
Can I bite off a giant arpeggio and digest it in one bear-sized piece? Or will I get better results from dividing up the arpeggio into smaller segments I can digest gradually over time?
There is something appealing about the former. I certainly admire the snake as it lazily lounges for 10 weeks with a large lump in its middle and not a care in the world. On the other hand, there are those of us who scramble and search daily for small mouthfuls of sustenance.
What Iāve discovered from playing and teaching is that a bear-sized arpeggio is nearly impossible to digest in one mighty bite. The python can do it. I canāt. I must scramble for my small mouthfuls. But if Iām willing to do it, I can build an arpeggio of just about any size.
Our first bite, shown as Bite 1, is thankfully a small one. Itās a simple A minor triad lick comprising just three notes. Your left hand is going to gobble this right down.
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But letās not ignore the right hand. The secret is to not pick every note. Let me rephrase that in a positive and more specific way. Pick the first note. Do not pick the second note. Pick the third note. Your choice of upstrokes and downstrokes are going to be crucial, as this lick gets larger. We will use an upstroke for the E and a downstroke for the A. Loop the lick around a few times to get the hang of it.
This is a good time to remember that we are not pythons and that we should spend some time digesting. How to do it? Start tapping your foot and playing along. I suggest a 16th-note feel. As you loop the lick, make sure to observe the small rest every time. In Bite 2, weāll extend this idea over three octaves.
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Iām sure youāve noticed that the position shifting and string jumping is the challenge for this lick. I want to encourage you first by saying that the position shifts are easy if you think about them the right way. Your hand is shifting from the 8th to the 5th to the 3rd position. For a moment, try to forget that youāre playing single notes and just think of moving power chords to these positions. Suddenly, the position shifts become no more challenging than a Ramones song (although I donāt want to understate the power and majesty of the Ramones).
To further digest the string jumping, letās focus on the pinky and what it has to do. Itās playing the E note in three octaves. And it has to jump around in order to do it. Letās play Bite 3 and listen to what the pinky is doing just by itself.
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With a little bit of practice ⦠digested!
Now, letās do the obvious and turn the lick around. The left-hand fingerings are going to be exactly the same as above, but the picking pattern is different. We are ascending this time, so the low note (A) will come first. Start with a downstroke on the A and then use an upstroke on the C. Check out Bite 4 and all will be revealed. As you could have probably guessed, itās time to expand to three octaves using our familiar fingering for Bite 5. Please notice that Iāve added an upstroke on the very last E note. This syncs right up to our original descending triad phrase, so we can now attach the two together for Bite 6.
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or download example audio
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Iād say a python would think twice before taking a bite of that arpeggio. So I suggest some practice and mental digestion before moving on.
This next variation uses the same A minor triad notes, but has some interesting changes in direction. The resulting lick in Bite 7 sounds less like an exercise and more like a purposeful melodic phrase. The secret is in the fingering. I found a place to sneak in an A note that we havenāt used before. This new A note requires less position shifting (thatās the good news), but a little more string skipping. You can do it!
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I recommend practicing and digesting these to a similar comfort level as you feel when you play āSheena is a Punk Rocker.ā You can wear your guitar a little higher, but not too much. Now itās time to reverse the whole pattern for Bite 8 and play it in G Major.
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Iām now going to use a word Iāve never actually spoken out loud: etude. Iāve seen this word written plenty of times, and I know what it means, but somehow I hesitate to speak it. Not that I have ever had any street cred, but it would certainly go the way of the dodo if anyone heard me say āetude.ā You can check out this finger-buster below. Itās a bear.
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Pythons we are not. Small bites are the key.
The country virtuoso closes out this season of Wong Notes with a fascinating, career-spanning interview.
Weāve saved one of the best for last: Brad Paisley.The celebrated shredder and seasoned fisherman joins host Cory Wong for one of this seasonās most interesting episodes. Paisley talks his earliest guitar-playing influences, which came from his grandfatherās love of country music, and his first days in Nashvilleāas a student at Belmont University, studying the music industry.
The behind-the-curtain knowledge he picked up at Belmont made him a good match for industry suits trying to force bad contracts on him.
Wong and Paisley swap notes on fishing and a mutual love of PhishāPaisley envies the jam-band scene, which he thinks has more leeway in live contexts than country. And with a new signature FenderĀ Telecaster hitting the market in a rare blue paisley finish, Paisley discusses his iconic namesake patternāwhich some might describe as āhippie pukeāāand its surprising origin with Elvisā guitarist James Burton.
Plus, hear how Paisley assembled his rig over the years, the state of shredding on mainstream radio, when it might be good to hallucinogenic drugs in a set, and the only negative thing about country-music audiences.
Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
As head of Breedlove and Bedell Guitars, heās championed sustainability and environmental causesāand he wants to tell you about it.
As the owner of the Breedlove and Bedell guitar companies, Tom Bedell has been a passionate advocate for sustainable practices in acoustic guitar manufacturing. Listening to him talk, itās clear that the preservation of the Earthās forests are just as important to Bedell as the sound of his guitars. Youāll know just how big of a statement that is if youāve ever had the opportunity to spend time with one of his excellently crafted high-end acoustics, which are among the finest youāll find. Over the course of his career, Bedell has championed the use of alternative tonewoods and traveled the world to get a firsthand look at his wood sources and their harvesting practices. When you buy a Bedell, you can rest assured that no clear-cut woods were used.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesnāt keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories heās collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relicāand stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levinās Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Marylandāhe discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how heās putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relicās cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the storeās house-specād Bedell parlors while we chatted.
āThe story of this guitar is the story of the world,ā Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, āIām gonna make up the story,ā Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregonās Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization processāin which the building team fine-tunes each instrumentās voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysisāand Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitarās warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acousticsāand of any Bedell Iāve had the pleasure to playādelivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, thatās what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. āWe have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,ā Bedell effused. āThere are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but thereās nobody on a production level.ā And he wants to spread that gospel.
āWe want to reach people who really want something special,ā he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores heās visited, āwho have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.ā
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A beautifully realized mashup of two iconic guitars.
Reader: Ward Powell
Hometown: Ontario, Canada
Guitar: ES-339 Junior
Iāve always liked unusual guitars. I think it started when I got my first guitar way back in 1976. I bought a '73 Telecaster Deluxe for $200 with money I saved from delivering newspapers.
I really got serious about playing in 1978, the same year the first Van Halen album was released. Eddie Van Halen was a huge influence on me, including how he built and modded guitars. Inspired by Eddie, I basically butchered that Tele. But keep in mind, there was once a time when every vintage guitar was just a used guitarāI still have that Tele, by the way.
I never lost that spirit of wanting guitars that were unique, and have built and modded a few dozen guitars since. When I started G.A.S.-ing simultaneously for a Les Paul Junior and a Casino, I came up with this concept. I found an Epiphone ES-339 locally at a great price. It already had upgraded CTS pots, Kluson tuners, and the frets had been PLEKād. It even came with a hardshell case. It was cheap because it was a right-handed guitar that had been converted to left handed and all the controls had been moved to the opposite side, so it had five additional holes in the top.
Fortunately, I found a Duesenberg wraparound bridge that used the same post spacing as a Tune-o-matic. I used plug cutters to cut plugs out of baltic birch plywood to fill the 12 holes in the laminated top. I also reshaped the old-style Epiphone headstock. Then, I sanded off the original finish, taped the fretboard, and sprayed the finish using cans of nitro lacquer from Oxford Guitar Supply. Lots of wet sanding and buffing later, the finish was done.
I installed threaded insert bushings for the bridge, so it will never pull out. The pickup is a Mojotone Quiet Coil P-90 and I fabricated a shim from a DIY mold and tinted epoxy to raise the P-90 up closer to the strings. The shim also covers the original humbucker opening. I cut a pickguard out of a blank and heated it slightly to bend it to follow the curvature of the top.
All in all, I'm pretty happy how it turned out! It plays great and sounds even better. And I have something that is unique: an ES-339 Junior.
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