Tolek - Sweeping & Legato SI Lesson

Revision as of 12:38, 10 February 2010

Under Construction -- Soon to be finished -- Fran

Introduction

Hey folks,
my name is Anatol Maximilian Konior. That´s a bit long, so just shorten it and call me Tolek. I am 17 years old and I live in Luxembourg. I`ve been playing classical guitar for 7 years and electric guitar for 3 years now. I mainly spend my days with practising, I still can´t stop.
I hope you will like my first lesson.

Structure

About the Lesson
The Lesson
Harmonic Analysis of this Lesson
Last Words

About the Lesson

Sweeping is a very difficult technique and a lot of lessons show the use of it in an extremely fast way. Personally, I became a bit frustrated when seeing not only the instructors but also the great guys of the guitar world sweeping like crazy. That´s why I decided to do a pretty slow lesson on sweeping. When I finsished a long lick, I started to play some legato and I asked myself: 'Why not some legato in that lesson?' So, the second part consists of long legato runs in order to develop your left hand strength. In my opinion, legato is a good manner to play really cool stuff plus it makes your left hand feel really comfortable on the fretboard.
I suppose that you know the sweeping basics. If not, check out this fantastic lesson.
Tempo is 75 bpm. This exercice starts in D Major and ends in C# Major.
Well, let´s start.

The Lesson

These are basic 5-string-sweeps over D Major, F# minor, G Major and A Major chords which gives us a nice intro and defines the D Major scale. Talking about rhythm, the notes are all 16th-triplets.

Here we repeat the same shape as in the first bar. We start with an A Major chord (V degree of D Major scale) which is followed by a B minor chord (VI degree of D Major scale). This succession of degrees is called Deceptive Cadence because it gives a musical surprise. The listener supposes that the V degree goes back to the I, but in that case, a completely new dimension/atmosphere is created.
All notes are 16-triplets, again.

This bar starts with an A Major triad, too. On the 2nd beat, we have a G Major chord followed by a F# Major chord on the 4th beat. Guess what rhythm we have.

We continue with the F# Major Arpeggio, this time the melody goes up. After a slide to the 14th fret, we sweep only over 3 strings, first over the B minor chord and then over the A Major chord. We end this bar with a descending lick which goes stepwise from B to D as we want to reach C#. Rhythmically we stay the same.

(SAME VIDEO AS FOR THE PREVIOUS EXAMPLE BECAUSE I MESSED UP A BIT... I FORGOT TO DO TWO DIFFERENT VIDEOS, SORRY)

Hurray! Another rhythms are waiting for us. The measure consists of 4 16th notes, one 8th note with a dot, a 16th note and a half note. This bar is used to modulate in a proper way (by using a simple C# Major triad) into C# Major which is a half step lower than D Major.

A completely new atmosphere is created in this 2nd part due to the modulation. Also, we don´t sweep anymore - the technique used here is the well-known legato. Pick the first note on every string to accentuate the on-the-beat-notes. There are 16th-triplets again. This scale is used.

This lick is very simple. We use a pattern over the whole C# Major scale on one single string. Pay attention to the correct switching of position. Rhythm is again the same: 16th-triplets except from the last note which a quarter note. This scale is used.

Nearly the same lick as in the previous one is used here, we just return to low C#. Again pay attention to the correct switching of position. Same rhythm: 16th-triplets and a last quarter note. This scale is used.

I think that this very popular song ending would be perfect here. This is my little present to you all for Christmas You can use economy picking or just alternate picking. I prefer the first. You wonder why I decided to end very anormally. I thought of reminding the listener of the previous part, so I played a D grace note before the C#. This time the rhythm is a bit complexer: 3 quarter triplets, 1 quarter, 1 16th followed by a 8th with a dot, a half and finally a quarter note that is linked with a whole note in the next bar.