
Chuck Wright, bassist on “Metal Health (Bang Your Head)” and “Don’t Wanna Let You Go” from Quiet Riot’s historic 1983 No. 1 album, Metal Health, onstage with vocalist Kevin DuBrow. “I always found the StingRay to be punchier than most basses,” he says.
Sterling Ball tells the story of an instrument that reaches back to the earliest days of electric-guitar manufacturing. In the hands of players including Pino Palladino, Joe Dart, Tim Commerford, and Tony Levin, it continues to live on the cutting edge.
“The unique characteristics of the StingRay were a happy accident,” proclaims Sterling Ball, bassist and retired CEO of Ernie Ball, current and longtime manufacturers of the now-iconic Music Man StingRay bass.
Happy accidents sometimes seem par for the course when it comes to discovery and innovation, and it’s true that the development and subsequent popularity of the model is partly due to such happenstance. But the StingRay, first introduced in 1976, also featured unique appointments that were carefully considered, including the onboard active EQ, the 3+1 headstock configuration, and the single Music Man humbucker. Such innovations quickly made the StingRay the go-to bass for a bevy of dynamic, influential players.
Popular music of the last few decades is full of incredibly diverse examples of how the StingRay helped shape and define the sound of recorded bass for the modern era. Look no further than Flea’s playing on the first six Red Hot Chili Peppers albums, Tim Commerford on Rage Against the Machine’s monumental debut, Louis Johnson’s groundbreaking slap-bass work with Brothers Johnson and on Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Joe Dart’s more recent fleet-fingered approach with Vulfpeck, and, of course, Cliff Williams’ steady pulse within AC/DC’s immense body of work. StingRay-wielding bassists deliver the grooves on a wide range of immediately identifiable hits, including Chuck Wright’s performance on Quiet Riot’s arena-ready anthem “Metal Health (Bang Your Head),” John Deacon’s pseudo-funk on Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” Bernard Edwards’ disco dynamite on Chic’s “Le Freak,” Tony Levin on Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” and the late Louis Johnson on Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” And that’s just scratching the surface.
The StingRay bass is alive and well. The Retro ’70s variation seen here faithfully reproduces the specs of the original Music Man model.
That the StingRay can be found in such varied styles gives credence to its versatility, reliability, and craftsmanship. Upon its introduction, the StingRay was poised to forever alter the sonic landscape of the low end. “There wasn’t a whole bunch of innovation happening in the electric bass industry at the time,” says Ball, “and some of the newer rock bassists really wanted a brighter sound. It was the right bass at the right time.”
StingRay Prehistory
The seeds of the StingRay were sown a long, long time ago among a who’s who of electric guitar industry pioneers who knew and influenced each other well before the instrument was even a twinkle in their collective eyes. Ernie Ball and Leo Fender first met sometime in the mid to late ’40s. “Leo was still running his radio repair shop in Fullerton, California, playing around with little amps and the Broadcaster prototypes,” surmises Sterling Ball, who is Ernie’s son. “My dad was just taken by all of it. It was life-changing for him and actually set the path for the Ball family.” By 1946, Leo had turned radio repairs over to Dale Hyatt (future co-founder of G&L, but that’s another story) and renamed his own business Fender Electric Instruments Company, where he focused on building guitars and amps.
Ernie Ball, a steel guitarist, became an official Fender endorsee in 1953. A few years later, in 1958, he opened what he claimed to be the first guitar store in the U.S. in Tarzana, California. By 1962, Ball would pioneer the custom-gauge-guitar-string revolution, setting in motion the decades-long success of the Ernie Ball company.
When the Fender company was sold to CBS in 1965, Forrest White was vice president. He and Tom Walker, an esteemed sales representative, remained with Fender for a short time after the sale, but by 1971, they had formed Tri-Sonix, Inc., with Leo Fender as a financial backer and silent partner. The company’s name was officially changed to Music Man in 1974, and Leo Fender was appointed president the following year, coinciding with the expiration of a 10-year non-compete clause lingering from the CBS sale.
The Early Days
One of Tony Levin’s many StingRay basses takes a rest from his busy schedule of touring and sessions.
Photo by Tony Levin
The StingRay bass debuted in 1976. Designed by Leo Fender, Tom Walker, and Forrest White, with beta-testing input from Sterling Ball, the StingRay was the first production bass to offer onboard active equalization. And because the relationships between all parties involved went far beyond business, it’s worth noting that they decided to honor their personal connection by embedding it into the aesthetics of the instrument via the Music Man company logo. “When you look at the headstock of the Music Man and you see the two little guys there, that’s my brother Sherwood and me,” reveals Ball, who is Walker’s godson. “Some people think that’s not true. It’s true. Unfortunately, no one around but me really knows.”
Sterling Ball was a burgeoning bass player by the mid ’70s; he’s played with Albert Lee and Steve Lukather among others. In addition to his beta-testing input, Ball explains that his personal/professional vantage point also put him in the position of mediator, when needed, between Walker and Fender. “Tommy and Leo would argue,” he recalls. “When I first went there, the bass was unplayable because the preamp was so hot it would overdrive the input impedance of just about any amp.” Walker, who was also an electrical engineer, “self-taught like most of the great ones,” according to Ball, designed the preamp. Walker had previously designed the Blender Fuzz pedal for Fender and would ultimately be responsible for developing Music Man amps.
The StingRay’s distinct sound also had a lot to do with Fender’s personal predilections and physical ailments. “People think Leo was a sonic shaper and that his intention was to change how the world hears sound, but Leo was deaf,” [Editor’s note: not literally.] laughs Ball. “Leo had no idea about funk, and he had no idea about slapping. He fancied country music, where the guitar is brighter. If you grow up eating hot peppers, your tolerance for heat is normal. So, if you grow up with a Stratocaster, that shapes what you think an electric guitar should sound like.” The fact that the bright, snappy-sounding StingRay would appeal to slap bassists like Louis Johnson was essentially pure luck, according to Ball, because Fender was getting Walker to crank the active circuit to his own taste, as well as compensate for the diminished frequencies in his own hearing.
“When you look at the headstock of the Music Man and you see the two little guys there, that’s my brother Sherwood and me.” —Sterling Ball
Tony Levin has played StingRay basses throughout his career with Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, and others, and he got his hands on one in the early days through the late Joel DiBartolo, 18-year veteran of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and another beta-tester for the burgeoning Music Man company. “My memory of that bass is recording a Peter Gabriel album, probably in ’79,” recalls Levin. “The high-end was so sensitive it was picking up crackles from static electricity. I was in the control room with a wire wrapped around my ankle, attached to the studio desk for grounding, to keep the crackle down.” That crackle didn’t deter Levin from realizing the StingRay’s sonic potential, though. In 1980, he played the same bass on John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s iconic Double Fantasy album.
Flea and his StringRay catch some air at Lollapalooza on Montage Mountain in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on August 15, 1992.
Photo by Ebet Roberts
The development and inclusion of Tom Walker’s active onboard preamp/EQ circuit was by-and-large the biggest innovation for a production-model bass guitar at the time. In this case, Ball likens Fender to a hot-rod enthusiast. “He liked having all that power,” he says. “He got a wider frequency response, and he could hear the bass better.” Levin says the original Music Man StingRay bass “felt like a Fender but had lows that engineers were craving, and that I just couldn’t get with my Precision.”
The preamp/pickup/bridge combination was the main source of the StingRay’s bright tone. According to Ball, Fender was not particularly concerned about tonewood when designing instruments. “His beta-testing was all done on finished-plywood board, which has no resonance,” reveals Ball. “It had a hole routed out where he could move different pickups in, and it had breadboarded circuitry on the outside.” It also had the high-mass, string-through-body Music Man bridge, another signature component. “When you went into Leo’s lab, he’d make you put a screwdriver on the bridge and then press the other side on the cartilage of your ear to listen to it vibrate,” recalls Ball. “If you do that, you feel the whole body vibrate. The guitar’s alive. One of the great things about the StingRay bridge is it really gives the instrument that ability to ring and vibrate. It’s so cool.”
Also contributing to that kind of lively sustain is the 3+1 tuning key headstock configuration, which was Forrest White’s contribution to the instrument’s design. Because this arrangement eliminates angled string pull on the headstock, it also prevents dead spots. At least that’s the theory. “Nothing’s bending to make it to the tuning peg,” explains Ball. “It's a straight string pull.” The 3+1 setup also made it identifiable for marketing. But there was one aspect of that design on the original Music Man models that clearly irked Ball. “They put the string tree on the G and the D. It didn’t need to be there. Most instruments we make don’t need a string retainer, but we’re trying to stay true to the original design.”
The latest iteration of the StingRay is the new DarkRay, a thoroughly modern take on the StingRay formula that was created in collaboration with Darkglass Electronics. It features a 2-band EQ preamp from Darkglass with clean, distortion, and fuzz modes, plus a neodymium humbucker, roasted maple neck, and more.
The Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay Emerges
In 1984, the Ernie Ball company bought Music Man at auction. “I didn’t have a guitar factory. I thought, ‘What the hell am I going to do?’” Sterling Ball chuckles. “So, I had to build a factory.” Ball brought in Dan Norton, his dad’s right-hand-man, and Dudley Gimpel, a renowned builder who worked at Knut Koupée Music Store in Minneapolis. “It was Dudley, Dan, and me. And now we have to make a bass [laughs].”
It was important to Ball that their builds were consistent, and since the original Music Man StingRay basses have notoriously inconsistent weights, Ball and his fledgling crew sought to rectify that issue. “Some were so heavy, I don’t think if you had a live-in chiropractor you could play them, and then there were others that were feather light. I gravitated towards the lighter ones.” Ball charted his course by trying to discern the difference between making a good bass versus making a great bass. “You could take one log and make 20 basses, and two of them are just going to be infinitely better.”
“[Leo Fender] liked having all that power. He got a wider frequency response, and he could hear the bass better.” —Sterling Ball
Other changes in the Ernie Ball era included moving the string tree to the D and the A strings, automating pickup production, adding contours, and changing the finish. Perhaps the most significant development, however, was adding the 3-band EQ and eventually offering an 18-volt circuit option. “What was fantastic when Ernie Ball took over was the addition of a midrange control,” states Levin. “I could make it sound like the Precision some engineers still wanted, but, for my preference, I could roll the midrange back.”
Bernard Edwards and his StingRay behind the board at the Power Station in New York City on April 6,1983.
Photo by Ebet Roberts
Ball concurs: “When we came out with the 3-band, which was cut and boost, you really got a lot more flexibility and a lot more options.” They eventually learned to voice the 3-band EQ based on customers’ tendencies to crank all the knobs. “In our business, everybody’s idea is everything has to be fully on,” explains Ball. “We could give you a lot more, but we know that if somebody turns everything up and plugs it in, they’re going to think it sounds terrible. So, we actually have to put it where we want it when it’s pegged. I’m not saying that we were putting a limiter on it, but we do voice it for being dimed.”
The StingRay remains a preeminent electric bass for many hotshot players, and the model’s line ranges from the vintage-informed Retro ’70s model to the heavy-music-tinged DarkRay to a host of signature models. But one thing that Ball says has been a little frustrating and limiting is the fact that most companies are still primarily selling 60-year-old designs.
“The path to innovation is very tough because of what players are willing to accept—it’s a narrow cast,” he says. “When you come out with a guitar or bass that looks different, it’s so interesting to see how strongly people oppose it at first. But if you don’t like it, you don’t have to get mad. It’s just not for you. We’re not taking your birthday away; we’re not taking Valentine’s Day away. All we’re doing is adding choices. You have to remind them that we didn’t take anything away. We just gave somebody else another choice.”
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.