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Lessons - Technique
What are Dan's most used play techniques? |
Hey Dan, I really think that you are going in the right
direction with the oriental thing, nobody else is really doing that anymore.
Marty Friedman has changed his musical style a lot, so its good that someone
else is going to compose music in this style. |
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Introduction |
Technique is a very important element of music, because it serves the musical expression. Read more about musical expression in the "Thoughts" section! On of the most relevant element in my guitar play is my vibrato and bending style (see below). It intensifies the effect of exotic scales enormous! I like a wide, quite slow, but intensive vibrato. In addition with a highly emotional whammy bar technique (aka scooping) you get a real Eastern sound! Blocked notes, that allows me to give even more expression in melodies and rhythms. Find below some scale positions, licks and style expressions, that shows you some important elements and concepts of my play style. |
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One of the most important style element is vibrato. It's absolutely evident to give a feeling to the music, and with a suitable vibrato I can give the right feeling not only to my melodies, but also to heavy riffs and even chords! To chords? Yes, I often play a really wide and intensive vibrato, when I play a two-note "chord" like G#11 (G-C#) as an example. |
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| Bending |
Basically, I use three kinds of bendings: (1) I bend in a similar way as Marty does. That means I pre-bend the note, play the note, quickly release the bended note and quickly bend it again (down-up). (2) I bend the note (especially on the high strings/high frets) and make a vibrato with the whammy. (3) I make quick bends and releases (up-down). |
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| Portamento Bending |
A very typical style element is a very slowly played
bending ("Portamento"). |
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| Quick Bendings |
Often I "decorate" melody lines with very quickly performed bendings. This gives your melody an Oriental touch. |
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| "Out of scale" Bendings |
Try to bend from an "out of scale" note (which means from a note which is not part of the current scale). An example: in C minor, bend from c# (=out of scale) to d, instead from the note c to the note d. |
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| Slides |
When I listened to the classical Indian music
(especially to sitar music), I like the way these Indian musicians play
the melodies of the ragas (simplified: raga = song) on only one(!)
string. A sitar is constructed in the way that - normally - only one string is used
to play the melody! That's one reason why these melodies sound so
"special". I like that kind of melodies very much. |
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| Thrills |
Oriental melodies are full of trills as kind of melodic decoration. |
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I use the whammy bar in a similar way like Jason Becker does: I produce fluent melodies and uncommon bendings. By the way: Marty Friedman doesn't use any whammy bar. His guitar don't even has a whammy bar! Marty doesn't like the use of a whammy bar very much.
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What I use often is octave-tapping. It's another way to produce exotic -
especially Asian - vibes.
Or a special tapping technique using a mixture of tapping and bending!
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Wah |
The pecal wah is another tool to decorate melodies with a human
(singer-like) touch.
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Sweeping / Arpeggios |
When I use sweeping / arpeggios, I like to add some exotic sounding notes like #5 or 9. | |
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© 2004 Dan Keller, www.sultanofstring.com. All rights reserved. Copying prohibited. |
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