The Best Thing To Learn In Order To Play Like Ed

[garbeaj]

One other thing that Ed said about Blackmore was that he turned him on to using the tremolo arm. But immediately after saying that Ed said that he didn't like the rest of his playing calling it "that weird staccato stuff". Bill posted the complete quote earlier in this thread.

[dirtycooter]

Garbeaj-you fuckin slayed that GGB! Loved it! Its one of my faves because theres a ton of dynamics and tension.
From soft to full on then slow to haulin ass. Its like a rollercoaster. Slows down buildin to the top of the peak, right at the top it breaks over inch by inch ever so gently at the crest. Then hold on fwoosh! Down the track it goes. Alex and Ed are really workin hard together and off each other here. Both were in a zone here.

[garbeaj]

Thanks Cooter...I was just running through the solo in that clip to demonstrate the fingerings that Bill and I came up with-plenty of mistakes in there! I was just playing my Flying V straight into my old sixties Silvertone 1482 amp which has a nice natural overdrive, but it's a far cry from Ed's Marshalls and Eventide and all that! I may have another bash at making a clip now that I got the Eventide H9 and I'm trying to get a wet/dry or wet/dry/wet thing going with my Rockstah Marshall, the '65 Super Reverb and possibly the Silvertone.

Ed has mentioned that there were a few times when he thought that Van Halen came close to a Cream style performance when he and Al would jam together onstage. I think he may have been referring to the little "battle" between drums and guitar during the "Somebody Get Me A Doctor"/"I'm So Glad" medley that you see on the U.S. Festival footage. This segment clearly morphed into "Girl Gone Bad". Although Ed and Al may have been in a Cream state of mind, the resulting track became what I've often said was the closest that Van Halen ever came to Led Zeppelin at their peak.

Interestingly enough-as Bill pointed out earlier in this thread, even the solo of "Girl Gone Bad" has elements of this "Sitting On Top Of The World" picking pattern and left hand fingering in it's very fast passage right before the very wide bends toward the very end of the solo. This pattern was once again incorrectly transcribed by the official Cherry Lane songbook version. I never would have been able to get an understanding of this fast part of the "Girl Gone Bad" solo if I hadn't grasped the "Sitting On Top Of The World" licks.

[dirtycooter]

I give tab a run through for certain things-if it works in the first 5 tries its good. If not its likely wrong.
But nothing probably replaces sitting down and really sussin things out yourself. It pays off to do it. Makes you think hard. Other times you never get it till you "see" it done right. You fight with that part forever then eureka-some youtube vid slaps you right in the bag and you go "self? Why you so damn simple? Thats all it was???"
And sometimes its not the tab. But the technique. And the technique can pull it all together.
There is one on Malmsteen where some guy totally gets down to the micro management level and picks it completely apart to where you jump over a string and come back acrossed it the other direction-that last note always snags you up if you don't return right and have yourself set up for it one step ahead when that part comes Great vid and really has merit to gettin them runs picked right and seemlessly. That stuff is priceless and with books takin a backseat to the web with video these days there will be this greater and greater flood of knowledge.

[garbeaj]

Yeah That's Troy Grady and his Masters In Mechanics and Cracking The Code series of lessons/entertaining videos are unbelievably brilliant. Best thing to happen to guitar instruction since Mel Bay. I really LOVE that guy's videos.

As far as the TAB books and transcriptions from magazines (often transcribed by the same people) I always look at and study every one of them...often they will have certain parts correct and others not correct. If you look at as many as you can you can combine that with your own observations and come up with the most accurate versions of what's really going on. Of course Bill is excellent at this, plus he uses the Slow Downer software to help his learning process too.

I think there are some people that completely dismiss the transcriptions that others do, whether it is from official TAB books or magazines, and they just go off and try to do it by themselves. Which I think is a big mistake. There are many instances where I figure things out completely on my own when there are no transcriptions available from any other source. But I think the best results come when you open your mind and use the transcriptions done by others as a jumping off point and as a resource in addition to your own personal observations. This really yields the best learning in my book.

[Megaro]

garbeaj and wjamflan, thanks for all the licks that you have posted. This is really helping my playing and practicing, especially the SOTW licks that show up in Hear About it Later. That cluster of notes in particular is helping me break out of a rut of playing the same notes / patterns when I do EVH style solos.

Are there any other key EVH licks that should be practiced ?

I know this is mainly a tone forum, but you can't get good tone without good technique !

[garbeaj]

Thanks Megaro, I'm really glad this is helping you. I would recommend to learn all the permutations of this lick in the rest of Ed's solos...like the fast parts of the "Panama" solo, the fast parts of the "When It's Love" solo, the "Outta Love Again" solo, the ending solos from "You Really Got Me" and "I'm The One", the "Hot For Teacher" solo...there are many others, but these are really great parts of Ed's playing.

I think wjamflan would agree that another key lick is the wide left hand stretch lick from "Ice Cream Man" that he and I discussed at length in the "Where Ed Plays On The Neck" thread. That lick has a right hand picking pattern that is also related to the "Sitting On Top Of The World" lick, but the left hand fingering and rhythmic grouping is a great lick to delve into.


There is also another great lick that we discussed here: http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=41641 that has the same rhythmic grouping as the "Ice Cream Man" lick that comes from the live versions of "I'm The One" from the early tours and there is a thread on that lick as well. I'll PM you my TAB for these licks if you are interested.

[garbeaj]

Here is a video clip I made where I demo the "Sitting On Top Of The World" cadenza licks that Bill (wjamflan) and I have been going on about. I also play several key Van Halen solos that have this lick present:

[Megaro]

That sounded note-for-note accurate to me.

[guitar007]

+1. Great job!

[garbeaj]

Thanks very much! I made mistakes all over the place in each of the solos I played ("Sitting On Top Of The World", "Hot For Teacher", "When It's Love", the Steven Rosen interview lick, the "You Really Got Me" ending solo, the "Panama" solo and the second solo from "Outta Love Again") but I hope the clip helps to illustrate what wjamflan and myself have been talking about all along...the unaccompanied solo at the end of the live version of "Sitting On Top Of The World" from Cream's Goodbye LP is crucial to learn if you want to be able to play the Van Halen solos that feature the lick correctly...and that is a hell of a lot of Van Halen solos!

[Santino]

Sounds good! Cool clip. Thanks for sharing.

I'd like to know more about your Destroyer.

[garbeaj]

Sounds good! Cool clip. Thanks for sharing.

I'd like to know more about your Destroyer.

Thanks very much! The story of my '76 Destroyer is a pretty long one...the short version is I got it on eBay in questionable shape for $750 and spent many years researching and finding the correct parts and eventually doing a lot of work on it (including installing brand new stainless steel frets) before getting it exactly as I wanted it. The amp is my Rockstah Marshall 2x12 combo and I used my late 70s MXR Flanger for my little stab at the flanger feedback intro to "Outta Love Again".

Here is the long version of the evolution of my '76 Destroyer:
http://www.vhlinks.com/vbforums/threads ... -Destroyer

[garbeaj]

Here are some links to jpegs of my TABs for the solos I played in the clip:
"SOTOTW" https://imageshack.com/i/poyA5QAgj
"Panama" solo https://imageshack.com/i/pmgWNXaMj
"You Really Got Me" ending solo https://imageshack.com/i/poGjRCZ2j
"When It's Love" solo https://imageshack.com/i/pbcBB8hIj
"Outta Love Again" 2nd solo https://imageshack.com/i/pnX58Neij