A look at Randy Rhoads’ signature playing techniques, articulation devices and use of scale patterns and melodic shapes
By Andy Aledort
RANDY RHOADS’ PLAYING was infused with brilliant technique, cutting-edge musical adventurousness and a powerfully emotional delivery. On Ozzy Osbourne’s 1980 solo debut, Blizzard of Ozz, and its follow-up, 1981’s Diary of a Madman, Rhoads laid down the gauntlet for a new approach to the instrument and established a standard for metal guitar playing that still holds to this day, despite his death in 1982.
The minor pentatonic scale was a staple of Randy’s solo improvisations, but he was also schooled in the fundamental modes, which are the seven different harmonic orientations, or aspects, of the major scale. In his solos, Randy often combined elements of minor pentatonic, the blues scale and minor modes, such as Dorian and Aeolian.
Let’s begin with a look at minor pentatonic in the key of A (A minor pentatonic scale: A, C, D, E, G). FIGURE 1 shows this scale played across all six strings in 5th position. A great way to practice this scale — and one of the ways Randy taught it to his students — is to break it into triplets, or three-note groups, and play them in ascending and descending patterns. FIGURE 2a illustrates the scale played in a descending eighth-note triplet pattern, with each successive three-note group starting one note lower in the scale. FIGURE 2b shows the same idea ascending. Use alternate picking throughout these figures to build up your picking speed and precision.
You should also practice these patterns using legato articulations, such as pull-offs and hammer-ons, both of which are performed with the fret hand alone. FIGURE 2c shows how you can play the descending pattern with pull-offs: wherever two notes are sounded on the same string, the first note is picked and the second note, which is lower and pre-fretted, is sounding by releasing the previous note’s finger from the string in a downward flicking motion. When playing the ascending pattern, as shown in FIGURE 2d, use a hammer-on when moving to a higher note on the same string, quickly and firmly tapping the finger down onto the string.
A cool phrasing variation that Rhoads would share with his students is to incorporate pull-offs into the ascending pattern (see FIGURE 2e). Randy did this in many of his solos — “Flying High Again” and “Diary of a Madman” are two great examples — and it can also be heard in solos by Jimm
