In this exclusive lesson the guitar legend treats us to some stunning rock soloing. Jason’s specially-written track allows Vinnie to come up with an incredibly musical performance, with Jon Bishop as your guide.
This month we present an exclusive masterclass from rock guitar legend Vinnie Moore. Vinnie exploded onto the 1980s neo-classical scene with his exciting blend of melodic soloing and incredible facility. He has since maintained a fabulous career; in addition to his solo work he has played for years with hard rockers UFO, and also recorded an album as part of the Alice Cooper band.
Jason’s Grand Slam is perfect to allow Vinnie’s style to shine. The track has a hard-driving rock feel and some fairly straightforward chord changes, which come mostly from the key of DMajor. There are four sections to navigate and these are the verse, bridge, chorus and middle eight/solo. As the tune revolves much of the time around aDMajor key centre, Vinnie opts for DMixolydian mode (D-E-F#-G-A-B-C). For the turnarounds the F# note needs to be changed to F Natural to fit in with the Fadd9 chord, therefore DMinor Pentatonic is a logical choice (D-F-G-A-C). Vinnie also moves back and forth between DMixolydian and DDorian mode (D-E-F-G-A-B-C). When creating a solo over Grand Slam Vinnie shares his process in the video. First he played a couple of improvised runthroughs, and if something great happened a note was made of it. Lots of ideas were put in the bin, which is all part of the process, and he also shares some of the bits that didn’t quite make the cut. We have tabbed out his initial chorus melody approach.
After exploring the various ideas, Vinnie settled on a couple of main melodic statements. These motifs are played and then answered by improvised phrases. This framework provides a cool-sounding and structured way to introduce opportunities to break away from the set pieces. The melodic statements can be reprised in the repeated sections and Vinnie regularly adds variations to keep the listener interested.
The bridge shifts key and moves between Bb and C. To navigate this section Vinnie devised an ear catching melody that navigated the changes well. For the end sequence of chords he moves between F Major scale, Bb Major scale, and A Mixolydian mode.
In the middle eight Vinnie branches out into a freer soloing vibe. The solo itself begins with a pre-composed line which acts as a jumping off point. If there is a period of speedy, technique-orientated playing Vinnie likes to follow it with a slower, more melodic passage. This provides light and shade, giving the listener something to latch onto. Vinnie pulls out a plethora of different techniques to bring his solo to life, including hammer-ons, pull-offs, alternate picking, string bending, finger slides, natural harmonics, volume swells, finger v
