Forget all your chords, arpeggios, and scales! Let’s dig into some weird and funky techniques.
Chops: Beginner
Theory: Beginner
Lesson Overview:
• Explore the limitless world of unorthodox techniques.
• Create new and refreshingly musical sounds.
• Develop a sense of timing when it comes to slides and scrapes.
Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation.
The sweet rumbling sounds of the power slide and the aggressive scratching of the pick scrape are two positive—and peaceful—sonic equivalents of a big-screen explosion. They are the weapons of choice in the flashy and more pyrotechnic side of rock ’n’ roll. It feels so right when you hit it and when it hits you. But are you doing them right? And how many of these techniques do you have in your arsenal?
Having done a lot of rock gigs in many different settings, I’ve noticed how certain techniques can enhance a performance. So in this lesson, rather than discussing scales, licks, or tones, I want to focus on the techniques inherent to rock guitar that are often overlooked and not studied. Don’t worry: They’ll all be extremely approachable and instantly gratifying.
You may think you already know all there is to know about pick scraping and power sliding, but there are many different ways to approach and deliver these effects. I became aware of the many variations when I started subbing for guitar wizard Joel Hoekstra on the Broadway show Rock of Ages. Since the musical features rock from the ’80s, the guitar book is filled with scrapes and slides, all at my discretion to interpret. They’re not much of a challenge to deliver, but since I come from an improvisational school, I tend to try to do things a little bit differently every night—within the scope of my abilities and the show’s possibilities. It might not seem like much, but those scrapes and slides provide a rare opportunity to alter details in order to keep the material fresh for myself, my bandmates, and the audience. As my friend (and fellow sub at Rock of Ages) Angus Clark puts it: “Have you ever done a gig with that many pick scrapes in it?”
Here are 10 variations on the technique that I find myself using most of the time. As a general rule of thumb, a decent amount of gain on your amp or distortion box will really make the guitar speak and scream nicely. Most of the versions are interchangeable and will “read” the same in a rock context, so feel free to keep what you dig and toss what you don’t.
Note: For dramatic effect, all the following examples land on a low E5 chord. Hey, why would you do a power slide in the first place if it didn’t land on an E5?
Ex. 1—The Classic Scrape
You hear this one everywhere. Place your pick perpendicular to your low strings, positioned so the pick digs into the grooves of the windings (you can usually catch two adjacent strings for a fuller sound). Start high on the strings—near the bridge—and slide down toward the neck. You’ll have to feel out what speed works best for the ideal sound. Keep in mind that pick gauge and material will also alter the sound. The key element of any successful scrape or slide is timing. The Classic Scrape is ideal when you want to fill a complete measure.
Click here for Ex. 1
Ex. 2—The Downward Slide
Another classic. Place your fretting hand high on the low strings (on or above the 15th fret), pick the low strings, and then slide your fretting hand down. Timing-wise, this one seems to work best when it’s quicker. In the example, the slide is a two-beat pickup that starts on beat 3.
Click here for Ex. 2
Ex. 3—The SRV
Similar to the previous example, but this is executed on the high plain strings instead of the low ones. Sure, you can find examples of this that predate Stevie Ray Vaughan, but he was the first guitarist I heard use this technique so dramatically and effectively. Hence the moniker.
Click here for Ex. 3
Ex. 4—The Revving
Like the name implies, this one emulates the revving sound of an engine. Start near the 3rd fret on the low strings, then slide up and back down. Your timing must be impeccable. In this example I cover one beat when I ascend and one when I descend.
Click here for Ex. 4
Ex. 5—The Scrape ’n’ Slide
This is a very powerful combination of the first two techniques. Execute the Classic Scrape, then as your picking hand gets past the neck, your fretting hand must hammer-on to the high frets of the low strings and take over the noise, sliding down toward the headstock. A bit of coordination is necessary, but it’s a great sounding variation. Plus, it looks really awesome. This usually works best when drawn out over a full measure.
Click here for Ex. 5
Ex. 6—The Revving Scrape ’n’ Slide
This is my personal favorite: a super-effective combination of Examples 1, 2, and 4. Start by revving up, then scrape down and slide down. The revving up serves as a one beat pickup to the full measure of scraping and sliding.
Click here for Ex. 6
Ex. 7—The Elephant
Another favorite of mine, this is a variation of the Revving that loosely imitates the sound of your preferred pachyderm. Start revving up on beat 2, use beats 3 and 4 to land on a high note, and finally bend the low string as far as you can. A lively sound indeed.
Click here for Ex. 7
Ex. 8—The Strangler
Similar to the Elephant, but here you stay on the note you land on after revving up, and then shake it with an exaggerated vibrato.
Click here for Ex. 8
Ex. 9—The Gojira
This next one is inspired by the extreme metal band Gojira, who often use this specific sound (and variations of it) as a compositional tool in their riff writing. The sound is less transparent and more pronounced, and might not fit anywhere as well as the other variations we’ve seen so far.
To execute, place your fretting hand past the last fret and push the high strings down (as if you were fretting them), then use a slow sweeping upstroke all the way to the lowest string. When you hit that low string, your fretting hand should actually be on the neck as you proceed to a one-string downward slide. The upstroke serves as a grace note to the quick power slide. Otherworldly!
Click here for Ex. 9
Ex. 10—The Freakout
Finally, this last example is an extreme noisemaker. Place your fretting hand high on the neck on the high strings (as many as you can manage, as long as the top strings are covered). Then start tremolo picking across several strings while sliding down. This one may also cut through more than the others, so use carefully.
Click here for Ex. 10
Have fun exploring the noisy combinations of these examples and maybe come up with some of your own variations. In addition to scales, note choices, and so on, there is often an art to the ugliness and noisy qualities of an unconventional technique.
Whitman Audio introduces the Decoherence Drive and Wave Collapse Fuzz, two innovative guitar pedals designed to push the boundaries of sound exploration. With unique features like cascading gain stages and vintage silicon transistor fuzz, these pedals offer musicians a new path to sonic creativity.
Whitman Audio, a new audio effects company, has launched with two cutting-edge guitar pedals, the Decoherence drive and Wave Collapse fuzz. Combining science and art to craft audio effects devices, Whitman Audio aims to transcend the ordinary, believing that magic can occur when the right musician meets the right tool.
Delivering a solution for musicians looking to explore a wide range of sounds, each pedal offers a unique path to finding your own voice. The Decoherence drive injects a universe of unique saturation into your music arsenal while the Wave Collapse fuzz takes you to uncharted sonic territories.
Decoherence features include:
- Cascading stages (Gain A > Gain B) each with a unique sound and saturation character
- Gain A - Medium to high gain stage with a mid focus for clear articulation and punch
- Gain B - Low to Medium gain with a neutral EQ that compliments and expands Gain A
- G/S Toggle - Selects the clipping diodes for Gain B (NOS Germanium or NOS Silicon)
- Tone Knobs (H & L) - Tuned active Baxendall style EQs that boost or cut Highs and Lows
- True bypass switching, accepts standard 9V DC power supplies (does not accept battery)
Introducing: Decoherence Drive - YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.Wave Collapse features include:
- Vintage Silicon transistor fuzz that goes from vintage clean to doom metal mean
- Buffered input and pickup simulation ensure it sounds great anywhere in your chain
- Bias Knob - Allows for a huge range of texture and response in the pedals gain structure
- Range and Mass Toggles - Provide easy access to three diverse bass and gain ranges
- Filter Knob - A simple-to-use tilt EQ enhanced by the Center toggle for two mid responses
- True bypass switching, accepts standard 9V DC power supplies (does not accept battery)
The Decoherence drive and Wave Collapse fuzz pedals carry retail prices of $195.00 each.
For more information, please visit whitmanaudio.com.
Introducing: Wave Collapse Fuzz - YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.In our third installment with Santa Cruz Guitar Company founder Richard Hoover, the master luthier shows PG's John Bohlinger how his team of builders assemble and construct guitars like a chef preparing food pairings. Hoover explains that the finer details like binding, headstock size and shape, internal bracing, and adhesives are critical players in shaping an instrument's sound. Finally, Richard explains how SCGC uses every inch of wood for making acoustic guitars or outside ventures like surfboards and art.
We know Horsegirl as a band of musicians, but their friendships will always come before the music. From left to right: Nora Cheng, drummer Gigi Reece, and Penelope Lowenstein.
The Chicago-via-New York trio of best friends reinterpret the best bits of college-rock and ’90s indie on their new record, Phonetics On and On.
Horsegirl guitarists Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein are back in their hometown of Chicago during winter break from New York University, where they share an apartment with drummer Gigi Reece. They’re both in the middle of writing papers. Cheng is working on one about Buckminster Fuller for a city planning class, and Lowenstein is untangling Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann’s short story, “Three Paths to the Lake.”
“It was kind of life-changing, honestly. It changed how I thought about womanhood,” Lowenstein says over the call, laughing a bit at the gravitas of the statement.
But the moment of levity illuminates the fact that big things are happening in their lives. When they released their debut album, 2022’s Versions of Modern Performance, the three members of Horsegirl were still teenagers in high school. Their new, sophomore record, Phonetics On and On, arrives right in the middle of numerous first experiences—their first time living away from home, first loves, first years of their 20s, in university. Horsegirl is going through changes. Lowenstein notes how, through moving to a new city, their friendship has grown, too, into something more familial. They rely on each other more.
“If the friendship was ever taking a toll because of the band, the friendship would come before the band, without any doubt.”–Penelope Lowenstein
“Everyone's cooking together, you take each other to the doctor,” Lowenstein says. “You rely on each other for weird things. I think transitioning from being teenage friends to suddenly working together, touring together, writing together in this really intimate creative relationship, going through sort of an unusual experience together at a young age, and then also starting school together—I just feel like it brings this insane intimacy that we work really hard to maintain. And if the friendship was ever taking a toll because of the band, the friendship would come before the band without any doubt.”
Horsegirl recorded their sophomore LP, Phonetics On and On, at Wilco’s The Loft studio in their hometown, Chicago.
These changes also include subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in their sophisticated and artful guitar-pop. Versions of Modern Performance created a notion of the band as ’90s college-rock torchbearers, with reverb-and-distortion-drenched numbers that recalled Yo La Tengo and the Breeders. Phonetics On and On doesn’t extinguish the flame, but it’s markedly more contemporary, sacrificing none of the catchiness but opting for more space, hypnotic guitar lines, and meditative, repeated phrases. Cheng and Lowenstein credit Welsh art-pop wiz Cate Le Bon’s presence as producer in the studio as essential to the sonic direction.
“On the record, I think we were really interested in Young Marble Giants—super minimal, the percussiveness of the guitar, and how you can do so much with so little.”–Nora Cheng
“We had never really let a fourth person into our writing process,” Cheng says. “I feel like Cate really changed the way we think about how you can compose a song, and built off ideas we were already thinking about, and just created this very comfortable space for experimentation and pushed us. There are so many weird instruments and things that aren't even instruments at [Wilco’s Chicago studio] The Loft. I feel like, definitely on our first record, we were super hesitant to go into territory that wasn't just distorted guitar, bass, and drums.”
Nora Cheng's Gear
Nora Cheng says that letting a fourth person—Welsh artist Cate Le Bon—into the trio’s songwriting changed how they thought about composition.
Photo by Braden Long
Effects
- EarthQuaker Devices Plumes
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- TC Electronic Polytune
Picks
- Dunlop Tortex .73 mm
Phonetics On and On introduces warm synths (“Julie”), raw-sounding violin (“In Twos”), and gamelan tiles—common in traditional Indonesian music—to Horsegirl’s repertoire, and expands on their already deep quiver of guitar sounds as Cheng and Lowenstein branch into frenetic squonks, warped jangles, and jagged, bare-bones riffs. The result is a collection of songs simultaneously densely textured and spacious.
“I listen to these songs and I feel like it captures the raw, creative energy of being in the studio and being like, ‘Fuck! We just exploded the song. What is about to happen?’” Lowenstein says. “That feeling is something we didn’t have on the first record because we knew exactly what we wanted to capture and it was the songs we had written in my parents’ basement.”
Cheng was first introduced to classical guitar as a kid by her dad, who tried to teach her, and then she was subsequently drawn back to rock by bands like Cage The Elephant and Arcade Fire. Lowenstein started playing at age 6, which covers most of her life memories and comprises a large part of her identity. “It made me feel really powerful as a young girl to know that I was a very proficient guitarist,” she says. The shreddy playing of Television, Pink Floyd’s spacey guitar solos, and Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan were all integral to her as Horsegirl began.
Penelope Lowenstein's Gear
Penelope Lowenstein likes looking back at the versions of herself that made older records.
Photo by Braden Long
Effects
- EarthQuaker Westwood
- EarthQuaker Bellows
- TC Electronic PolyTune
Picks
- Dunlop Tortex 1.0 mm
Recently, the two of them have found themselves influenced by guitarists both related and unrelated to the type of tunes they’re trading in on their new album. Lowenstein got into Brazilian guitar during the pandemic and has recently been “in a Jim O’Rourke, John Fahey zone.”
“There’s something about listening to that music where you realize, about the guitar, that you can just compose an entire orchestra on one instrument,” Lowenstein says. “And hearing what the bass in those guitar parts is doing—as in, the E string—is kind of mind blowing.”
“On the record, I think we were really interested in Young Marble Giants—super minimal, the percussiveness of the guitar, and how you can do so much with so little,” Cheng adds. “And also Lizzy Mercier [Descloux], mostly on the Rosa Yemen records. That guitar playing I feel was very inspiring for the anti-solo,[a technique] which appears on [Phonetics On and On].”This flurry of focused discovery gives the impression that Cheng and Lowenstein’s sensibilities are shifting day-to-day, buoyed by the incredible expansion of creative possibilities that setting one’s life to revolve around music can afford. And, of course, the energy and exponential growth of youth. Horsegirl has already clocked major stylistic shifts in their brief lifespan, and it’s exciting to have such a clear glimpse of evolution in artists who are, likely and hopefully, just beginning a long journey together.
“There’s something about listening to that music where you realize, about the guitar, that you can just compose an entire orchestra on one instrument.”–Penelope Lowenstein
“In your 20s, life moves so fast,” Lowenstein says. “So much changes from the time of recording something to releasing something that even that process is so strange. You recognize yourself, and you also kind of sympathize with yourself. It's a really rewarding way of life, I think, for musicians, and it's cool that we have our teenage years captured like that, too—on and on until we're old women.”
YouTube It
Last summer, Horsegirl gathered at a Chicago studio space to record a sun-soaked set of new and old tunes.
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