LESSONS
Soloing Seminar
s k n i The Astonishing j Pick/Pluck Practice Practicess i of Dave Martone H B Y C HR IS B UO NO
d i r b y H
STYLE. IT’S A HOT COMMODITY THESE DAYS. FLIP ON ANY MEDIA TALK TALK
box and you hear myriad commercials telling you how to achieve, projboxand ect, and protect it. Stroll through any mall, look around, and there’s usually enough style on display for everybody to purchase some amount of it. In the guitar world, identity is everything, but it’s much harder to obtain. That’s why when a guy like Dave Martone appears, heads turn. Martone’s sound emanates with unusual grace, aggression, and conviction. It is, for lack of a sufficiently suff iciently sophisticated term, shred term, shred,, but while it’s plenty explosive, it doesn’t blow things up in clumsy ways. Martone likes to disintegrate musical frameworks strategically, like a demolitions expert reducing an empty Vegas casino to dust via brilliantly timed sequences of small explosions. Athletic technique, literate compositional chops, white-hot distorted tones (with garnishes of crystalline clean), and wide intervallic leaps are all hallmarks of Martone’s crisp and confident guitar style. Listening to Martone is fun—you sense the danger, but know that somehow, like the hero in an action movie, he’s gonna make it to the end of the song alive. While it may be too early to say if this makes Martone the next box office sensation of instrumental instrumenta l guitar, one thing is certain: The Canadian guitar virtuoso has the confidences of some other instrumental
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PHOTO: CLAUDE_DEFRESNE
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LESSONS Soloing Seminar heroes. Just check out the guest artist list on Clean Clean,, his debut release for Magna Carta. It features Greg Howe, Jennifer Batten, Billy Sheehan, and Joe Satriani. The cornerstone cornerstone of the Martone Martone sound is a hyper-evolved approach to a timehonored Nashvill Nashvillee technique technique that, that, Zakk Zakk Wylde Wyl de aside, few guns-a-blazin’ rock guitarists have explored. We’re talking about hybrid picking—the practice of making zippy single-note runs easy to play by sounding them with a pick and one or two plucking fingers. fingers . (The fingers come in especially handy during string skips.) The interesting thing about Martone’s incredible pick/pluck style is that he’s able to look back to his youth and pinpoint the very ver y day when, in one fleeting moment, he found the seed from which it would grow. That seed was a simple classical guitar etude.
Villa-Lobos etude, fret a simple open-position Em tion Em chord and take a spin through Ex. 1. Now, instead of plucking the notes “classical“cla ssicalstyle,” employ the indicated hybrid pattern that uses the pick and middle (m ( m) and ring (a) fingers. (The ring finger is only used to pluck the first string.) It makes the rippling E minor texture a breeze to play without saying goodbye to your pick. The thing to recognize recognize here here is that this hybrid picking pattern, like most, can be applied to other harmonies, such the Fdim7/E Fdim7 /E chord in Ex. 2. Once you’ve got the pattern dialed, Martone suggests looping it while shifting the fretted notes down the neck in half-steps à la Etude la Etude #1 #1,, leaving the sixth and first strings open. “As you progress with this approach, try using a palm-mute on the strings,” adds Martone. “That’ll be helpful later, because when you start doing this stuff with some gain, things can get a little out of control.”
T H E H E C T O R F AC AC T O R “When I was learning to play guitar I studied some etudes from Hector Villa-Lobos,” says Martone. “There was some string jumping jump ing in in Etude Etude #1 that I thought was interesting, and it sparked the idea behind a lot of the technique I use today today.” .” To T o exp experie erience nce move movess from this insp inspiring iring
T H E J O UR U R N E Y B E GI GI N S “So now I’m going to take this technique and put it inside something we all love and hate—the pentatonic scale,” says Martone. Employing Ex. 3’s ’s Em Em pentatonic fingering (which starts on D on D,, the b7), Martone loops
Ex. 1
Em
4 4 4 4 = 68
m
m
m
0
T A B
0
2
a
a
0
0
0
0
2
m
m
0
0
2
0
2
0
m
2
2
= pick with downstroke,
m
= pluck with middle,
a
0 = pluck with ring
Ex. 2
= 90
Ex. 3
Fdim7/E
E minor pentatonic scale IX
= root
m
m
m
a
0
12
T A B
10
12 0
12
10
a
12
m
0
m
12
10
11
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m
12
10
12 11
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SCRUNCHED HARMONICS Log on to guitarplayertv.com to watch video of this lesson interview, and you may notice a red, fluffy hair tie around the neck of Dave Martone’s guitar somewhere near the nut. It’s a soft, elastic “scrunchy” the guitarist uses to keep open strings muted and “more under control.” Sure, employing some sort of mechanism to dampen the strings is nothing new—Michael Angelo Batio, Jennifer Batten, Regi Wooten, and George Van Eps are among several guitarists known for the practice. But it’s the other way Martone uses his scrunchy that’s innovative. Placed directly over the 5th, 7th, or 12th frets (or at other harmonic nodes), the scrunchy applies just enough pressure to hold harmonics almost as well as a finger laid across the strings would. This allows Martone to pluck or strum harmonics without using his fretting hand. The ingenious discovery transforms a ten-cent hair tie into a harmonic capo that can be used u sed to engineer sophisticated licks that featuring huge intervallic leaps between sparkly harmonics and fretted notes. Clever. —CB
LESSONS Soloing Seminar Ex. 4a to show you one of his go-to hybrid
patterns. Two notes are picked, another is plucked (usually by the middle finger), and the rest are slurred (hammered or pulled). Moves like this are a key ingredient in the buttery smoothness you hear in Martone’s sextuplet-based runs, such as Ex. 4b, where the same motif is applied to the th e rest of the E minor pentatonic scale with an accent applied to each plucked note. To get more —that is, to create larger melodic intervallic—that intervallic leaps—Martone shifts the plucked notes up a string [Ex. 4c]. As with many examples
in this lesson, this lick gains a more dimensional sound if you accent the plucked notes as indicated in the notation and lay back on the picked and slurred passages. “The hybrid approach is a great way to breathe new life into scales,” says Martone. It also allows you to play patterns, such as those we’ve just gone over, fas over, fastt. As Martone tears through these last two examples at NASCAR-approved speeds, you begin to sense the great depth of power hybrid picking has given his lead playing. “I can’t believe that Villa-Lobos idea became such an integral part
of my playing. I can’t believe such a small little part of a song made such an impact.”
BIGGER LEAPS In Ex. 5 you’ll find a three-note-per three-note-per-string -string C# natural minor scale. In Ex. 6, Martone once again zips up the scale using his Villa-Lobosinspired hybrid pattern. With the string skip, the interval spanning the lowest and highest notes in each sextuplet is a major ninth. “I make this contorted face when I play this that makes it look as though it’s painful to play, but it’s not,” confesses Martone. “There is a bit of a stretching involved, but that helps achieve that more intervallic sound I’m going for.” As Martone glides through this hypnotic phrase, he applies a subtle vibrato to each embedded plucked note. It gives the already unique-sounding line an eerie, crying quality.
Ex. 4a Freely
TEACHING WITH TITANS Ever wonder what it would be like to give a guitar lesson alongside one of your heroes? Dave Martone found out when he was chosen by Workshoplive.com to host a series of video seminars with the modern day guitar hero, Joe Satriani. “My main role was to organize all of the content,” says Martone of the show, called Satch Zone. “I wanted the topics to include legato, whammy-bar madness, those cool ‘Power Cosmic’ arpeggios—in other words, any and every approach that pops into people’s heads when they think th ink of Joe Satriani.” Leading a seminar with someone of Satch’s stature is a daunting task, considering Satriani is a master guitar sensei in his own right. (His former students range from Kirk Hammett to Alex Skolnick.) Luckily, Martone had years to prep for the challenge, having taught for the famed National Guitar Workshop (creators of Workshoplive) Workshopl ive) for nearly a decade. There, he sharpened his claws teaching and trading licks with such luminaries as Yngwie Malmsteen, Greg Howe, Marty Friedman, Jennifer Batten, and even Satch’s former pupil, Steve Vai. To get into the zone, click to workshoplive workshoplive.com/satchzone. .com/satchzone.—C —CB B 112 DECEMBER 2008
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Em
m
T A B
ARPEGGIO WORK ZONES Martone’s hybrid approach not only services scale-based melodic ideas, but it also works with arpeggios. Centered in the key key of of A A major,
12 10
12
12
10
12
Ex. 4b
4 4
= 60-144
Em
6
6
6
m
simile
m
6
etc.
12
T A B
12 10 12
12
12 10 12
9 12
10 12
12
12 9 12
9 12
12 9 12
12 10 12
4 4 Ex. 4c
= 50-155
6
Em
6
C natural minor IX
6
6
12 T A B
12
12 12 10 12
10 12
12 10 12
9 12
9 12
12 9 12
12 9 12
12 10 12
44
Ex. 6
= 50-135
Ex. 5
C m
6
6
6
6
14
14
T A B
13
13 9 12
12 9 12
9 12
9 13 12 9 12
13 9 13
9 13
13 9 13
LESSONS Soloing Seminar here are Martone’s three main seventh chord qualities—major seventh, minor seventh, and dominant seventh [Examples 7a-7c]. He attacks them with the same hybrid-picked six-note assault we saw in previous examples. Each arpeggio purposely omits the 5. (For example, Bm7 ple, Bm7,, the IIm7 in the key of A A,, has no F # ). Not only does does this nicely nicely format the # ). arpeggios into Martone’s hybrid picking modus operandi, it also enables the arpeggios’ fretting-hand fingering shape stay the same when moved down to the next string set (second, third, and fourth strings), and only requires the highest note be lowered a fret when the pattern is shifted down to the remaining two string sets (third, fourth, and fifth strings, etc.). This fingering uniformity allows Martone to easily combine and superimpose the mini-arps into one glorious lick [Ex. 8]. “Setting up my arpeggios like this lets me easily play in a given key using a series of chords I call ‘work zones,’” says Martone. “These days I’m more thinking about the
Ex. 7a
14 Bm7
Evenly
6
5
T A B
4 7
7
4 7
Ex. 7b
14 Amaj7
Evenly
6
4
T A B
2
6
6
2
6
Ex. 7c
14
THE GRINDER Martone’s hybrid picking mojo goes well beyond a mere lick-making mechanism. It serves him well in what may be his strongest attribute: composition. For starters, check out Ex. 9, the intro to “Nail Grinder” (off ). Featuring a clever use of dropped- D dropped- D Clean). Clean tuning, the riff opens with chromatically descending fourths that flow right into minor sevenths, octaves, and finally to fifths—all in one position, thanks to the Villa-Lobos-style string skips. With an emphasis on the piezo signal coming out of Martone’s Parker Fly guitar (for boosted articulation), this cherry riff is not nearly as complex to play as it sounds—even at tempo!—provided the hybrid picking approach is employed smartly. From bar 3 onward, the remainder of the riff is a quirky play on the D the D blues scale ( D D,, F , G, Ab, A A,, C).
Ex. 8
44
E7
Evenly
chords inside the scale than thinking of the scale itself. Thinking in terms of chords can really open up the sound of your lines.”
(Bm)
= 50-115
(E7)
(Amaj7)
(Dmaj7)
6
6
6
6
6
etc.
10
T A B
9 13
13 9 13
9
9
T A B
7
7 7 10
10 7 10
7 11
7 11
11 7 11
7 11
11 7 11
11 7 11
Ex. 9 = 160
*Dropped-D tuning
4 4 1
palm mute throughout
m
T A B
10
etc.
m
10
9
9
8
8
7
7
10
10
9
9
8
8
7
7
10
10
9
9
8
8
7
7
0
10 9 8 7 10 9 8 7 0
12
12
10
10
12
12
15
15
12
12
10
10
12
12
0
* 6 = D
5
T A B
0
12
12
10
10
12
12
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17
17
18
18
17
17
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15
15
0
0
12
12
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10
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15
15
12
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13
13
13
17
17
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11
11
15
15
11
11
0
Soloing Seminar LESSONS HAIR-TIE HARMONICS To T o close close out this lesson with style style,, we we shift shift gears to explore an innovative way to play harmonics via licks taken from the song “Moron Face” (also off Clean Clean). ). Instead of lightly placing a fretting-hand finger over a given fret to play the harmonics, Martone takes his picki ng-ha ng-hand nd index finger and places it over the strings (first at the 9th fret, as indicated in Ex. 10) and uses his fretting hand to play ghost-hammered legato lines. Because the finger resting over the fret activating the harmonics remains stationary,, the notes being hammered are stationary at varying distances, inciting a mosh pit of disjunct intervals. When you get these concepts under your belt take a deep breath, eat a hearty breakfast, and then try incorporating Martone-style hybrid hijinks and “scrunched” harmonies within the same riff. “There’s a lot going on in these licks,” reflects Martone, “but it all comes together from my studying of those Villa-Lobos pieces as a kid.” g
SNAP, CRACKLE, PIEZO! Though Martone’s main Parker Fly Deluxe is a stock, off-the-rack model, it’s the way Martone utilizes the guitar’s dual pickup systems that is a bit atypical. To give his lead tone an extra snappy attack, Martone employs the “acoustic” properties of the Fly’s piezo pickup while he’s unleashing the fury of his scorching sco rching lead tone (courtesy (cou rtesy of a Vox Valvetronix Valvetronix VTX amplifier). A custom Y-cable sends both signals into a Radial Big Shot PZ-DI pedal that, by way of a pair of stomp switches, lets Martone blend or switch between the magnetic and piezo systems. From there, Martone’s magnetic signal travels to the Valvetronix, while his piezo signal is compressed (“to add more spank, less spike”) by a Visual Sound Route 66 pedal placed alongside a DigiTech DigiVerb pedal in the Big Shot’s built-in effects loop. The pedal’s balanced balance d output delivers the processed piezo signal sign al to the board and monitor desk. —CB
44 Ex. 10
(F )
= 95-155
**
*
T A B
***
4
2
4
5
4
2
2
5
4
2
4
4
6
7
6
4
4
7
5
6
4
6
6
7
3
4
7
5
* Li Li gh gh tltl y p la la ce ce pi pi ck ck in in gg-h an an d i nd nde x fi ng ng er er ov ov er er 9t 9t h f re re t.t.
* *L *L ig ig ht ht ly ly pl pl ac ac e pi ck ck in in gg- ha ha nd nd in ind ex ex fifi ng ng er er ov ov er er 11 11 th th fr fr et et .
***Lightly place picking-hand index finger over 9th fret.
****
3
T A B
6
4
3
3
6
4
3
4
4
6
2
3
5
3
2
2
3
5
6
2
5
3
2
3
4
5
****Lightly angle picking-hand index finger from 9th to 8th fret, from low E to A strings.
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