that I took out and made a sort of quirkier solo instead, which I thought was more appropriate for the slightly ironic humor that’s there. But I took my time. Then I added an instrument called a lavta, which is a sort of small cousin of the oud, and you hear it behind the guitar solo. So, it’s got a very different texture—almost Middle Eastern in character.
Talk about how you layered the sounds on “Adinkra,” which, as the name suggests, has kind of a West African influence.
That’s a good track to talk about because it started in an extremely different place. It started with an environment—I think I’ve still got the original tracks—where it sounded like an Indian orchestra to me. And it was extremely attractive when I first played it, and I did come up with that melody instantly. I sort of stayed with it and had an amazing slide guitar solo in the middle—one of the best slide solos I’ve ever played.
Then, at some point I added one drum track and then another. I like to play drums on my own. And I put down a kind of … what you might call belly-dancing rhythm, and thought, “Oh, that’s really cool.” The more I sat with the track, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Suddenly the whole thing sounded corny to me and like crap belly-dancing music.
I had to have the courage to sort of strip down the track, because I knew there was some really cool, good stuff in there. So, I constructed the whole melody and the bridge, and I think there were two things that came out of it. First, I started playing that sort of West African fingerstyle guitar around the melody. The melody informs the trumpet and horns that I added.
I sort of rebuilt the track until I felt it had the right sort of cool quality to it. It’s much more understated, but I thought it had a great feeling once I went through these various changes. But it’s completely different from what I had. That’s the process: You have to be very open—ready to destroy your work that you spent so much time on. That one, on this album, is the classic example. I mean, it’s shocking when you hear what it comes from. Some people might’ve liked it, but that’s the way it is.
You’ve obviously played with some great musicians. What’s it like for you to work alone, as you did on this record?
It’s an interesting thing, because I’ve made many records and am used to working with fantastic players—drummers and bassists, in particular. But I think I’m very happy in this process now of working alone. I’m starting to play the drums better; I’m getting better all the time.
I like to do it on my own because I’ve found that, even with the greatest musicians, they’ll get your music to a point, but they’ll never get it like you do. And so at least the last two records in particular are very personal and, for me, they’re complete artistic statements because there’s no one else changing the way around. I mean, it sounds sort of selfish to work like that, but I really enjoy it, and it’s challenging, and it’s more time-consuming because you’re not just knocking out a track in a couple of hours.
I like the freedom of working out the bass lines alone, then experimenting with the drums and guitars, building them up and layering, layering, layering, layering, until I come to something good. And then there’s, you know, the solos—great, improvised guitar solos because people expect that of me.
With the Police in 1982, Summers plays the 1961 Fender Telecaster that became his signature instrument during the band’s initial run. He bought it for $200 and used it to play on “Roxanne,” “Message in a Bottle,” and more of the group’s early hits. Photo by Frank White
You describe the layering process and listening to your work to see how it evolves as you record it. Would you say that you use the studio as a compositional tool?
Well, it is, totally. The whole studio’s like a giant paint box. Sometimes I’ll walk around and go, “Oh, wait a minute. What’s that thing?” You know, some weird instrument. “Let’s try it out. Maybe that will give us something.” It’s very much like that.
Andy Summers’ Gear
Guitars• Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster Masterbuilt by Dennis Galuszka
• Fender Custom Shop Telecaster Masterbuilt by Dennis Galuszka
• 1958 Gibson ES-335
• Gibson ES-336
• Gibson Les Paul Standard
• Gibson SG Standard
• Collings 360 ST
• Collings I-35 Deluxe
• Steinberger bass guitar
• Fender Precision bass
• Guild acoustic bass
• Manson Sandpiper steel-string
• José Marín Plazuelo flamenco
Amps
• Assorted Mesa/Boogie amps and cabinets
• Roland JC-120
• Fender Vibroverb
Effects
• Boss CE-3 Chorus
• Boss CE-300 Super Chorus
• Boss VB-2 Vibrato
• Caroline Guitar Company Météore Lo-Fi Reverb
• Catalinbread Belle Epoch Tape Echo
• DigiTech Whammy
• EarthQuaker Arpanoid polyphonic pitch arpeggiator
• Electro-Harmonix Superego Synth Engine
• Eventide Eclipse multi-effects unit
• Eventide H9 Harmonizer
• Fractal Axe-Fx II XL+
• Klon Centaur
• Lexicon PCM-70 Digital Effects Processor
• Mad Professor Golden Cello overdrive/delay
• MWFX Glitch error-inducing effect
• MWFX Judder sampler/repeater
• Paul Trombetta Design Rotobone overdrive
• Red Panda Particle granular delay
• Red Panda Raster delay/pitch shifter
• Roland VG-99 multi-effects unit
• TC Electronic Dark Matter Distortion
• TC Electronic Ditto Looper
• TC Electronic Ditto X2 Looper
• ZVEX Instant Lo-Fi Junky
Strings and Picks
• Assorted D’Addario sets
• Dunlop Tortex 2.0 mm
With so many tools available—and with what sounds like so many different sounds in your head—how do you know when to let go of a composition?
These things take time. Some days you get three great sets of ideas in one afternoon. It really has to do with perspective. You can’t just sit on a track and hammer away and think you’re going to get it. Sometimes it’s just like, “Okay, that’s enough for today. Let’s do a different style. Let’s do another track.” And then let that one go for a few days, and come back, and you hear it clearly because you haven’t listened to it for a few days. That’s a very important part of the process. It’s perspective that can only be obtained by stopping listening for a bit. Then you come back, focus in it, put up that track and get it instantly. “Okay, I know what’s wrong with it now.” It’s a very creative process, but you have to be vulnerable and ready to know when you feel it: when’s the right time to play solos, when’s the right time to just do sort of construction work, if you like.
On the whole, the record seems to transcend labels. Is that intentional?
I don’t think I’d say to myself, “Okay, we’re going to avoid all labels.” That’s just the way it comes out. This is my music, I don’t think it’s ... The message I got when I was growing up was that my music was not rock; it was jazz. As a kid, I was a complete jazz freak. Later, of course, I played in a rhythm-and-blues band and, obviously as you know, I played in rock bands. So, it goes on. All sorts of music are interesting. It doesn’t matter if it’s heavy metal or Albanian folk music.
The music I make comes from a variety of places, having done it such a long time. And one of the reasons that comes out, I think, is a sort of avoidance of anything generic. That’s clearly what this record and the previous one are about. They’re avoiding standard stuff.
It’s like pure music that speaks for itself. Music should come at you; you should be drawn to it. That’s what great music is. It’s not going to knock you out. It’s just there. That’s the subtle, sophisticated place to get to.
You’ve talked a couple of times about being a real musician. What do you think it takes to be a real musician playing at the highest level?
It can take your whole life. Just like any of the arts, you can learn things to a degree, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s wonderful to be engaged in ceramics, watercolors, violin, or whatever on the weekends.
But the greatest musicians always have the most innate feeling for rhythm and time. After that, you’ve got to be able to play great solos, phrase well, and do interesting timing—change the time, playing in and out of the time. This is what makes a great musician more than anything else. If you don’t have that, you’re never going to be that great.
You recently played solo guitar to some of the photographs you’ve taken around the world. How do your photos and travels inform your music?
Well, I have sort of sub-career as a photographer and have done over 40 shows at this point. I’m just about to put out another book. I’m very interested in the world and have traveled everywhere. I’ve been to Africa, all over Asia several times, and I think I might trek to China again this fall.
I think the two things inform one another. As an improviser, getting ready to just kind of get in there and react in the moment was very helpful for me in terms of photography when I was out in the world shooting. And I suppose in any media that I get involved in creatively, I listen for the condition of music.
YouTube It
Andy Summers improvises on a Gibson ES model at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, standing before a shifting collection of his photographs. You can hear a variety of delays, loops, reverbs, and modulation effects in play.
Well-designed pickups. Extremely comfortable contours. Smooth, playable neck.
Middle position could use a bit more mids. Price could scare off some.
$2,999
Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay II
A surprise 6-string collaboration with Cory Wong moves effortlessly between ’70s George Benson and Blink-182 tones.
Announced at the 2025 NAMM show, Cory Wong’s new collaboration with Ernie Ball Music Man scratched an itch—namely, the itch for a humbucker-loaded guitar that could appease Wong’s rock-and-R&B alter ego and serve as complement to his signature Fender Strat. Inspiration came from no further than a bandmate’s namesake instrument. Vulfpeck bassist Joe Dart has a line of signature model EBMM basses, one of which uses the classic StingRay bass body profile. So, when Wong went looking for something distinctive, he wondered if EBMM could create a 6-string guitar using the classic StingRay bass body and headstock profile.
Double the Fun
Wong is, by his own admission, a single-coil devotee. That’s where the core of his sound lives and it feels like home to him. However, Wong is as inspired by classic Earth, Wind & Fire tones and the pop-punk of the early ’90s as he is by Prince and the Minneapolis funk that he grew up with. The StingRay II is a guitar that can cover all those bases.
Ernie Ball has a history of designing fast-feeling, comfortable necks. And I can’t remember ever struggling to move around an EBMM fretboard. The roasted maple C-shaped neck here is slightly thicker in profile than I expected, but still very comfortable. (I must also mention that the back of the neck has a dazzling, almost holographic look to the grain that morphs in the light). By any measure, the StingRay II’s curves seemed designed for comfort and speed. Now, let’s talk about those pickups.Hot or Not?
A few years ago EBMM introduced a line of HT (heat-treated) pickups. The pickups are built with technology the company used to develop their Cobalt and M-Series strings. A fair amount of the process is shrouded in secrecy and must be taken on faith, but EBMM says treating elements of the pickup with heat increases clarity and dynamic response.
To find out for myself, I plugged the StingRay II into a Fender Vibroverb, Mesa/Boogie Mark VII, and a Neural DSP Quad Cortex (Wong’s preferred live rig). Right away, it was easy to hear the tight low end and warm highs. Often, I feel like the low end from neck humbuckers can feel too loose or lack definition. Neither was the case here. The HT pickup is beautifully balanced with a bounce that’s rich with ES-335 vibes. Clean tones are punchy and bright—especially with the Vibroverb—and dirty tones have more room for air. Individual notes were clear and articulate, too.
Any guitar associated with Wong needs a strong middle-position or combined pickup tone, and the StingRay II delivers. I never felt any significant signal loss in the blended signal from the two humbuckers, even if I could use a bit more midrange presence in the voicing. The midrange gap is nothing an EQ or Tube Screamer couldn’t fix, though. And not surprisingly, very Strat-like sounds were easy to achieve for having less midrange bump.
Knowing Wong’s love for ’90s alt-rock, I expected the bridge pickup to have real bite, and it does, demonstrating exceptional dynamic range and exceptional high-end response that never approached shrill. Nearly every type of distortion and overdrive I threw at it sounded great, but especially anything with a scooped-mid flavor and plenty of low end.
The Verdict
By any measure, the StingRay II is a top-notch, professional instrument. The fit and finish are immaculate and the feel of the neck makes me wonder if EBMM stashes some kind of secret sandpaper, because I don’t think I’ve ever felt a smoother, more playable neck. Kudos are also due to EBMM and Wong for finding an instrument that can move between ’70s George Benson tones and the hammering power chords of ’90s Blink-182. Admittedly, the nearly $3K price could give some players pause, but considering the overall quality of the instrument, it’s not out of line. Wong’s involvement and search for distinct sounds makes the StingRay II more than a tired redux of a classic model—an admirable accomplishment considering EBMM’s long and storied history.
Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay II Cory Wong Signature Electric Guitar - Charcoal Blue with Rosewood Fingerboard
StingRay II Cory Wong - Charcoal BlueThe Melvins' Buzz Osborne joins the party to talk about how he helped Kurt Cobain find the right sounds.
Growing up in the small town of Montesano, Washington, Kurt Cobain turned to his older pal Buzz Osborne for musical direction. So on this episode, we’re talking with the Melvins leader about their friendship, from taking Cobain to see Black Flag in ’84 to their shared guitar journey and how they both thought about gear. And in case you’ve heard otherwise, Kurt was never a Melvins roadie!
Osborne’s latest project is Thunderball from Melvins 1983, something of a side trajectory for the band, which harkens back to this time in Osborne’s life. We dig into that and how it all relates and much more.
In challenging times, sometimes elemental music, like the late Jessie Mae Hemphill’s raucous Mississippi hill country blues, is the best salve. It reminds us of what’s truly essential––musically, culturally, and emotionally. And provides a restorative and safe place, where we can open up, listen, and experience without judgement. And smile.
I’ve been prowling the backroads, juke joints, urban canyons, and VFW halls for more than 40 years, in search of the rawest, most powerful and authentic American music. And among the many things I’ve learned is that what’s more interesting than the music itself is the people who make it.
One of the most interesting people I’ve met is the late Jessie Mae Hemphill. By the time my wife, Laurie Hoffma, and I met Jessie Mae, on a visit to her trailer in Senatobia, Mississippi, she’d had a stroke and retired from performing, but we’d been fortunate to see her years before at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival, where she brought a blues style that was like quiet thunder, rumbling with portent and joy and ache, and all the other stuff that makes us human, sung to her own droning, rocking accompaniment on an old Gibson ES-120T.
To say she was from a musical family is an understatement. Her grandfather, Sid, was twice recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. While Sid played fiddle, banjo, guitar, harmonica, keyboards, and more, he was best known as the leader of a fife-and-drum band that made music that spilled directly from Africa’s main artery. Sid was Jessie Mae’s teacher, and she learned well. In fact, you can see her leading her own fife-and-drum group in Robert Mugge’s wonderful documentary Deep Blues(with the late musician and journalist Robert Palmer as on-screen narrator), where she also performs a mournful-but-hypnotic song about betrayal—solo, on guitar—in Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint.
That movie, a 1982 episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (on YouTube) where she appears as part of Othar Turner’s Gravel Springs fife-and-drum band, and worldwide festival appearances are as close as Jessie Mae ever got to fame, although that was enough to make her important and influential to Bonnie Raitt, Cat Power, and others. And she made two exceptional albums during her lifetime: 1981’s She-Wolf and 1990’s Feelin’ Good. If you’re unfamiliar with North Mississippi blues, their sound will be a revelation. The style, as Jessie Mae essayed it, is a droning, hypnotic joy that bumps along like a freight train full of happily rattling box cars populated by carefree hobos. Often the songs ride on one chord, but that chord is the only one that’s needed to put the music’s joy and conviction across. Feelin’ Good, in particular, is essential Jessie Mae. Even the songs about heartbreak, like “Go Back To Your Used To Be” and “Shame on You,” have a propulsion dappled with little bends and other 6-string inflections that wrap the listener in a hypnotic web. Listening to Feelin’ Good, it’s easy to disappear in the music and to have all your troubles vanish as well—for at least as long as its 14 songs last.“She made it clear that she had a gun—a .44 with a pearl handle that took up the entire length of her handbag.”
The challenge I’ve long issued to people unfamiliar with Jessie Mae’s music is: “Listen to Feelin’ Good and then tell me if you’re not feeling happier, more cheerful, and relaxed.” It truly does, as the old cliché would have it, make your backbone slip and your troubles along with it. Especially uptempo songs like the scrappy title track and the charging “Streamline Train.” There’s also an appealing live 1984 performance of the latter on YouTube, with Jessie Mae decked out in leopard-print pants and vest, playing a tambourine wedged onto her left high-heel shoe––one of her stylish signatures.
Jessie Mae was a complex person, caught between the old-school dilemma of playing “the Devil’s music” and yearning for a spiritual life, sweet as pecan pie with extra molasses but quick to turn mean at any perceived slight. She also spent much of her later years in poverty, in a small trailer with a hole in the floor where mice and other critters got in. And she was as mistrustful of strangers as she was warm once she accepted you into her heart. But watch your step before she did. On our first visit to her home, she made it clear that she had a gun—a .44 with a pearl handle that took up the entire length of her handbag and would make Dirty Harry envious.
Happily, she took us into her heart and we took her into ours, helping as much as we could and talking often. She was inspiring, and I wrote a song about her, and even got to perform it for her in her trailer, which was just a little terrifying, since I knew she would not hold back her criticism if she didn't like it. Instead, she giggled like a kid and blushed, and asked if I’d write one more verse about the artifacts she’d gathered while touring around the world.
Jessie Mae died in 2006, at age 82, and, as happens when every great folk artist dies, we lost many songs and stories, and the wisdom of her experience. But you can still get a whiff of all that––if you listen to Feelin’ Good.
Intermediate
Intermediate
How David Gilmour masterully employs target notes to make his solos sing.
When I was an undergraduate jazz performance major struggling to get a handle on bebop improvisation, I remember my professor Dave LaLama admonishing me, “If you think playing over the fast tunes is hard, wait until you try playing over the ballads. What Dr. Lalama was trying to impart was that playing fast scales over fast changes could get you by, but playing melodically over slow tempos, when your note choices are much more exposed, would really test how well you could create meaningful phrases.
Although getting past the “this scale works over these chords” approach to improvisation generally requires hours of shedding, aiming for particular target notes (specific notes over specific chords) is an optimum strategy to maximize your practice time. In the realm of rock guitar, I can think of no greater master of the melodic target note technique while playing ballads than David Gilmour.
For the unfamiliar few, Gilmour was first enlisted by fledgling psychedelic rockers Pink Floyd in 1967, when original guitarist/vocalist Syd Barrett began having drug-induced struggles with mental health. The band experimented with various artistic approaches for several years before refining them into a cohesive “art rock” sound by the early ’70s. The result was an unbroken streak of classic, genre-defining conceptual albums that included Meddle, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall. Although bassist/vocalist Roger Waters assumed the role of de facto bandleader and primary songwriter, Gilmour was a significant contributor who was praised for his soulful singing and expertly phrased lead playing that seemed to magically rework pedestrian blues phrases into sublimely evocative melodies. His focus on musicality over excessive displays of technique made him a musician’s musician of sorts and earned him a stellar reputation in guitar circles. When Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in the mid ’80s, Gilmour surprised many by calmly assuming the leadership mantle, leading the band through another decade of chart-topping albums and stadium tours. Although Pink Floyd are not officially broken up (keyboardist and founding member Richard Wright died in 2008 while Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason joined forces with Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk on the one-off single “Hey Hey Rise Up” in 2022), Gilmour has mostly spent the last few decades concentrating on his solo career. His latest release, Luck and Strange, features his wife, novelist Polly Sampson, as primary lyricist and daughter Romany Gilmour as vocalist on several tracks. His recent tour filled arenas around the world.
Let’s take a page from Gilmour’s hallowed playbook and see how incorporating a few well-chosen target notes can give our playing more melody and structure.
For the sake of simplicity, all the examples use the Gm/Bb major pentatonic scale forms. In my experience as a teacher, I find that most students can get a pretty solid handle on the root-position, Form-I minor pentatonic scale but struggle to incorporate the other four shapes while playing lead. One suggestion I give them is to work on playing the scales from the top notes down and focus on the four highest strings only. I believe this is a more logical and useful approach to incorporating these forms into your vocabulary. Try playing through Ex. 1, Ex. 2, Ex. 3, and Ex. 4, which are based on the top-down approach of the Form I, Form II, Form IV, and Form I (up an octave) shapes respectively.
Ex. 1
Ex. 2
Ex. 3
Ex. 4
Once you’ve gotten a handle on the scales, try playing Ex. 5, which is loosely based on the extended introduction to Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” We begin by soloing over a static Gm chord for four measures. As target notes, I’ve chosen the root and 5th of the G minor chord ( the notes G and D, respectively). In the first measure, we’re starting in a minor pentatonic Form I with a bend up to the root of the Gm chord. A flurry of notes on beat 4 sets us up for the bend to the D in the second measure. The D note is again targeted in measure three—this time up an octave via a shift into the minor pentatonic Form II shape. Measure four aims for the G tonic up an octave, but ends with a bend that targets a C—the root of the IVm (Cm) chord in the final measure. By focusing on target notes and connecting them with embellishing licks, your lead lines will have a much better sense of direction and melodic narrative. Also, by only targeting the root and 5th of the chord, the target note approach will be easily transferrable to songs in a G blues context (G pentatonic minor over a G major or G dominant tonality).
Ex. 5
A further exploration of this approach, Ex. 6 begins with a two-beat pickup that resolves to the scale tonic G. This time however, the G isn’t serving as the root of the Im chord. Instead, it’s the 5th of Cm—the IVm chord. Employing the root of the pentatonic scale as the fifth of the IVm chord is a textbook Gilmour-ism and you can hear him use it to good effect on the extended intro to “Echoes” from Live in Gdansk. When approaching the C on beat 2 of the second full measure, bend up from the Bb on the 6th fret of the 1st string then slide up to the C on the 8th fret without releasing the bend or picking again. In the final measure, I’ve introduced two Db notes, which serve as the b5 “blue note” of the scale and provide melodically compelling passing tones on the way to the G target note on beat 4.
Ex. 6
Exclusively positioned in the Form-IV G minor pentatonic shape, Ex. 7 is based on a bluesy lick over the I chord in the first and third measures that alternately targets a resolution to the root of the IV chord (C ) and the root of the V chord (D7#9) in the second and fourth measures. Being able to resolve your lead phrases to the roots of the I, IV, and V chords on the fly is an essential skill ace improvisers like Gilmour have mastered.
Ex. 7
Now let’s turn our attention to the Bb major pentatonic scale, which is the relative major of G minor. Play through the Form I and Form II shapes detailed in Ex. 8 and Ex. 9 below. You’ll see I’ve added an Eb to the scale (technically making them hexatonic scales). This allows us a bit more melodic freedom and—most importantly—gives us the root note of the IV chord.
Ex. 8
Ex. 9
Channeling the melodic mojo of Gilmour’s lead jaunts on Pink Floyd’s “Mother” and “Comfortably Numb,” Ex. 10 targets chord tones from the I, IV, and V (Bb, Eb, and F) chords.
The muted-string rake in first measure helps “sting” the F note, which is the 5th of the Bb. Measure two targets a G note which is the 3rd of the Eb. This same chord/target note pairing is repeated in the third and fourth measures, although the G is now down an octave. For the F and Eb chords of measures five and six, I’ve mirrored a favorite Gilmour go-to: bending up to the 3rd of a chord then releasing and resolving to the root (an A resolving to an F for the F chord and a G resolving to an Eb for the Eb chord.) The final measure follows a melodic run down the Bb scale that ultimately resolves on the tonic. Be sure to pay attention to the intonation of all your bends, especially the half-step bend on the first beat of measure seven.
As a takeaway from this lesson, let’s strive to “Be Like Dave” and pay closer attention to target notes when soloing. Identify the roots of all the chords you’re playing over in your scales and aim for them as the beginning and/or ending notes of your phrases. Think of these target notes as support beams that will provide structure to your lead lines and ultimately make them more melodically compelling.