Emotional Ballad Guitar Solo in E
Emotional ballad guitar solo (with guitar tabs) for the original jam track (‘Sunset Jam’) I posted earlier. Enjoy!
About the track
After a short acoustic intro, the A-section (verse) follows a gorgeous chord progression in the key of E major. I play in the split coil position of the Suhr Modern. The bluesy guitar licks follow the groove of the emotional ballad backing track and leave room for the other instruments.
The B-section opens with a distant slide guitar, warm piano sounds, and acoustic guitar harmonics. The lead guitar switches to the bridge humbucker, and starts building up the melody into a higher register.
After an alternate picking riff, the C-section (chorus) presents itself with long, high notes. Here I’m thinking about the D major pentatonic. The D-chord in the chorus (bVII) implies a modulation to A major, thus bringing some Lydian flavor into the game. Mixing this part turned out the be a challenge because of the high pitch of the lead guitar. With extra delay (Soundtoys Echoboy) reverb (Exponential Audio Nimbus) and a hint of extra compression (Waves CLA Guitars), the guitar notes sustain longer to carry the melody over the chords.
Featured Lick (Bar 25)
Ascending shred licks are a great way of connecting melodies between verses and choruses. In the emotional ballad guitar solo video, I use this technique in bar 25 to lead the listener’s ear from the bride (B-section) to the chorus (C-section). The lick starts on B and ends on E in the first beat of the next bar. In between is a B Mixolydian permutation (pattern of 3 sextuplets), followed by two triplets of sixteenth chromatic notes. Pro Tip: use the chromatic scale sparsely in your playing and save it until the very end of a bar.
Featured Plug-In
I highly recommend the Flux Stereo Tool v3 Plugin (freeware). I use it on summing tracks, the mix-bus, and FX-bus to build, check, and (if necessary) correct the stereo image. This plugin proves that the most straightforward tools sometimes turn out to be the most useful. One of my most used plugins. And did I tell you it was free?
Backing Track
Gear
Suhr Modern HH with Floyd Rose (all solos)
Martin HD-16R Acoustic (intro)
All guitars played by Maarten
Bass: Spectrasonics Trilian
Drums: Steven Slate 5.5
Recorded with Logic Pro X
