Hektor Tamer Of Horses Solo Pt 1
Ben Higgins
May 26 2015, 10:42 AM
Instructor
Posts: 13.792
Joined: 11-March 10
From: England
Hi guys. I wanted to take you through the entire solo from "Hektor, Tamer of Horses" which is a song taken from my first album, Mr Badass.

Solo begins 2:33 and last until 2:52.



Although the track has quite a mellow vibe compared to some of the other stuff I've written, the guitar parts are no less demanding or less exciting to play. It's a surprisingly difficult track to play mainly due to the position shifting involved in many of the licks.

I've divided the solo into 2 parts so we'll tackle the first part this time.

The tempo is 102bpm and the song is driving along in the key of C#m at this point. The first thing we encounter is this classical Beethoven sounding tapping sequence. The technique involves tapping and then hammering onto the note recently vacated by the tapping finger. So you're only actually playing 2 notes but it sounds like an insanely fast hammer-on. This is a technique that I first got from Paul Gilbert... thanks Paul!

First off, we trace a C#m arpeggio by moving up to the next 'would be' interval in the arpeggio sequence. Imagine a C# arpeggio played from the lowest note to the highest note. Well, we're climbing up the arpeggio 2 notes at a time and repeating some of the notes in the process.

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The chord than moves to G# and the lead guitar then descends using minor 3rds for a diminished sound. This is probably the easiest part as you only have to move to the note you vacated and play an identical shape.

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Then the chord moves to C# with a bass note of F. This gives a suggested slash chord of C#/F. For this section the tonality has shifted to a Major sound so we ascend through a C# Major arpeggio this time.

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After that we change direction again and descend through an F#m arpeggio.

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Here's GPro, PDF & the backing track!

Attached File  Hektor_Tamer_of_Horses_Solo_pt1.gp5 ( 3.29K ) Number of downloads: 113

Attached File  Hektor_Tamer_of_Horses_Solo_pt1.pdf ( 134.07K ) Number of downloads: 157

Attached File  Hektor_Solo_Backing_Track.mp3 ( 952.81K ) Number of downloads: 119


The hardest thing about this section is memorising it. Honestly, it's not that difficult physically. The difficulty is remembering where the hell the notes are and not accidentally tapping or hammering on to the wrong fret. This is where my classic phrase comes in handy; "Give yourself time to get it right."

You'll have to spend a lot of time visualising where the next tapped note is supposed to be just before you hit it. You'll be slowing things right down and thinking "is it that fret or the next one along?".

I recommend working on one chord arpeggio at a time, so start with the C#m shapes (of which there are 4) and stick with those until you're comfortable.

It took me a long time to record this part and a lot of Anglo Saxon curse words...

I recorded this track with my Jackson PS4 and I used the neck pickup because it gave me this nice, rounded tone which I think suited the track well. I wanted a natural, earthy sound on this track to coincide with the clean intro and the less distorted chords on the chorus.

Get practising with this because next time we'll be going through the 2nd and concluding part of this solo!

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Socky42
May 29 2015, 05:35 PM
GMC:er
Posts: 606
Joined: 3-July 10
From: Manchester, UK
Thanks for posting these Ben! I love breakdowns of solos and the theory behind it. Can definitely hear the Paul Gilbert/Racer X vibe in the lick.

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net


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