STAR VIDEO
In this exclusive video feature, the legendary Steve Morse performs and discusses his solo over Jason’s Celtic rock track, The Pledge. Jon Bishop is your guide.
This month we are looking at Steve Morse’s performance on Jason’s track The Pledge. For this, Steve used a combination of composed phrases and improvised ideas to link up the melodic hooks. There are plenty of chord changes and pivots in tonality, and Steve skilfully negotiates these with simple melodies that are based around the chord tones. No single scale can be used effectively, so Steve’s combination of composed ideas and chord tone playing helps to ensure the melodies fit with the track. Studying Steve’s solo will hammer home the concept of playing arpeggio notes as the chords change. Many players do this by ear, but establishing a pathway or fretboard roadmap to navigate the target tones as they pass, is a good idea.
Steve demonstrates his use of various techniques such as trilling, string skipping, alternate picking, artificial harmonics and legato. He also employs his pickup selector to achieve a tone that works with the section or phrase he is playing - typically it’s neck pickup up high, bridge pickup down low.
To keep the notation easy to use, and to allow you to see all the note choices clearly, we have used an open key signature (that said, there’s a home key reference to DMajor overall). Steve also uses chromatic notes that link the arpeggios into long, colourful lines. He also shares the secret to adding chromatic notes in the video, and that is to make sure the diatonic notes fall on the strong parts of the beat. This helps to create a flowing line with a core structure that still fits in with the underlying harmony.
Another striking feature of the lead work here is much of this solo is right up in the high register. Playing up the ‘dusty end’ of the fretboard takes a lot of control and practice. For the big string bends way up here, Steve sometimes uses his fourth finger to play the notes as this fits into those closer-together frets. To keep the notation tidy and easier to use we have used 8va lines where appropriate.
The amount of different rhythmic subdivisions used in Steve’s solo is another factor of note. The lion’s share of the ideas uses 16th-note subdivisions, but Steve spices things up with triplets and sustained notes.
The notation contains all of the fingerings, articulations and phrasing from Steve’s video performance. As always, it’s well worth taking a very close look at the way he fingers and picks the phrases in the video, as ou
