
Phish’s nimble guitarist navigates changes with ease largely because he takes inspiration from jazz greats.
Chops: Intermediate
Theory: Intermediate
Lesson Overview:
• Develop a better sense of melody by using arpeggios.
• Create tension-filled lines with the diminished scale.
• Improve your understanding of the fretboard by connecting triads.
Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation.
Trey Anastasio is easily my biggest influence as a guitarist. Throughout a career that has spanned 30-plus years, Trey and his band Phish have touched upon a mind-boggling number of genres and blended them into a unique sound. Not only that, but today I’m a huge fan of many styles of music because I heard Phish explore them when I was a teenager.
Admittedly, before Phish came along I thought jazz was lame. But now, I love it. Phish wore the disguise of a carefree rock band, but they were the ones to introduce me to a lot of the harmonic, melodic, and improvisational characteristics that made jazz one of the great art forms of the last century. It was as if they were shoving spoonfuls of extra-healthy kale down my gullet while convincing me it was actually ice cream.
Trey is probably best known for his exploratory flights over a one- or two-chord vamp, but in this lesson we’ll look at how he navigates changes. What does he do when more than one scale or arpeggio is needed? Some guitarists might think the improvisational techniques we’re about to examine are only relevant to jazz, but they would be wrong. Many rock tracks are prime examples of a soloist playing over changes, and there are plenty of these moments in Phish’s music.
We’ll look at a few instances where Trey handles this beautifully, and then trace some of his vocabulary back to legendary jazz guitarists. Think of it as using Phish songs as a lab where we can experiment with different scales, arpeggios, and chord voicings.
YouTube It
In the second set on 7/3/14, Phish morphed from “Bathtub Gin” into one of the better versions of “Limb by Limb” from the band’s 2014 Summer Tour. Trey leads the jam starting at 3:21 before leaving the tune unfinished and heading into “Winterqueen.”
Let’s start by taking a look at Phish’s classic tune “Limb by Limb.” For the majority of the jam section in this song, Trey solos over a simple F Mixolydian (F–G–A–Bb–C–D–Eb) vamp in a lilting 12/8 time signature. But for me, the highlight of this jam occurs during the outro of the solo, when Trey continues to blow over the chorus chord progression. This progression consists of a measure of Db, a measure of Eb, and two measures of F. The latter two chords are still technically diatonic to F Mixolydian, but the Db is actually borrowed from F natural minor (F–G–Ab–Bb–C–Db–Eb), which means F Mixolydian won’t work over the Db.
There are a few solutions for tackling this progression. One approach would be to simply use F natural minor (the F minor pentatonic or blues scale could work, too) over Db and Eb, and then shift to Mixolydian for F. However, Trey usually prefers to outline changes with arpeggios. In Ex. 1, you can see how he might use triad arpeggios to seamlessly move from one chord to the next. He takes the shapes and breaks them up into creative, melodic ideas. Also, he doesn’t restrict himself to using only notes in the arpeggios, but will include other notes from the scales as well. There’s sage advice in those licks. Don’t just play guitar. Play music!
Click here for Ex. 1
Let’s move on to another Phish classic, “Stash.” This song’s jam almost always goes off the rails into insane places that don’t end up having much to do with the progression. It does, however, almost always start here, and the studio version pretty much sticks to it all the way through. I highly recommend checking out the version from A Live One. It’s a great example of a band working together, playing off one another, and a guitarist breaking rules and using his imagination to create some exhilarating tension and release. This is as true as improvisation gets in my opinion, and because a guitar lesson like this can’t begin to summarize the interplay, it’s best to simply listen and enjoy.
“Stash” has a simple progression in D minor. If you wanted to, you’d be totally fine playing D harmonic minor (D–E–F–G–A–Bb–C#) or D minor pentatonic (D–F–G–A–C) over the whole thing. What I find really cool, though, is the ominous Bb7 in the second measure. This chord is almost diatonic to the scale, except for its b7, which is Ab. This note is super cool because in the key of D minor, it's the b5, which sounds very creepy and distinctive. When soloing over this progression, I really enjoy including that note in my lines—or even ending phrases on it. It yields some really cool melodic motion, and you can create some dramatic, tension-building lines by taking advantage of it.
Another trick you can use over this progression—or anytime you’re playing in a harmonic minor situation—is making use of a diminished 7th arpeggio (1–b3–b5–bb7). (The bb7 is the same note as the 6; we’re simply giving it a different name to follow chord-building convention.) This arpeggio is a symmetrical shape since each note is the exact same distance from its neighbors. As you can see in the diagram below, this arpeggio consists of just two notes on every string, which are always three frets, or a minor third apart. You simply move up one fret every time you start a new string (move up two frets when moving from the 3rd string to that pesky 2nd string).
For our purposes (Ex. 2), the diminished arpeggio works best when you start it a half-step below the root, which in this case is D. All the notes in the arpeggio are diatonic to D harmonic minor, but still create some cool tension. If you just jam to this progression and get a feel for it, your ears will be a great judge of when that arpeggio will sound great and when it won’t be stable enough. To put it into Star Wars terms, turn off your X-Wing’s targeting computer and just use the Force.
Click here for Ex. 2
Now let’s take this “Stash” progression and use it to practice some other approaches. A huge part of the beauty of Phish’s music lies in its versatility, so as guitarists we can take advantage of that and use these Phish tunes as a vehicle to practice other things. For this next example (Ex. 3), let’s take “Stash” and use it to develop some chord soloing ideas in the style of Wes Montgomery. If any of you aren’t acquainted with Wes, check out this video below. He was an absolute master of using chord voicings to create a huge sound in his solos that would emulate a big band horn section. Also, note that he exclusively plucked strings with his thumb, a technique that gave him a unique, über warm and full tone.
I’m taking some ideas and chord voicings that, to me, are reminiscent of Wes’s style, and applying them to the “Stash” changes. All of these chords occur on the top four strings, and most of them are different inversions of 7th chords.
In the first measure, I’m playing a bunch of different D minor variations. This is a really cool little box where you can find a lot of neat voicings for minor-key comping and even soloing. I then insert chromatic notes to connect the previous D minor portion to what I want to play for the Bb6, which is a pretty common chordal lick that’s a great fill to use over a dominant chord.
Next, I go up the neck through a couple of different inversions of Em7b5, using a few single notes to connect the voicings and give it some melodic flow. Then, I play two different A7 voicings, the second of which I add a b13 tension to give it a little more flavor, and then I end the passage on a Dm6/9 to make it a little hipper.
Click here for Ex. 3
For our last example, we’ll be looking at “Foam.” This song may qualify as one of the weirdest songs in Phish’s entire catalog, which is why it’s one of my favorites. This example has more changes than the other ones in this lesson. In fact, the form that Trey solos over is actually a peculiar 17 measures long, though we’ll only be examining a portion of it.
At first glance, the chords in Ex. 4 might seem totally unrelated, but take a closer look. First, many of the chords are inverted, which means that a chord tone other than the root note is the lowest note in the chord. So when you see A/C# that means you’re playing an A major triad, but putting the 3 (C#) in the bass. Now take a look at each chord and the bass note being played for each. The chord progression’s bass notes ascend chromatically through the entire form. (Later in the progression the direction reverses and the bass notes descend chromatically.) This is extremely smart harmony, and it features some really creative voice-leading to keep that chromatic thread running through the whole progression.
So how the hell do we solo over it? Well first, let’s take a look at how Trey would do it. It’s his tune, after all. Just like in “Limb by Limb,” Trey often relies heavily on triad arpeggios to navigate through these changes. The only difference this time is that there’s a lot more of them. In this example, Trey starts off by outlining the C major and A major chords using their respective arpeggios, although he adds one or two other scale tones as well. He then includes a touch of chromaticism to get down to a chord tone for the G major that occurs in the next measure. After that, he employs a really cool approach that’s very useful for guitarists, which is known as “pivoting.” In this approach, Trey picks one note in each measure, and uses it as a point from which to pivot to other notes in the scale or arpeggio. He starts with the lowest note, and then plays other notes on top of it, always alternating every other note back to the lowest one.
Click here for Ex. 4
Now let’s pull the jazz card one more time, and use “Foam” as a guinea pig. For Ex. 5, I’ll be referencing my favorite jazz guitarist of all time, the great Django Reinhardt. Instrumental music can often lack a human element and be difficult to relate to, but the beauty of Django is that when he plays, you can practically feel what he’s saying to you and what he was feeling while he was playing without anybody saying a word. To me, that’s the highest level of self-expression in music.
Django employed countless scales, arpeggios, rhythms, and chord voicings in his playing, but I’m going to pick one concept and apply it to this example. This approach is somewhat similar to the pivoting idea I mentioned before, but this one can be traced back not only to plenty of jazz music, but lots of classical music as well. This is known as using “enclosures.”
Check out the link below to get an idea of Django’s playing. His solo begins at about 00:49, and he comes out of the gates full tilt, playing a burning (sorry, that’s such a jazz dweeb word) line that totally consists of enclosures.
So what’s an enclosure? Well, to use them, we’re going to need those triad arpeggios we’ve been talking so much about. Let’s take that first C major in “Foam.” We won’t play our C note just yet, but rather simply keep it in mind for a second. That’ll be what’s known as our target note. First, play the D note that’s the next note up in the scale from C. Next, play whatever note is a half-step below ourtarget note. In this case it’s a B. So what we’re doing is enclosing that C note with whatever two notes are on either side of it. Now that we’ve enclosed the C, do the same exact thing to the other notes in the C major arpeggio. Keep going up the second octave as far as you can until you reach the 1st string.
In Ex. 5, I begin by playing a C major enclosure pattern in a triplet rhythm, and I end the phrase by moving the last C to a C# to adjust for the A major chord that’s in the next measure. If you listen, there’s a bunch of other variations on those enclosures in the example, too, where I include some Django-esque 16th-note ornamentations to keep the enclosures from sounding too repetitive. The cool thing with these enclosures is that there are so many variations you can come up with, and you can cultivate a huge vocabulary from this one idea. Just let your imagination go wild, and have some patience and work ethic to let those ideas come to life.
Click here for Ex. 5
As with anything you’re practicing, you have to work persistently with these concepts to master them. Playing over changes is not an easy skill to develop, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. Whenever there’s a progression you don’t feel comfortable soloing over, start by slowly arpeggiating the entire progression using a steady stream of eighth-notes, always playing along to a metronome set at a realistic tempo. And take advantage of the internet! Search for arpeggios, look up all the inversions, and get in the shed until you have those tools at your disposal.
To wrap up, I can’t stress enough that this lesson is in no way meant to encapsulate everything about Trey’s playing in a couple of paragraphs. I don’t think that would be possible. The real heavy stuff, the stuff I don’t think I could explain in a lesson, is his fearless improvisational abilities, and his willingness to break rules and play whatever he wants as only he can. For me, the biggest inspiration from Trey’s playing, and the aspect that makes him one of the most important guitar players of his time, is that no matter what he does, he sounds completely original and always like himself. I’ve even heard stories of him throwing out all his Pat Metheny albums after someone told him he played like Metheny. I don’t know if that story is true, but regardless, his unique playing speaks for itself.
Acoustic players, this one’s for you! Win the LR Baggs Venue DI in the I Love Pedals giveaway and take full control of your live sound. Enter today and return daily for more chances!
LR Baggs Venue DI Acoustic Guitar Preamp / DI / EQ / Tuner Pedal
We created the Venue DI so you can travel light, set up fast, and sound incredible anywhere you plug in. The Venue DI gives you complete control by combining a full-isolation DI output, 5-band EQ with adjustable low & hi-mid bands, variable clean boost, and chromatic tuner all in one acoustic pedal. With its all-discrete signal path, hi-graded semiconductors, and exclusive use of audiophile grade film capacitors, the Venue DI is on par with the world’s elite preamps and provides a studio quality sound for the stage.
With authentic stage-class Katana amp sounds, wireless music streaming, and advanced spatial technology, the KATANA:GO is designed to offer a premium sound experience without the need for amps or pedals.
BOSS announces the return of KATANA:GO, an ultra-compact headphone amplifier for daily jams with a guitar or bass. KATANA:GO puts authentic sounds from the stage-class BOSS Katana amp series at the instrument’s output jack, paired with wireless music streaming, sound editing, and learning tools on the user’s smartphone. Advanced spatial technology provides a rich 3D audio experience, while BOSS Tone Exchange offers an infinite sound library to explore any musical style.
Offering all the features of the previous generation in a refreshed external design, KATANA:GO delivers premium sound for everyday playing without the hassle of amps, pedals, and computer interfaces. Users can simply plug it into their instrument, connect earbuds or headphones, call up a memory, and go. Onboard controls provide access to volume, memory selection, and other essential functions, while the built-in screen displays the tuner and current memory. The rechargeable battery offers up to five hours of continuous playing time, and the integrated 1/4-inch plug folds down to create a pocket-size package that’s ready to travel anywhere.
KATANA:GO drives sessions with genuine sounds from the best-selling Katana stage amp series. Guitar mode features 10 unique amp characters, including clean, crunch, the high-gain BOSS Brown type, two acoustic/electric guitar characters, and more. There’s also a dedicated bass mode with Vintage, Modern, and Flat types directly ported from the Katana Bass amplifiers. Each mode includes a massive library of BOSS effects to explore, with deep sound customization available in the companion BOSS Tone Studio app for iOS and Android.
The innovative Stage Feel feature in KATANA:GO provides an immersive audio experience with advanced BOSS spatial technology. Presets allow the user to position the amp sound and backing music in different places in the sound field, giving the impression of playing with a backline on stage or jamming in a room with friends.
The guitar and bass modes in KATANA:GO each feature 30 memories loaded with ready-to-play sounds. BOSS Tone Studio allows the player to tweak preset memories, create sounds from scratch, or import Tone Setting memories created with stage-class Katana guitar and bass amplifiers. The app also provides integrated access to BOSS Tone Exchange, where users can download professionally curated Livesets and share sounds with the global BOSS community.
Pairing KATANA:GO with a smartphone offers a complete mobile solution to supercharge daily practice. Players can jam along with songs from their music library and tap into BOSS Tone Studio’s Session feature to hone skills with YouTube learning content. It’s possible to build song lists, loop sections for focused study, and set timestamps to have KATANA:GO switch memories automatically while playing with YouTube backing tracks.
The versatile KATANA:GO functions as a USB audio interface for music production and online content creation on a computer or mobile device. External control of wah, volume, memory selection, and more are also supported via the optional EV-1-WL Wireless MIDI Expression Pedal and FS-1-WL Wireless Footswitch.
For more information, please visit boss.info.
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.
Featuring torrefied solid Sitka Spruce tops, mahogany neck, back, and sides, and Fishman Presys VT EQ System, these guitars are designed to deliver quality tone and playability at an affordable price point.
Cort Guitars, acclaimed for creating instruments that exceed in value and quality, introduces the Essence Series. This stunning set of acoustic guitars is designed for musicians looking for the quintessential classic acoustic guitar with fabulous tone all at an exceptional price point. The Essence Series features two distinct body shapes: The Grand Auditorium and the OM Cutaway. Whatever the flavor, the Essence Series has the style to suit.
The Essence-GA-4 is the perfect Grand Auditorium acoustic. Wider than a dreadnought, the Essence-GA-4 features a deep body with a narrower waist and a width of 1 ¾” (45mm) at the nut. The result is an instrument that is ideal for any number of playing styles: Picking… strumming… the Essence GA-4 is completely up for the task.
The Essence-OM-4 features a shallower body creating a closer connection to the player allowing for ease of use on stage. With its 1 11/16’th (43mm) nut width, this Orchestra Model is great for fingerpickers or singer/guitarists looking for better body contact for an overall better playing experience.
Both acoustics are topped with a torrefied solid Sitka Spruce top using Cort’s ATV process. The ATV process or “Aged to Vintage”, “ages” the Spruce top to give it the big and open tone of older, highly-sought-after acoustics. To further enhance those vintage tones, the tops bracing is also made of torrefied spruce. The mahogany neck, back, and sides create a warm, robust midrange and bright highs. A rosewood fingerboard and bridge add for a more balanced sound and sustain. The result is amazing tone at first strum. 18:1 Vintage Open Gear Tuners on the mahogany headstock offer precise tuning with vintage styling. The herringbone rosette & purfling accentuates the aesthetics of these instruments adding to their appeal. Both acoustics come in two choices of finish. Natural Semi-Gloss allows the Sitka spruce’s natural beauty to shine through and classic Black Top Semi-Gloss.
A Fishman® Presys VT EQ System is installed inside the body versus other systems that cut into the body to be installed. This means the instrument keeps its natural resonance and acoustic flair. The Presys VT EQ System keeps it simple with only Volume and Tone controls resulting in a true, crisp acoustic sound. Lastly, Elixir® Nanoweb Phosphor Bronze Light .012-.053 Acoustic Strings round out these acoustics. This Number 1 acoustic guitar string delivers consistent performance and extended tone life with phosphor bronze sparkle and warmth. The Essence Series takes all these elements, combines them, and exceeds in playability, looks, and affordability.
Street Price: $449.00
For more information, please visit cortguitars.com.