The following lick is the shorter of two lead breaks in The Unseen Enemy. They are quite dramatic in the way that the music stops and the lick seems to come out of nowhere. The two licks share similarities such as the use of a lower octave effect to fatten them up and the creating of tension by outlining different chords. The lick that we will be covering today happens at the end of the first chorus before the 2nd verse kicks in.
Figure 1:The Lick
Unseen Enemy - 1st chorus lick.WAV
The first bar and a half consists of an ascending Minor "Blues" scale: E - G - A - A# - B - D (Figure 2). To spice things up a bit, I chose to use a fingering based on the D Japanese Pentatonic scale (Figure 4), rather than go with the typical first position blues box(Figure 1):
| Figure 2: E Blues Scale | Figure 3: D Japanese Pentatonic Scale | Figure 4: D Japanese Pentatonic Scale Variation |
 |
 |
 |
The three octave Japanese Pentatonic Scale pictured above in Figure 3 is a very close match for the E Blues scale in Figure 2, except that it has no E in it! However, this is easily remedied by simply playing a natural second instead (Figure 4).
The last half of the second bar features a colorful string skipping arpeggio. It begins with what sounds very much like another E minor pentatonic scale ( E - D - E - G - E - D ), that is, until the last five notes reveal that it is not really an E minor pentatonic scale at all, but rather, an arpeggio outlining an Bb6add11+ chord! As you may already be aware of, each note of a scale is the root of a chord. The flat 5th in the E minor blues scale is no exception. The basic chord, pictured in Figure 5 at the 5th fret, is Bb - D - Fb, which is a Major flat 5 chord. Looking at Figure 6, we see that he inclusion of the natural F in the arpeggio replaces the flat fifth, so the Fb on the second string now becomes an added sharp 11th. The 6th is the G on the 4th string.
Getting back to the arpeggio, Figure 7 shows that it has a symmetrical shape on the second and fourth strings. If you wanted to make it less so, you could always play the E on the fourth string and the F on the second instead. Timingwise, there is an interesting twist in that the triplets are offset by one sixteenth note. I've always liked the sound of syncopated triplets. Most rockers play them on the strong beats, myself included, the vast majority of the time. I have to admit that this sound has become somewhat cliché by this stage of the game!
|
Figure 5: Bb/5- Chord
|
Figure 6: Bb6add11+ Chord
|
Figure 7: Bb6add11+ Arpeggio
|
 |
 |
 |
I hope that you enjoyed the mini lesson. Happy practicing!
