TRIPLETS & SEXTUPLETS

This month Andy G Jones uses triplets and sextuplets to play swinging rock lines inspired by the great German guitarist, Michael Schenker.

This issue’s column is based around the use of triplet quavers (eighth notes) and sextuplet semiquavers (16th notes). Our inspiration is the great German rock guitarist Michael Schenker. While Schenker’s style has something of a classical influence, predating Yngwie Malmsteen by quite a few years, he was influenced by Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and Johnny Winter among others. This explains the bluesy element heard in his playing.

He is a fluid improviser and his picking and legato technique were hugely influential from the mid 1970s on. The lines that I’ve written for this lesson draw on several different types of harmony - the Aeolian mode, Mixolydian mode, the Blues scale and even the Phrygian Dominant. Phrygian Dominant can in many contexts sound like it’s come from classical music but also forms a part of Santana’s sound when playing over the V chord in a Minor key. The Phrygian Dominant is the fifth mode of the Harmonic Minor and is distinguished by the presence of the flat 9 and flat 13. So A Phrygian Dominant, as heard here, is the fifth mode of D Harmonic Minor (D-E-F-G-A-Bb-C#).

Even thought the triplet-based example features strict alternate picking, most of the licks featured here contain a preponderance of legato articulation. Always aim to keep the pulse even - it’s easy to rush or land late with notes when you’re hammering on, pulling off or sliding onto a note.

It’s a known fact that the human brain can’t process every note of a fast lick individually - when we play faster lines, we’re sending instructions to our hand to play sequences of notes rather than a separate impulse for each note. With this in mind, make sure that you learn the lines slowly and carefully before you speed them up. If you try and play fast before you’ve programmed the fingers to play exactly the right notes at exactly the right time, you’ll waste a lot of time and energy.

As there are quite a few slides as well as hammer-ons and pulls-offs, the fingering can be tricky, so feel free to adjust it - there might be a way to execute the lick that suits your hands better than the tab; this is just how I played it at the time of recording.

As always, if you like a lick or part of it, try to personalise it by experimenting with your own variations - this is how you’ll form your own individual style.

Have fun with this. I hope it adds little something to your bag of tricks.

NEXT MONTH We’ll look again at using triplets in both eighth and 16th-note form to create licks inspired by the brilliant Paul Gilbert.