Filling up the Gaps with Slides, Scratches, & the Whammy Bar (with Shepherd)

We often come across portions of a song where the music suddenly breaks off, or 'chokes'. One example is the variation on Take it All's chorus which I posted a few days back. In this post I demonstrate three things you can do when you come across such 'chokes'.



To do a slide, start with your finger high up the fretboard on the low E string. Pick the string, and slide down. Change to the chord at the right time, when the instruments come in again; hence you have to time your slide well, else you'd end too early to play the chord.

Scratches are fun to execute too. All you have to do is to scrape the side of your pick against the low E string. Don't be afraid to apply pressure on the string to get a more aggressive sound.

Lastly, if your guitar has a floyd rose bridge, you can depress the whammy bar while holding on to the chord. It sounds even better if you do this with a flanger. Release everything, and change the chord when the instruments return. It didn't show up well in the video though, apologies.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you show me how to do the scratch technique? Thanks

Anonymous said...

To do the scratch, just slide your pick to the low E string to the fret where the next chord plays. If not, just slide your nail especially if you have long one^.^ However I wonder what is floyd rose bridge and flanger....

Hermes said...

the floyd rose bridge is a bridge that doesn't allow the string to go untune when you use the vibrato bar (or tremolo bar).