PHIL HILBORNE’S ONE-MINUTE LICK AEOLIAN ARPEGGIO LICK

This month’s lick is an ear-grabbing descending arpeggio phrase in which a basic shape is played by the fretting hand and then moved diatonically down the neck - in this case a 1-5-1 D5 arpeggio (D-A-D). This arpeggio form is then kept as intact as possible as it travels down the fretboard, although you can see that at one point - from the F note - the shape has to change slightly to conform to this note’s presence in the scale - but fortunately this is very easy to deal with. The scale use throughout is A Aeolian (A-B-C-D-E-F-G). Small downward sweeps across the top three strings or hybrid picking would be appropriate to use here. This kind of lick can be heard in the playing of Steve Vai, Blues Saraceno and Steve Stevens. As always, try to come up with similar phrases of your own invention - both descending and descending, in different keys, using different intervals and as many rhythmic variations as you can muster.