Greasy Fingers

Hello everybody. Welcome to my first column here at Guitar Nine. It's an honor to do this lesson here and hopefully, there will be more to come. What I would like to concentrate on this time around is 4 note per string legato licks and sequences. I first got the inspiration for this stuff from Rusty Cooley. The first six examples are little sequences that I like to practice to get my hands warmed up for this kind of playing.

Let me stress that these have some pretty big stretches in them so be careful. If you need to, use other 4-note finger shapes in order to get the sequence/s of the notes of each example. The shapes I picked for this are random. What are important are the sequences behind the shapes because as you'll see, we'll apply them to actual licks as the last part of the lesson. The way I like to approach these is as follows:

1. Practice each sequence to a metronome for 1-minute non-stop at about 40-60 bpms.
2. After you get comfortable doing that, move the sequences up and down the string, across the neck, chromatically, diatonically, etc. This too is done to a metronome.
3. Start to come up with your own sequences and scale fingerings for yourself and try to come up with at least one lick a week.
4. These are in groups of 8 notes (octuplets). If you need to, feel free to break them down into groups of 4 notes.

Now that we have some sequences under our belt, lets do some actual licks. These are just little licks that I came up with in accordance to the scale I'm in and the sequences that we practiced. Once again, use a metronome. Like the sequences, feel free to break these licks down into groups of 4 notes if you need to. The way I approach licks like this is I take each one, play it 10 to 15 times to a metronome, and increase the tempo in increments of 5 bpms.

Well that's it for now. Take care.