ALEX SILL Video Masterclass
Video Masterclass Pt3 Alex Sill demonstrates his chord and lead style over Jason Sidwell’s track Digging Deep. As we head into ballad territory Alex shows how to tastefully incorporate 32nd-note lines and dynamic flurries. Jon Bishop is your guide.
Simon Phillips’s astounding guitarist Alex plays and describes his solo on Digging Deep.
This month we are looking at another tastefully crafted piece of playing, courtesy of fusion wizard Alex Sill. For his solo on Digging Deep, Alex favours a combination of sophisticated phrasing, clever note choices and a modern sounding, overdriven tone which makes this one an essential, if challenging, study piece.
Jason’s ballad clocks in at a sedate 80bpm with an E Major key signature. For clarity and ease of use we have labelled the sections with rehearsal marks. Section A provides us with emotive movement between E Major and A Minor. Alex navigates these two chords with the E Major scale (E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D#) and A Dorian (A-B-C-D-E-F#-G). The focal two notes that Alex targets when outlining the change from E Major to A Minor is G# (the Major 3rd of E Major) which moves a semitone down to G Natural (Dominant 7th of A Minor). This provides a subtle intervallic shift while highlighting to the listener that the chord has changed.
The B section starts in E Major and then moves to a non-diatonic secondary Dominant chord G#7. Here Alex shifts to using the chord tones of G#7 (G#-B#-D#-F#) The B section is finished off with a II-V-I (F#m7-B7- E) back into the E Major chord to begint the repeat of the A section.
The C section shifts to C Major and here Alex opts for C Lydian (C-D-E-F#-G-A-B); here Alex uses these notes to play over the Am7 chord and this again implies A Dorian. For Digging Deep’s final few bars we move back to the original E Major to A Minor movement.
In the video Alex talks over the nitty-gritty of using rapid-fire 32nd-note lines in the context of a ballad where there is plenty of space. The speed of the 32nd-note subdivision (32 notes per beat) can be pretty daunting. However, the ballad tempo makes squeezing in all those notes a little more achievable; it also sounds incredibly exciting. Alex reminds us that when there is a lot of space at a slower tempo this may expose the little idiosyncrasies in your playing that you may not like. To help, Alex presents a sample line to study (Example 1). He demonstrates this slowly at first so we have notated this in eighth notes to make it easy to work with. The main areas to concentrate on are note clarity and independence of each of the fretting-hand fingers. The ergonomics of the chosen fingering pattern on the fretboard greatly affects the timing and feel of playing this line. An enhanced approach would be to opt for total legato with no pick involvement at all, to further strengthen the fretting hand.
As ever, the backing track and chord charts are included for you to play over as well as the video to watch (and re-watch) for the detail. Hopefully there will be a new technique, lick or phrase in here somewhere for you to perfect. If you find one you like be sure to memorise it and file away for future use.
Alex has released his debut studio album entitled Alex Sill, Experiences; Real and Imaginary. Visit www.alexsill.com. As guitarist for Simon Phillips’ Protocol there is plenty of live footage on YouTube to enjoy!
“Alex uses fast 32nd-note legato phrasing throughout the solo to link sections and provide excitement!”