I’ve been following this guy for a couple of years and had a patron subscription
I particularly like his Leppardized covers of 80s songs and wondered what is the best way to approach this ?
it seems like a mixture of guitar following vocal melody , rhythmic chord tones and bits of scales and double stops. How would someone go about trying to do this for their own choice of cover . Eg for example a Madonna song .
I can manage to sometimes use my ear to outline the vocals , but this guy even when he’s not following the exact vocal outline ,can imply the vocal line by this staccato picking between 2 or 3 strings , which gives it that characteristic leppardized feel I love . Is the secret to it finding closely grouped chord tones / arpeggios that work well against the vocal melody ,or mixing the vocal melody in with chord tones/arpeggios . I notice in some parts of songs he uses diads/double stops to thicken out a melody in a chorus . The guy is very clever at doing this . Is it something one could learn and where would one start .
Two of my fave ones below
Any suggestions how to start for someone with basic music theory knowledge
I’m currently practicing lots of different stuff too (slash ) but could possibly afford a coup,e of lessons in the new year when can sort my practice times out (I’ve recently switched to night practice but would sooner get up early for my main practice so I could enjoy stuff like this an hour or two at night )
thanks for any suggestions
best regards and seasons greetings Paul
Comments
Video 2 straight in at the beginning and the verse
really like this . I do have the tabs so could analyse it if I knew what path to follow and what to look for . I suppose keyboard parts could play a part too
Sounds very similar to how Neal Schon plays for Journey
please I would welcome any more input on this style and how to tackle it .
meanwhile another example I love by a different guitarist in Finland on a Chaka Kahn song
This one does not have the staccato leppardized approach but I love it ,I think it would work well actually like that too,but is outstanding as it is
I really like it and it really gives some songs a great lift .
thanks for weighing in , I,ll check out some journey in a minute and see what neils doing
But I would like to see that rhythmic staccato picking underneath it too, that would really make it pop
https://youtu.be/CDB3QTa_TDw
I liked his arrangements - ta
So if it were me - work out the chords and then go from there..
I can definitely tell what you mean by that Def Leppard sound - those stacatto notes jumping out with that gain / chorus sound is very Phil Collen.
I love those players .
I just had a go at who’s crying now , well who’s crying now was playing in my head and I was playing along in that manner to it mainly by feel of pentatonic type shapes and an idea of the vocal melody and it worked , not as good as the original I posted but it’s a start the rhythmic feel was there , just need to work on note choices and finding all the chord tones /scales .
I think by alternating a bit of that rhythmic staccato , a bit of vocal melody ,and some double stop harmonies so it doesn’t get too repetitive ,it might be possible for me to do.
I really need to get my main morning practice back after waking up so I can work on this stuff for an hour each night along with caged /arpeggios etc .
been working on Slash stuff all year just getting up to speed on certain guns n roses parts of solos
It takes me so long these days , but I can say after a couple hundred days I’m playing stuff I never dreamed of . The hard stuff is now refining it ,cleaning it up at speed .
I have currently been setting myself out some charts to learn all the triad chords along the neck
especially favouring the e b g and b g d string sets so I think that will be a good grounding for what I want to do .
nice combination of heavily muted single lines and power chords...
Ab / C / Bb / G / Ab add 9 / Bb x 2 - and then end with an Ebsus 4 -> Eb triad...
notice that lovely Andy Summer's type Ab add 9 (heavily muted) staccato...
Nice.
[ I should probably watch the video in the OP to see if this is at all the same thing!]
Edit: watching the first video and he is not doing what I thought you meant. Oh well. Tim Pierce is good on these kind of things if you follow his YT channel as his session career tended be about constructing parts.