A look inside the intricate studio process of the U.K. band, which uses mad guitar experimentation to build meaty, infectious pop-rock songs.
The 1975 hit the world stage with a bang. Their self-titled first album debuted in 2013 at No. 1 in the U.K.—and it was near the top of the U.S. charts, too. They toured incessantly, built a huge fan base, and generated considerable buzz. The band’s ’80s-style, synth heavy, danceable grooves proved to be simply irresistible (pun intended) to the masses.
But the 1975 aren’t newbies. They formed in the early 2000s in Manchester, U.K., and the original lineup—guitarist Adam Hann, lead singer/guitarist Matthew Healy, drummer George Daniel, and bassist Ross MacDonald—has remained intact since inception. The quartet is a tight musical unit that’s worked hard to shape a unique brand of funk pop. It seems to be working. Their new album, I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, is highly anticipated—their U.K. arena tour is already sold out—and they’re headlining arenas in the U.S. this spring. “We were busy on the first album,” Hann says. “We felt that on the second we wouldn’t have this insane amount of stuff to do. But if anything we have more stuff to do.”
At their core, the 1975 are a guitar band (preprogrammed synth patches notwithstanding). Their music is built around tight grooves, intricate interlocking rhythms, perfectly crafted tones, and tasteful solos. And they upped the guitar ante with their new release: From the fantastic comping on songs like “She’s American” to the studio wizardry of “Nana” to the outlandish Belew-era Bowie-esque solo on “Love Me,” I like it when you sleep is pop-guitar heaven.
Hann is the band’s primary guitarist and a serious gear geek. He tours with an array of amps, vintage guitars, and glorious pedals. But better, producer Michael Crossey indulged Hann’s geekiness in the studio. He shared his vintage gear, gave him space to explore, and spent days shaping tones and assembling perfect parts. The result is a stellar performance at a Steely Dan-level of perfection.
Hann spoke with Premier Guitar just before flying to New York for the 1975’s maiden Saturday Night Live appearance. We spoke about crafting amazing, impossible-to-duplicate sounds in the studio, the gear to get the job done, the 1975’s unusual songwriting methods, and how even a Music Man John Petrucci Signature Series guitar has its place in the arsenal of a top-selling pop band.
When did you first start playing guitar?
I was around 15 or 16. My cousin played—he came to visit and brought his guitar and a little practice amp. The next day I went to the local music shop and bought a 10-watt Marshall amp and an Epiphone SG.
Did you study or take lessons?
I had lessons for a bit, but I was obsessed so I’m mainly self-taught. I would do really monotonous things—parts I was trying to learn—to a metronome. I would play it slow and then speed it up and up until I could play it at the correct tempo. I used to spend hours sitting in my room doing things like that.
Did you ever experiment with placing the click on the backbeat or playing along with drum machines?
No. I would get tabs online and I’d just slow it down and play with this really awful sort of MIDI backing track until I could play it at full speed. I used to do really geeky stuff like “Cliffs of Dover” and that kind of thing. It was so many notes and saying so little, in a way—but I used to absolutely love it.
What was your first band?
Believe it or not, it was an early version of the 1975. Originally there were five of us. We’ve been through a few different band names, but today the same lineup minus one guy is the first band that I started with the guys over 10 years ago.
Talk about songwriting and your approach to guitar parts.
It’s evolved a little bit, but traditionally we’ve never had any chords. We sit rhythmic guitar parts on a bed of [synth] pads—the bass and the pads provide the chord movement and me and Matty play a rhythmical guitar part that interlocks with what George is doing. That’s developed as we’ve gotten older and we use more chords now—like in “Girls”—but it’s still very rhythmical. You’re still looking at an INXS 3-note chord, percussive vibe. That’s really what forms the basis of the guitar parts that we write.
Do you and Matt spend a lot of time working out different parts or does that happen organically?
What usually happens is, we have a basis of a song idea that one of the guys has created on a laptop in Logic with maybe a simple idea for a guitar part in there already. I will either take it and elaborate on it or work on a new part by myself. When I’ve done that, I’ll send it to Matty and George and say, “What do you think of this?” I’ll then take it back and go again from that. It’s like you’re working in your own little world a bit—it’s just the way it works for us having been together for so long. We do write the odd song in the traditional way. Like “Love Me,” for example, was written two years ago on tour jamming this idea out in soundcheck—that’s how we got that song. But predominantly George will sit on a laptop and create things that way, then he’ll say, “We need to put some guitars on this.” It’s a bit unconventional, but that’s what works for us.
So when you finally get together for rehearsal, a lot of your parts are already worked out.
What’s funny is, after the first album we said we should’ve gotten together more and played the songs before we recorded them. When we took the first album out on tour, we played the songs night after night and little parts evolved—naturally they get played a certain way that’s more comfortable. When we did the second album, we wanted to get together and play the songs and ideas we had so that process would happen before we started cutting it.
But the studio is an unlimited place of creativity. We weren’t going to get bogged down on the idea of, “Oh, we won’t do this because it’s impossible to do live.” We just do what we want to do—what sounds good and is right—and when it comes to playing the show we’ll work out how we’re going to do it live. We’ve got these creative guitar lines and massive layers of synths and keyboards—we didn’t get bogged down on the idea that it can’t be done. We’ll make it work. There’ll be a live version. We just want the recording of the song to be the best it can be.
Adam Hann, lead guitarist for the 1975, plays his 1962 Jag in front of his triple-amp rig, which consists of two Hiwatt Custom 50s and a Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus. Photo by Atlas Icons / Chris Schwegler
How are you getting that great tone on the “Love Me” solo?
We recorded the solo and then took the DI at the same time and fired bits of it back out through different pedals, amps, and delays to make this really weird sort of character for the solo. We had a lot of fun recording that. Mike Crossey, who recorded the album, said it’s probably one of the best guitar solos—not so much in terms of the playing on it—but in terms of the creativity behind the whole identity of it, that he’s ever recorded. So it was cool.
What are some of the tools you used?
So the main part goes through the Electro-Harmonix Micro Synth, which gives it a weird, slightly slower attack—makes it like a wah-esque attack—with a low octave in there. It has this square wave bit on it, which gives it more of an unusual sound. Above all, we wanted it to sound not like a traditional guitar solo; it just needed to sound interesting. It then goes from that into a Klon—with no drive on it really, just to beef up the mids—and then through a Roland CE-1 chorus. It then goes straight into a really driven Audio Kitchen amp. Those are really good-sounding British handmade amps. It is a little 14-watt head with a 1x10 cabinet. It breaks up straight away as soon as you set it up.
“UGH!” has intriguing rhythm parts. How did you create those sounds?
For that, there’s a whole host of layering going on. The main analog, sort of organic, envelope sound you’re hearing is a phaser. I think it is a Mu-Tron Bi-Phase. It’s a classic phaser pedal that I don’t own—Mike Crossey has one. It’s a ludicrously expensive, sought-after phaser pedal. We did loads and loads and loads of takes with the phase on and then went through and captured all the moments where the sweep of the phase hit what we were playing perfectly. We then comped together all those moments to create that part—again, this is what I was saying about, “This is impossible to do live.” We’ll make it work—possibly with the HOG, with the expression pedal with a weird cutoff whammy sound or something like that.
Logic also has an auto filter that’s not necessarily used for guitars. But when we were tracking the demo we went straight into Logic and set up a guitar rig that had an auto filter in it—that’s in there on the recording, as well as the phaser sound.
That’s a lot of work for one rhythm track.
A lot of the recording of the guitars was like that. There is probably far more thought and intricacy that went into the recording than is obvious when you first listen to it. For example, there is another track on the album that we wanted to create this blanket of guitar sounds. We recorded the guitar part, captured the DI, and then went and cut it up and reamped each little section. Each time we did the part with a different set of pedals and effects that constantly changes throughout. You get this guitar part where from beat to beat—or even from eighth-note to eighth-note—it changes from a distorted guitar to a clean chorus guitar to a really extreme tremolo sound. That was on a song called “Nana.” When you first listen to it, you don’t imagine the actual process that happens to create that—it’s just sort of this constantly evolving guitar sound on a single part. The work that went into recording the guitar part took like two days in the studio for one seemingly incidental guitar part on the album.
What guitar did you use for “Love Me?”
There’s a funny story behind the guitar used for that song. When I was 17 or 18, my grandmother passed away, and my parents bought me a Music Man John Petrucci Signature Series guitar with her inheritance. This is when I was going through a phase of being obsessed with Dream Theater and John Petrucci and G3 and Steve Vai and all these virtuoso shredding guitar players.
We recorded the album in L.A. and when we were getting ready to leave, my manager rang and asked, “Are you taking that guitar?” I was like, “No, I’m not taking it. We won’t use it.” And he said, “No, you should take it because you never know. It’s the first expensive guitar you’ve ever owned. Take it.” Funnily enough, we ended up using that guitar on quite a lot of the album—and just for one specific sound. It has a really great out-of-phase sound. It’s got these two humbuckers in it, but the out-of-phase position has both coils split, so you get like a single-coil out-of-phase on it. That’s what got used for the main chord part on “Love Me,” for the solo in “Love Me,” and for the rhythm guitar part in “She’s American.” The reason it took us by surprise is that this album has a specific sound that we had in our heads, which is this ’80s active Strat sound—like you hear on a Madonna record. That Music Man had that kind of vibe, but a really well-balanced even sound to it. I would never have picked that guitar up and chosen it to do that, so it was a bit of a stroke of luck that we had it with us.
Adam Hann’s Gear
Guitars1962 Fender Jaguar
Fano JM6
Music Man John Petrucci Signature
Amps
2 — Hiwatt Custom 50
Roland JC-120
Effects
RJM Mastermind MIDI controller
Keeley Compressor
Electro-Harmonix Micro Synth
Klon overdrive
Analog Man King of Tone
ZVEX Fuzz Factory
Electro-Harmonix HOG
Wampler Plextortion
Boss CE-1
Strymon Mobius
Strymon TimeLine
Strymon BigSky
DigiTech Whammy
Strings and Picks
Ernie Ball Power Slinkys (.011–.048)
Heavy 1.0 mm picks
It’s this horrible maroon color and when it came to doing it live, the color was so bad that we ended up getting this white vinyl that we cut out and painstakingly stuck over the entire guitar. We then covered up the hardware with tape and threw a load of multicolored paint over it. Now it’s got this weird Jackson Pollock-esque look to it.
There are many of those great ’80s clean sounds on the album. Is that the main guitar you are using?
There is that, and we used an American Strat. Also Mike had a Nash, which was probably one of the best-sounding Strats I’ve ever heard—we used
that a lot. That and a Roland JC-120 or a Fender Twin was sort of the go-to. If we were in the studio and needed a clean sound for a part, that’s where we’d start and then we’d go from there.
What amps do you take on the road with you?
For a while I’ve had these Hiwatt Custom 50s, which are really good amps. They’re quite loud, which is a bit of a problem for us onstage, but they’re very transparent-sounding amps. I have two of those Hiwatts that go in stereo from my delays and reverbs. I have a JC-120 as well in mono and then the three get blended together at front of house. The Hiwatts are sitting underneath and supporting the body of the sound and then the Jazz Chorus adds a really nice sparkle on top. They seem to work really well together.
Do you use the gain from the Hiwatt for your distortion or do you use pedals?
I’m using pedals for that. I have a Klon in there—more or less most of the clean stuff will have a Klon on it just to prop it up, to make it sound a bit nicer. I know a lot of people are skeptical about Klons, but personally I think you struggle to find an overdrive that sounds that nice, especially in the low mids. Maybe I’ve got swept up in the hype, but I think it’s worth the money I paid for it. I also have a Wampler distortion, which is just really great—it’s like a Rectifier-sounding distortion.
When playing live, what are you listening to to keep your rhythm parts tight?
I’m listening mainly to the kick and snare. The benefit of playing with George for over 10 years now is that I can tell when he’s going to go off on some crazy fill. I need to just not pay attention to what he’s doing in a way—just try and stay on the beat—and we’ll meet back on the downbeat when he’s finished going around the kit. Back when I was a kid, playing to a metronome to learn stuff has benefitted me, especially on songs like “Love Me” where the rhythm guitar is so regimented. It’s about being as tight as you can possibly be—for me it helps to listen to kick and snare above anything else when we’re playing live.
It must feel good getting the new album out after so much time working on it.
We had the luxury of being able to spend four months in the studio in L.A. recording it. I feel like that’s an amount of time not many people get in the studio nowadays. We’re really quite lucky to have been able to go away for that long and really focus on each individual aspect and get it right. We’re definitely ready for everyone else to hear it.
A sonic tinkerer, Adam Hann incorporates many techniques and styles into his playing and might spend two days in the studio working on a single guitar part.
Adam Hann Essential Listening
Take a guitarist’s tour through four notable tunes and performances within the 1975’s repertoire.“Love Me”
Right from the opening chords, this song is an education in pop guitar—great ’80s tone and skin-tight groove. But what gives the song its particular muscle is the exceptional solo starting at 2:26. It employs an army of reamped tones, tricks, and exotic effects.
“Sex”
“This is a song about sex,” he says. What more do we need to say? Except check out Hann’s fantastic tones and innovative playing, especially his two-handed tapping starting at 2:36. Also check out this early iteration of his pedalboard at 1:49. It predates the RJM Mastermind MIDI switcher he now uses.
“The Sound”
From their set on SNL, you can see a glimpse of Hann’s most recent pedalboard at 3:10. “I’m at the point now where if I have to do a show just using a regular pedalboard, I would probably struggle,” he says. “When you’re turning three pedals on and changing presets on four others, it takes you a while.” He nails the solo starting at 3:23.
“Robbers”
Hann on a vintage Jag in front of a zillion people at Glastonbury Festival in 2014. “I have a 1962 white Jag that just sounds incredible,” he says. “The Music Man John Petrucci, the Fano JM6, and the Jag—those are the three main guitars I use at the moment.”
PRS Guitars launches the CE 22 Limited Edition, featuring a 22-fret, 25” scale length, mahogany body, maple top, and vintage-inspired 58/15 LT pickups. With only 1,000 made, this model offers classic PRS aesthetics and a blend of warmth and bolt-on articulation for vintage-inspired tone and modern versatility.
PRS Guitars today announced the launch of the CE 22 Limited Edition. Only 1,000 will be made, marking the brief return of a 22-fret version of this bolt-on mainstay. The 22-fret, 25” scale length CE 22 Limited Edition combines a mahogany body and maple top with a bolt-on maple neck. The guitar is outfitted with PRS’s vintage-inspired 58/15 LT pickups, push/pull tone control, three-way toggle switch, and PRS locking tuners with wing buttons.
“This limited-edition, 22-fret model in our CE line offers classic PRS aesthetics and a voice that blends warmth with bolt-on articulation for vintage-inspired tone and modern versatility,” said PRS Guitars Director of Manufacturing, Paul Miles.
The original CE, with 24 frets, first appeared in stores in 1988 and offered players PRS design and quality with the added snap and response of traditional bolt-on guitars. It wasn’t until 1994 that a 22-fret version debuted, just a few months after the release of the Custom 22. Last in stores in 2008, this refreshed CE 22 Limited Edition marks the model’s return to the market.
With a unique combination of specs, the CE 22 Limited Edition is a different animal from the CE 24. These differences include the model of pickups, placement of pickups, and, of course, the number of frets. That is all while retaining the CE family’s combination of maple and mahogany, nitro finish, PRS Patented Tremolo and Phase III Locking Tuners.
The limited-edition model comes in Black Amber, Carroll Blue, Faded Blue Smokeburst, Faded Gray Black and McCarty Sunburst.
For more information, please visit prsguitars.com.
CE 22 Limited Edition | Demo | PRS Guitars - YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.Delicious, dynamic fuzz tones that touch on classic themes without aping them. Excellent quality. Super-cool and useful octave effect.
Can’t mix and match gain modes.
$349
Great Eastern FX Co. Focus Fuzz Deluxe
Adding octave, drive, and boost functions to an extraordinary fuzz yields a sum greater than its already extraordinary parts.
One should never feel petty for being a musical-instrument aesthete. You can make great music with ugly stuff, but you’re more likely to get in the mood for creation when your tools look cool. Great Eastern FX’s Focus Fuzz Deluxe, an evolution of their très élégantFocus Fuzz, is the sort of kit you might conspicuously keep around a studio space just because it looks classy and at home among design treasures likeRoland Space Echoes, Teletronix LA-2As, andblonde Fender piggyback amps. But beneath the FFD’s warmly glowing Hammerite enclosure dwells a multifaceted fuzz and drive that is, at turns, beastly, composed, and unique. Pretty, it turns out, is merely a bonus.
Forks in the Road
Though the Cambridge, U.K.-built FFD outwardly projects luxuriousness, it derives its “deluxe” status from the addition of boost, overdrive, and octave functions that extend an already complex sound palette. Unfortunately, a significant part of that fuzzy heart is a Soviet-era germanium transistor that is tricky to source and limited the original Focus Fuzz production to just 250 units. For now, the Focus Fuzz Deluxe will remain a rare bird. Great Eastern founder David Greaves estimates that he has enough for 400 FFDs this time out. Hopefully, the same dogged approach to transistor sourcing that yielded this batch will lead to a second release of this gem, and on his behalf we issue this plea: “Transistor hoarders, yield your troves to David Greaves!”
The good news is that the rare components did not go to waste on compromised craft. The FFD’s circuit is executed with precision on through-hole board, with the sizable Soviet transistor in question hovering conspicuously above the works like a cross between a derby hat and B-movie flying saucer. If the guts of the FFD fail to allay doubts that you’re getting what you paid for, the lovingly designed enclosure and robust pots and switches—not to mention the pedal’s considerable heft—should take care of whatever reticence remains.
Hydra in Flight
Just as in the original Focus Fuzz, the fuzz section in the Deluxe deftly walks an ideal path between a germanium Fuzz Face’s weight and presence, a Tone Bender’s lacerating ferocity, and the focus of a Dallas Rangemaster. You don’t have to strain to hear that distillate of elements. But even if you can’t easily imagine that combination, what you will hear is a fuzz that brims with attitude without drowning in saturation. There’s lots of dynamic headroom, you’ll feel the touch responsiveness, and you’ll sense the extra air that makes way for individual string detail and chord overtones. It shines with many different types of guitars and amps, too. I was very surprised at the way it rounded off the sharp edges made by a Telecaster bridge pickup and AC15-style combo while adding mass and spunk. The same amp with a Gibson SG coaxed out the Tony Iommi-meets-Rangemaster side of the fuzz. In any combination, the fuzz control itself, which boosts gain while reducing bias voltage (both in very tasteful measure) enhances the vocabulary of the guitar/amp pairing. That range of color is made greater still by the fuzz’s sensitivity to guitar volume and tone attenuation and touch dynamics. Lively clean tones exist in many shades depending on your guitar volume, as do rich low-gain overdrive sounds.
The drive section is similarly dynamic, and also quite unique thanks to the always versatile focus control, which adds slight amounts of gain as well as high-mid presence. At advanced focus levels, the drive takes on a fuzzy edge with hints of Fender tweed breakup and more Black Sabbath/Rangemaster snarl. It’s delicious stuff with Fender single-coils and PAFs, and, just as with the fuzz, it’s easily rendered thick and clean with a reduction in guitar volume or picking intensity. The boost, meanwhile, often feels just as lively and responsive—just less filthy—lending sparkle and mass to otherwise thin and timid combo amp sounds.
Among this wealth of treats, the octave function is a star. It works with the fuzz, drive, or boost. But unlike a lot of octave-up effects, you needn’t approach it with caution. Though it adds plenty of the buzzing, fractured, and ringing overtones that make octave effects so wild and distinct, it doesn’t strip mine low end from the signal. The extra balance makes it feel more musical under the fingers and even makes many chords sound full and detailed—a trick few octave effects can manage. With the fuzz, the results are concise, burly, and articulate single notes that lend themselves to lyrical, melodic leads and power chords. In drive-plus-octave mode, there are many hues of exploding practice-amp trash to explore. The boost and the octave may be my favorite little gem among the FFD’s many jewels, though. Adding the octave to boosted signals with a generous heap of focus input yields funky, eccentric electric-sitar tones that pack a punch and are charged with character in their fleeting, flowering state.
The Verdict
It’s hard to imagine adding extra footswitches to the Focus Fuzz Deluxe without sacrificing its basic elegance and proportions, and without elevating its already considerable price. Certainly, there would be real utility in the ability to mix and match all three excellent gain modes. On the other hand, the output level differences between fuzz, drive, and boost are pretty uniform, meaning quick switches on the fly will shift texture and attitude dramatically without delivering an ear-frying 30 dB boost. And though it’s hard not be tantalized by sounds that might have been, from combining the fuzz and/or boost and drive circuits, the myriad tones that can be sourced by blending any one of them with the superbly executed octave effect and the varied, rangeful focus and output controls will keep any curious tone spelunker busy for ages. For most of them, I would venture, real treasure awaits.
Why is Tommy’s take on “Day Tripper” so hard? And what song would Adam Miller never play with him? Plus, we get Adam’s list of favorite Tommy Emmanuel records.
We call guitarist Adam Miller in the middle of the night in Newcastle, Australia, to find out what it’s like to play with Certified Guitar Player, Tommy Emmanuel. Miller tells us just how famous Tommy is in Australia, and what it was like hearing him play from a formative age. Eventually, Adam got to open for Emmanuel, and they’ve since shared the stage, so we get the firsthand scoop: Why is Tommy’s take on “Day Tripper” so hard? And what song would Miller never play with him? Plus, we get Adam’s list of favorite Tommy Emmanuel records.
Adam’s newly released trio album, Timing, is out now.
Plus, we’re talking about new recordings from Billy Strings and Bryan Sutton, as well as Brooklyn Mediterranean surf party band Habbina Habbina.
Patterns can be viewed as boring or trite, but a little bit of creativity can turn them into bits of inspiration.
Chops: Intermediate Theory: Intermediater Lesson Overview: • Learn different ways to arrange scales. • Combine various sequences to create more intersting lines. • Solidify your technique by practicing unusual groupings of notes. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation. |
I want to offer some food for thought on making sequences musical. Using sequences in our playing helps develop our musicianship in various ways. It can help us tune into the fretboard, develop melodic ideas all around the neck, and further our improvisation and compositional skills. So, spending time with sequences is certainly not time wasted. Please note that I sometimes use the word “rule" in this column, this is only a pointer to keeping on track of our exploration of these concepts. The intellect is very useful, but intuition is where the creativity comes from. When in balance lots of great things can be done. Let's get stuck in!
It's simple to play a scale from bottom to top, or top to bottom, but we can develop a sequence by shuffling these notes around. In Ex. 1 we have a C Major scale (C–D–E–F–G–A–B) played in thirds followed by a sequence highlighting the diatonic triads of the major scale. By following a “rule" we can develop many different sequences. The options are endless and a little overwhelming.
Click here for Ex. 1
Lets start by simply combining an interval sequence with an arpeggio sequence. In Ex. 2, the first two beats of the first measure feature ascending thirds. This is then followed by a triad arpeggio starting from the third note on the string. The next set of thirds then starts on the “and" of beat 4. The entire sequence is a seven-note pattern that is created by combining two thirds and a triad. It gives us a nice bit of rhythmic displacement as the phrase is now starting in a different place in the measure.
Click here for Ex. 2
Ex. 3 is a descending idea in A minor that basically flips the sequence we looked at in Ex. 2. Here, we are starting with two descending thirds before the triad. I'm using pull-offs and economy picking to articulate the triads. This one works well over D minor as well if you want a D Dorian (D–E–F–G–A–B–C) flavor.
Click here for Ex. 3
You can see the effectiveness of combining different sequences and groupings of notes to create interesting runs. It's also really effective for making phrases. In Ex. 4 we take a small fragment from Ex. 3 and change the rhythm. In the sound example I repeat this a few times over some implied chords in my bass line: Am, F, and Dm. It's great to get more from one line by seeing the different chord types you can play it over.
Click here for Ex. 4
In Ex. 5 we're going to start using fourths and fifths. It starts with an ascending A minor triad (A–C–E) before leaping to the 9 (B) and then hitting a G major triad (G–B–D). A similar pattern leads into the C major triad (C–E–G). Throwing in these wider intervals alongside triads is very effective for creating a dramatic sounding runs.
Click here for Ex. 5
For our next example (Ex. 6), we will take fragments from Ex. 5 and space them out a bit. I wanted once again to show how these sequence ideas can also be helpful for developing melodic phrases. Once we have a cool sequence or fragment, all we need to do is be creative with how we play it. We can change the rhythm, harmonic context, dynamic, and much more.
Click here for Ex. 6
Before we move on, it's important to remember that we can add colorful notes to our triads. Let's begin with some seventh-chord arpeggios. Ex 7 features are diatonic seventh arpeggios in G minor (functioning as a IIm chord) to get a Dorian sound.
Click here for Ex. 7
Ex. 8 is a little gratuitous of me. It begins with an idea made of several different concepts. First, we start with an Am7 arpeggio (A–C–E–G), then descend down an A5 arpeggio. I follow that up with diatonic thirds and end with a pedal-point sequence. If that's not enough, we then take this bigger idea and fit it around a chord progression. I move it to G7, Dm7 and then I break my “rule" slightly and outline notes of a C6 arpeggio (C–E–G–A). However, it does keep the same melodic contour of the initial idea. I used my ear and fretboard to guide me. It's always healthy to have a fine balance between intellect and intuition.
Click here for Ex. 8
We dig into C harmonic minor (C–D–Eb–G–Ab–B-C) for Ex. 9's monster two-measure lick. It sounds evil! In composing this phrase, I kept to the basic concept of finding seventh-chord arpeggios within C harmonic minor in the 8th position. I followed my ear as well as my slowly developing intellect. However, if you look closely you can see I was following a mini chord progression through this line. We start out with a CmMaj9 arpeggio (C–Eb–G–B–D) in the first beat, followed by a G7b9 arpeggio (G–B–D–F–Ab). Here we have a very strong Im-V7 movement in C minor. I then move back to our CmMaj9 arpeggio and in the second measure we start descending down an Eb augmented triad (Eb–G–B). This is then followed by more CmMaj9 goodness.
Click here for Ex. 9
Ex. 10 is now taking Ex. 9 and extending it into a cool flamenco-inspired melody. The rhythms in this were inspired by the incredible Paco De Lucia. I follow the sequence from the previous example almost exactly, but I use a bit of artistic license to repeat certain fragments to fit into a “top line" or “head"-style melody.
Click here for Ex. 10
My aim here isn't to give you one rule to follow but instead to encourage you to take the sequences you know and love and start getting more out of them. Enjoy and stay safe!