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Posted by: Gus May 4 2008, 11:21 PM

Hello, GMC - My name is Gustavo Costa. So it is Gus C ( not a Gus G yet )

I also added a silly welcome video (Main video comes later in the post) :  Welcome.avi ( 16.86MB ) : 737

I live in Aalborg, Denmark, where I am studying mobile communication. I was born and lived almost all my life in Brasília, capital of Brazil. Really good city but it was good to move. It is such a good experience to live abroad for some period.
I am 26 years old and played acoustic since I was 8. But I stopped several times, I was lazy to practice and played basically chords.
3 years ago me and some close friends decided to form a band (named Rotação 355) and then I started learning electric guitar and lead. Currently, I am playing acoustic style with one band and electric with another.

I just love music. Not only hearing and playing, but also dancing. About rock I like pretty much every genre, from ballads to metal. My favorite guitarists are Jimmy Page, Slash, Kirk Hammett and Augusto Licks (brazilian guitarist of the golden era of Engenheiros do Hawaii). But there are so many more (Joe Satriani, Gus G, David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, ... )

Still, I will give you one example of song from each, to make you understand one kind of song I just love: songs that build up emotions all the way to the top. From slow clean melodies to shredding at bulky distortion: Stairway to Heaven, November Rain , Fade to Black, O exército de um Homem Só (Parte 1) . That's also I believe the best construction for a solo: use full speed only in the climax.

That said, I hope you like the dynamics of feeling of this lesson, and can learn something

I try to give advices about execution, as well as insight on how I composed that. I believe it can be useful indepedently of the level you play. I classificated each part according to level. Remember also that even beginners can play advanced stuff, if you start practicing slowly. Off course advanced students are encouraged to play all of it until full speed .


One video worths more than 1000 words, so just put it through your best sound system and hopefully you enjoy :

If that's too big for your download, check the version in my YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-IfNlEp8PM

Years ago I learned the intro of "Come out and Play", from The Offspring. The sound is so amazing. It is exotic and at the same time cativating. Kind of "egyptian" or "middle-eastern".
But at that time I did not know anyhthing about scales. When I started learning major and minor scales I realized it did not fit any of them. Then, I learned the harmonic minor and I though my quest was over. When learning modes, I didn't revise the concept, but finally in GMC I came accross the modes of harmonic minor, and amongst them the phyrigian dominant scale. Well, that definetely is it: that exotic/cativating sound comes from Phrygian Dominant mode. I was instantly passioned for this scale.

This lesson starts with a Dm pentatonic feel. It has lots of slow and fast parts, building up until full blast usage of D Phrygian Dominant.
But don't be afraid of fast parts! Just learn it slowly
The bass line on backing track is just D, which gives full room to change the modes.

Each part of this lesson has an aspect I am highlighting on the explanation and that's the way I am naming the section. So, if for example you liked the frenzy pick tapping you may want to check part 07 directly. Actually, as this part is a little bit trickier I did a 101 video.
The class is a little long (cause I like detailed explanations ), but if it's too much for you try at least checking the sessions you are more interested into and/or according to your level:
01 - Vibrato
02 - Bending
03 - Pentatonic licks
04 - Changing the mode
05 - Fast pull off
06 - Wild Pinky(little finger)
07 - Pick tapping mixed with normal legato
08 - Staccato
09 - Bridge
10 - Tremolo picking

Here are the scales used in the lesson, (reused and adapted with Muris/Kris permission):




The "aliens" notes here are 2 notes that don't belong to D minor pentatonic but I am using occaionally: G# and Eb. Though I called them "Aliens", they are not choosen by chance. The first one is the blues note. And the minor pentatonic added of blues note is the blues scale. The other one is the main characteristic of Phrygian mode.




Here are the full tabs for the lesson. You can see the notation on the text file:
 PhrygianDominant.gp5 ( 6.56K ) : 415
 phrygiandominant.txt ( 14.64K ) : 458

I did not include all the tabs in the explanation, otherwise it would make it hard to read. One important thing to notice about tabs: they are tabbed to normal E tuning, but my guitar was actually on Eb tuning in the video. I hope this does not become a problem to learn from the lesson. I apologize for the confusion, but who owns guitar with floating bridge knows we don't want to change the tuning every day...




Hey, ending long notes in vibrato gives more expression to your playing. Actually, within time you become addicted to use vibrato on every long note ending phrases.
Vibrato, in electric guitar is basically about moving your fretting finger a little bit up and down in appropriate tempo. In classical guitar technique you do it also sideways (which I also use sometimes, specially after finishing a slide).
In the bending note there is a small vibrato just to keep the sustain a little bit more, and in the other note there is quite a wide vibrato that combined with delay and reverberation accentuates the note without being boring.





First part already has a bend, but in this part it is on spotlight.
Bending is a technique that actually removes one of the limitations of guitars. Guitars are well-tempered instruments, and as such they are "more suited" to some (standard) specific sounds. But, while bending you actually can reach any frequency (pitch) you want, within guitar range.
In other words, while bending what you should trust the most is your ears. You are probably going to see tabs of Jimmy Page, Slash or any of your favorite guitarists doing 1/4 and 3/4 tone bends. That means they just followed their ear at that point doing "non-standard" notes
The main bend here is exploring one interesting situation: In the combined first/second pentatonic box, in 3rd string (G) you can reach 3 interesting notes while bending: the 4th, the blues note(augmented 4th) and the 5th.
What I am doing here is starting in the 4th, going to the blues note 2 times. The blues note gives an nice feeling of unfinished things (try it yourself). And then I go to the 5th (one of the most recognizable intervals by human hearing). All of that bending.


There are 3 things I took quite a while to learn about bending that can make your life easier :
1) The thumb should be on the top of fretboard providing strong turning point so that hand and arm work on the bend (not only your fingers)
2) Using more than one finger to the bend will add you more strength to do it.
3) When bending upwards, to stop the string just above from ringing you can use your index finger on it. Here I have my index on 4th string, and middle and ring fingers are bending the 3rd string.

The last phrase of this part is what I would call a spoiler. It adds the minor 2nd to the pentatonic. The minor 2nd characterizes the phrygian mode, so it is giving an idea to the listener: phrygian is coming!




Licks are very short but effective phrases, that you can practice over and over so that they become automatic. Then you simply pull them out of your musical quiver during your solos. First pentatonic box is really great for that.
Both licks here are very simple, but effectively starts speeding things up.
The first one uses three notes, with a pull off.



The second one is a matching bend. That is, the bend goes until reaching the other note being played, giving a fast repetition feel, with just two notes.


Again, this section finishes with the phrygian spoiler phrase.


From this section on, we change to phrygian dominant mode. The very last phrase was on phrygian, so here there is just one change (minor 3rd to major 3rd, that is, F to F#) and one addition (the 6th, Bb).

The phrygian dominant, as harmonic minor mode, has 3 semitone intervals. In some case that leads to "congestion" of your fingers in the fretboard, like in this section. You can see that I use a small bar with index finger several times to play more easily in this congested parts.

One of the goals of this section is also to lead me to first string, where I will pull out (pull off, ) some of my favorite licks.







Fast pulling off in first string is the main reason I prefer 010 strings over 009. In my opinion that makes the execution easier and sound better. When pulling off in the first string, you don't have to worry about what is below the pull off, so you can hit the pull off harder. In a guitar with good sustain, it gives a very effective sound.
However, even hitting harder you should try to keep the range of the motion limited.

I guess one of the reasons I like pull offs in the first string so much is because I practiced Sultans of swing second solo very hard. That solo was so above my skill level , but I wanted to play it anyway! The most challenging part was the fast 2 string arpeggio with pull offs on first string, but it was rewarding to do it.
The formula you should know already: I started at 50% speed, until I played it correcly and then moved to 60% speed. From 60 to 70 and on. The most difficult was actually to move from 90% to 95% and finally 100%. But don't give up!

This section end to a long slide of the 3 semitone interval, one of the characteristics of phrygian dominant scale.



There are 2 fast licks here. One with the middle finger and another one with both middle and little finger.
The first one is actually not that hard to do very fast once you know to do hammer on and pull off. You just hammer-on and pull-off as quick as possible.

|--10h-11p-10h-11p-10h-11p-10h-11p-10--L--L------|
|------------------------------------------------|
|------------------------------------------------|
|------------------------------------------------|
|------------------------------------------------|
|------------------------------------------------|

The second one is trickier. The lick itself has the same formula of last section, going up and down in the notes of the scale doing pull offs. But here we are using 4 notes. And more than that, the 3 semitone interval is included inside the lick. In my case I can't reach these positions quickly with the ring finger, so I have to do 2 consecutive stretched pull-offs with the pinky. To be able to play it you will have to develop stamina, speed and opening of the pinky . And then you will have a wild pinky. Don't give up.

--10-11p-10-14p-10-15p-10-14p-10-11p-10-
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------

Be sure to stretch and warm up before doing that. Otherwise you will get hurt and also will not be able to play it at all. (I myself can't do this section without proper warmup)

Here is the sequence I make.
http://www.handmades.com.br/images/stories/artigos/lesesosteomusculares.pdf (go to page 4 and follow from step 1)
http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/solo-guitar/warming-up-with-marcus-siepen/

I don't know any similar material for stretching in English, but maybe you can be able to do it with the link I provided. "10 segundos" means 10 seconds, "10 vezes" means 10 times. For the finger rotation part you should do 5 times in each direction (for each finger including thumb).
Remember that if you feel pain while stretching you are doing it too hard...



Pick tapping is a technique in which you turn your pick sideways pressing it against the fretboard (Think of a needle in a sewing machine and then you are on the right speed). With the right pick and enough pressure you get an "automatic" pull off every time the pick leaves the fretboard. Jumbo frets help a lot here. I can do it easily on my Ibanez, but it is harder on strat, but you still can do it with practice.

The best pick for this technique is small, hard and sharp pick. Well, my desk is full of Jazz III picks, from Jim Dunlop. That's a perfect fit for this technique.

The tab here is almost senseless (32th notes). If you want to learn go for the video (which has an explanation). Just an excerpt of tab (this is just a single bar):

The important thing to understand is that sequence 11, 10 is ringing (same way as last section). The tapping than starts at 14th fret, moves to 15th. Then I do some fast back and forth changes between 14th and 15th fret and finally it stays a long time on 17th fret, ending this section.


I actually "learned" this technique from a Metallica songbook. I didn't like my tapping, but on the tab for the solo of "One" there was a small footnote "*Tap using edge of pick throughout". I never tried that idea before.
After trying the tapping part of "O exército de um Homem Só (Parte 1), Engenheiros do Hawaii", I just got addicted to tapping with the pick. My days of non-tapping player were gone =)
That sounded cool, but as I wanted to play "One" perfectly I spent some time trying to learn the tap (T), pull-off (P), hammer-on (H) pattern on the tab. It was varying so wildly between figures T P P, T P H . The T is a hammer on given by the pick, and the first P is the "automatic" pull off provided by the pick leaving the fretboard. The third part of the figure comes from the normal legato.
I started slowly, but I could never do the right pattern. Then I just decided: I will just try to play this thing at full speed. And wow!, for my own surprise I was sounding very convincing, not caring at all if it was T P P or T P H.
So you can see the explanation at the video of this part how you should do it. ;-)

Well, after I recorded the video I didn't check right away, but definetely I should have muted the strings (you can hear some extra noise there) even if I lose some speed when I do that. You should keep your right hand muting the other strings while doing the pick tapping (watch Joe Satriani playing "Surfing with the alien" )


This part starts with a screaming bend, which gives a good ending for the shredding of last part.
Well, not everything in music is about crazy speeds or long sustained notes. Silence is important as well!
The next bend and other notes are played with a technique named staccato, which is kind of the opposite of legato. It consists of having a small portion of silence in the ending part of every note.
I realized how expressive this can be in guitar when analyzing the solo of a song named "Refrão de Bolero", from Engenheiros do Hawaii.
My execution goes with an accentuated upstroke picking, almost like a very small pop (bass techinque). Then I use the same finger which is fretting to mute the string (just let the finger leave the fretboard while still touching the string and then rest).

--17brb----------------|--17b----15----14----15----|--14----15----14----------|---------------------|
-----------------------|---------------------------|--------------------16----|--15~----------------|
-----------------------|---------------------------|--------------------------|---------------------|
-----------------------|---------------------------|--------------------------|---------------------|
-----------------------|---------------------------|--------------------------|---------------------|
-----------------------|---------------------------|--------------------------|---------------------|


A small, not so fast, pull off / slide phrase that gives bridge between parts 08 and 10.
Sometimes simplicity beats anything else...

----------14--15p--14------14--15p--|--14------14--15--15s----17----|
--15--16---------------16-----------|------16-----------------------|
------------------------------------|-------------------------------|
------------------------------------|-------------------------------|
------------------------------------|-------------------------------|
------------------------------------|-------------------------------|


Tremolo picking is kind of alternate picking take to extreme: your right hand has no time to "breath". It is in pure constant motion.
Phrygian dominant scale is great to work with tremolo picking . You can even just follow the notes of the scale one by one.
Actually, one of the most well knowns tremolo picking songs, Misirlou, arranged by Dick Dale and immortalized by Pulp finction, is almost in Phrygian Dominant. Just the 7th is different.

So here is the main deal about tremolo picking: you must make a constant motion of very small downstrokes and upstrokes, keeping the string being hit at a constant pace. If you start practicing very slowly you will learn it very soon.
It is important to practice the string changes. Each string has a different tension and size, which makes challenging changing the string and continuing at thes same speed before.




Here are the backing tracks. Remember to start slow and advance when confident.
The tempo of the video is 130 bpm
 BackingTrack85.mp3 ( 2.41MB ) : 473
 BackingTrack105.mp3 ( 2.01MB ) : 431
 BackingTrack120.mp3 ( 1.69MB ) : 408
 BackingTrack130.mp3 ( 1.56MB ) : 461



I hope you be able to use the information here to improve your playing and musical ideas.

I am open to answer any questions about this lesson in the forum.

I'd like to thank Smells/Andrew/Kris on putting effort to make this student instructor's board happens.
Creating a lesson make us research a lot and criticize our own work. Also, it let us realize how much effort is put into GMC lesson creation.

At last, but not least, I would like to say thanks to Ulrich, who helped me setting up the recording and is the bassist of one of my bands.

Boa Sorte!
-- Gustavo



I recorded this with my Ibanez Prestige RGT 320q, which is just an amazing guitar and gives tones of sustain. I used Neck pickup (humbucker).
I used Guitar Rig 3. I set to J800 in distorted channel , with delay and reverb added between the amp and cabinet (all in guitar rig).

It may look unimportant for beginner players, but part of the tone comes from the pick: Jazz III , Jim Dunlop. I hardly would do the pick tapping and tremolo picking parts with some other picks I use...

Posted by: Trond Vold May 5 2008, 08:27 PM

Great lesson It's obvious that you put alot of work and effort into it.
I really like your explanations.

Posted by: Hisham Al-Sanea May 5 2008, 10:31 PM

great hard work man. i see you worked very hard
and nice lesson .congrats for your work

Posted by: Gus May 5 2008, 11:57 PM

Thanks a lot. These words coming from you guys mean a lot to me.

About the effort I would classify in 3 things at the same time: less effort than I would like to , as much as I could, more than I should (giving that I have to deliver a M.Sc thesis soon.

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn May 6 2008, 12:38 AM

Gus, don't neglect your education just for GMC!

Posted by: Gus May 6 2008, 01:53 PM

Don't worry! I've been working on the thesis for months.

The only problem to write it all down is my extensive writing style

Posted by: Nemanja Filipovic May 6 2008, 02:02 PM

Great lesson Gus.

Posted by: Vinod Saranga May 6 2008, 02:27 PM

Great Job Gus

Posted by: seagull May 14 2008, 10:02 AM

Super lektion. Jeg regner med at du kan forstå dansk.
Jeg bor selv knap 40 km syd for Aalborg.

Fortsæt det gode arbejde!

Posted by: Gus May 14 2008, 03:55 PM

Ja, tak!
Jeg taler ikke så godt dansk, men jeg forstår lidt

Vi ses i Karneval i Aalborg

Posted by: seagull May 14 2008, 04:23 PM

Arh, ja du må lige føre an med dansen, du kommer jo fra karnevallens hovedstad...

Posted by: PassionPlay May 15 2008, 12:38 PM

Ligepludselig er der bare mange danskere på Gmc synes jeg (jeg er selv fra Lyngby lige nord for københavn)

og ja, ligesom seagull skriver.. super lektion!

Posted by: seagull May 15 2008, 01:16 PM

Hehe, jeg har også gjort en masse propaganda for den side her, den er bare for genial.

Posted by: PassionPlay May 15 2008, 04:17 PM

Ja den er !

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic May 15 2008, 11:15 PM

Awesome lesson Gus!! Keep up the great work!

Posted by: jacmoe Jun 23 2008, 08:12 PM

Killer lesson, Gus! I am digging it! Thanks!

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Jun 27 2008, 10:13 PM

Wow, killer one Gus, you really put some time and effort into it. Respect man

Posted by: Vasilije Vukmirovic Oct 2 2008, 12:13 PM

You must have spent an hours to write that down:)

Do I see genuine commitment here?

Posted by: Gus Oct 2 2008, 01:49 PM

Well, I do like detailed explanations.

But I have to admit I only spent so much time on this, because it was an entry for the competition.

For next lessons I will place explanations directly on video though.