*Play first tritone with thumb, first time only.
Freely
by Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford, Robert Fripp, and Tony Levin
Published by E.G. Music, Inc., Editions E.G.
All Rights Reserved.
F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 4 /G U I TA R P L AY E R . C O M 85
w/Rhy. Fig. 2 (eight times) Play four times
* “Ping” strings behind nut.
** Bend neck or use trem. bar.
Rhy. Fig. 2 (Play eight times) w/Rhy. Fig. 1 (four times)
44
Lessons
86 G U I TA R P L AY E R . C O M /F E b R U A R Y 2 0 1 4 1”), but here we’re thumb-picking the bass
notes and using the index and middle fin-gers to up-stroke the tritones. (Tip: Tony varies this riff during the verses by replac-ing the sreplac-ingle quarter-note on beat four of bar 2 with a pair of sixteenth-note upbeats that utilize the figure’s D7 tritone interval, plus another one a half-step lower [C#7].) The foundation is set, let’s build the house.
PERCOLATION
Four bars into T-Lev’s Rhy. Fig. 1 groove, the rest of the band enters for an eight-bar,
pre-verse-1 instrumental figure. Leading the pack is Fripp’s percolating sixteenth-note figure (labeled “Rhy. Fig. 2” in Ex.
2a), which outlines an A7/9 tonality as he places descending 9’s (B), roots (A), and b7’s (G) between E and open A pedal tones. Belew’s entrance on the fourth six-teenth-note of beat one with a harmonically ambiguous Am6 (or D7/A) hit is punctu-ated in tandem with Bruford (Ex. 2b), and marks the only point throughout the song where you’ll hear the drummer hit a crash cymbal. Belew injects organically-generated
WTF? guitar noises into bar 2 throughout the entire eight-bar section, including the behind-the-nut string “ping” and physical neck-bend (!) depicted in Ex. 2c. (Tip: Use a whammy bar. It’s much safer.)
EXTRAPOLATION
As we progress to the first verse, Levin continues playing Rhy. Fig. 1, while Fripp foments washes of Asus4 and Gsus4 power chords (Ex. 3a), and Belew adds special effects similar to those in the pre-verse in between barking out idiomatic equivalents
King Crimson
w/Rhy. Fig. 3 (two times)
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F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 4 /G U I TA R P L AY E R . C O M 87
*Gtr. synth w/heavy pitch vibrato arr. for gtr.
G m
88 G U I TA R P L AY E R . C O M /F E b R U A R Y 2 0 1 4
Lessons
King Crimson
for the word “talk,” all beginning with the letter “A.” The song’s subsequent verses proceed alphabetically, with similar lexi-cal items starting with “B,” “C,” “D” and
“E” before the last chorus concludes with three consecutive cries of “Elephant talk!”
Besides more behind-the-nut pings, Belew’s interjections here include the pre-verse Am6 chord hit, but this time he follows it with a sparkly arpeggio using the artificial harmonics shown in Ex. 3b. Ex. 4, which follows the first verse, shows how Fripp
adapts the same rhythm motif from his pre-verse-1 figure (Rhy. Fig. 2) and adjusts its notes—from B, A, G, and E, to C, B, A, F#, and E—to imply D9 during the song’s remaining pre-verse sections.
ELEPHANTOSITY
…is what Fripp called it in the album cred-its. Belew’s “elephant” tones, which ini-tially appear during the first instrumental chorus and are played over Ex. 5a (Fripp’s third adaptation of Rhy. Fig. 1, now adjusted
Ex. 7a
w/Rhy. Fig. 4 (six times)
w/fuzz
*Tap w/edge of pick throughout.
9 10 9 10 9 7
F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 4 /G U I TA R P L AY E R . C O M 89
Ex. 8
to fit F#m7 and labeled “Rhy. Fig. 3”), were the result of his Electro-Harmonix Big Muff fuzz and Electric Mistress flanger (or Poly-Chorus) set to an eighth-note modulation rate with a half-step of pitch change, along with some sleight-of-hand fretwork on the first string. To simulate a single example (Belew plays each pass differently), turn on the flanger and play the metallic, muted-sixteenths depicted in Ex. 5b for a bar-and-a-half before kick-ing in the fuzz and slidkick-ing in and out of the indicated first-string pitches (F# and G) shown in bar 2. (Tip: Watch a few old Tarzan movies for inspiration!)
FRIPPERY
Fripp’s solo, which follows the third verse and second chorus, features a distorted and heavily vibrated brassy guitar-synth patch electronically transposed up one octave and supported with clean-toned, Hendrix-inspired rhythm guitar by Belew. Refresh-ingly easy to play compared to most Fripp solo excursions, this one is more thematic than improvisational. Rooted in the key of C# minor, Ex. 6 covers the first eight bars, and shows how Fripp (Gtr. 1) arpeggiates C#m9 and C#m (bars 1, 2, and 4), and Abm (bar 3), before descending through three different ascending Abm arpeggios (bars 5 and 6) to target a C#m voicing (a sub for E6 in bar 7). You’ll need a hefty amount of fuzz, a pitch transposer set one octave up and 100% wet, plus a constant pitch modulation effect to approximate Fripp’s tone. (Or you can just wing it with your fingers!) Belew (Gtr. 2) bubbles below the surface throughout, mirroring and echo-ing Fripp’s arpeggios with whammy-barred
and/or hammered-and-pulled partial chord shapes in grand Jimi tradition. His arpeg-giated C#m artificial harmonics in bar 8 also function as E6.
“THAT’S A GUITAR?”
Those familiar with his pre-Crimson work with Zappa, Bowie, and Talking Heads had already experienced a healthy dose of Adrian Belew’s innovative soloing before Discipline was released, but anyone still in the dark must have been knocked for a loop the first time they heard “Elephant Talk”!
Of course, Belew never played the same solo twice, but for me, this special take, which is played over the F#-based ensem-ble figures shown in Examples 7a and 7b, and the first half of which is transcribed in Ex. 7c, is written in stone. Belew admit-tedly gleaned the “Bavarian Bagpipe” tech-nique found in bars 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 from former boss Frank Zappa. The trick is to use the edge of your pick to rapidly trill between notes as written. And check out how Belew’s lazy, dragged-triplet bends in bars 3 and 4 morph from bar-bends to fin-ger-bends. Too cool!
In concert, Belew’s solo would typically segue to an extended Stick-and-percussion break. Following his re-entrance with the riff from Ex. 4, Fripp at some point would cue the final verse with something akin to the angular, chromatically ascending
root-#4(b5)-root intervals illustrated in Ex. 8. Slow it down, suss the shapes and moves (including the rhythmic hiccup on beat four), and then make it roar! That wraps up our “E.T.” tour, so it’s up to you to inves-tigate the rest of the trilogy. Trust me: It’ll blow your mind. g
Lessons
90 G U I TA R P L AY E R . C O M /f E b R U A R Y 2 0 1 4
Ex. 1 Ex. 2
Ex. 3 Ex. 4
“WhEn it comEs to funk playing and that sort of thing,” says Guthrie Govan,
“the thing I get asked about most often is the frantic right-hand stuff I do.”
Specifically, Govan is talking about the spastic strumming-hand flurries he so effort-lessly injects into conventional sixteenth-note-based grooves. It’s no wonder many players are captivated by his use of this technique, because he executes it with so much speed and precision it’s almost comi-cal. He’ll be cruising along, perhaps playing a fast James Brown- or Nile Rodgers-style pattern, and then suddenly—often just before a big, satisfying downbeat strike—
his pick hand will shift into a gear that revs so high, the ensuing spray of notes seems almost superhuman.
Luckily, there’s a simple science behind Govan’s signature funk spasms. The other good news, as you’ll discover when you go to guitarplayer.com and watch the exclu-sive video Govan shot for this lesson, is that the British guitar virtuoso teaches as well as he plays. And he plays pretty damn well.
“Some people think I’m doing trip-lets,” says the Aristocrats/Steven Wilson
guitarist. The assumption is no surprise, because the technique in question does kind of sound like a light-speed version of the famous triplet move Leo Nocen-telli employs on the intro to the Meters’
“Tippi-Toes.”
“It’s not triplets,” says Govan. “It’s thirty-second notes. [Mimics Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel:] ‘It’s one more, isn’t it?’”
A great exercise for learning this approach, suggests Govan, is to simply strum a six-teenths-based groove and occasionally double things up to thirty-second-notes.
And while he’s absolutely correct, before we do that, let’s do a quick refresher on how to subdivide a measure into 32 pulses. First, set your metronome tempo slow enough that when you’ve finally revved your wrist up to thirty-second gear, it doesn’t burst into flames. 75bpm might be a good start.
Ex. 1—Tap your foot on each click, count-ing each group of four out loud (“one, two, three, four”), at the same time strumming the muted strings using downstrokes. Loop it. You’re now strumming quarter-notes.
Ex. 2—Shift up to eighth-notes by
doubling up your downstrokes. (Count aloud: “One and, two and,” etc., one word per downstroke.) In this and every other example in this lesson, keep the foot tap-ping on and only on the quarter-notes (“one, two,” etc.). That’s the internal heartbeat that keeps the groove solid.
Ex. 3—Achieve sixteenth-notes by dou-bling up the percussion once again. Do this by adding an upstroke between each downstroke. (You actually were already doing this in Ex. 2; your pick just wasn’t yet making contact with the strings during its upward flights.) Count aloud using the music school convention, “one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a,” etc.
Ex. 4—Just before landing on beat three and (when it returns) beat one, double up your strumming attack yet again, for just half a beat. (There’s no real verbal con-vention for counting this subdivision, so choose a four-syllable phrase you can easily say fast, like “gotta getta.”) You’re now playing short bursts of thirty-second notes on the second half of beats two and four, as in “one-e-and-a, 2-e-gotta-getta, three-e-and-a, 4-e-gotta-getta.”)