Brett Garsed Masterclass pt 6(of 8)
Brett Garsed demonstrates secrets of his lead style as he tackles a solo over Jason’s track King Bee. Jon Bishop is your musical guide.
This month sees our sixth instalment of our jumbo eight-part video master class series with Australian legato legend Brett Garsed. This time we are turning up the fun factor with a medium-paced backing track to navigate as we look at tackling Jason’s track entitled King Bee. As Brett explains this one doesn’t have so many chord changes, making it a good fun jam. The tonality is mainly B Natural Minor (B-C#-D-E-F#-G-A) for the verse and chorus and then shifts to a rather nice F Lydian style sound in the bridge. F Lydian (F-G-A-B-CD-E) is the fourth mode of the C Major scale. This means they share the same notes so you can simply play the notes of the C Major scale and get the same effect.
We have written out fingerings for the B Minor scale and F Lydian mode to get you started. Typically musical, Brett starts his solo with some well-measured motifs. These question and answer style motifs are a nicely spaced introduction to the solo.
As usual the legato sound is very much in evidence, so there are plenty of hammer-ons and pull-offs to look out for. Brett also uses lots of finger slides to make the melodies come to life. You can slide into a note from below or above and this provides a cool tension and release factor. Brett also slides off notes at the end of a phrase which acts very much like a punctuation point (an elipsis) at the end of a sentence.
The rhythm subdivisions are nicely mixed up, too, which keeps the listener’s interest at all times. The use of triplets also break up the standard semi-quaver lines nicely and this, again, adds interest and helps release the tension. As ever the backing track and video of Brett’s performance are included. It’s well worth studying his technique and fingerings closely as there are many lessons to be learned from the great man - his creativeness is incredible. The faster lines will benefit from being tackled slowly at first. Learning the solo verbatim and being able to play it at performance tempo is a very worthwhile goal, but one that may take some time. Have fun, see you in instalment seven!
The chorus has an Iron Maiden style gallo ping rhythm whic h brought back many memories . Up the irons ! Brett Garsed NEXT MONTH Brett takes a beautiful clean slide solo over Jason’s track Back In The Day