Back in the mid-80's, I had all these really old albums that my dad found somewhere. They looked like they were left out in the sun for a while because some of them were pretty scratched up and warped. Among these was Rush's 2112. The needle would skip over most of the beginning of I. OVERTURE, but the rest played just fine. I remember thinking how much better this was than MOVING PICTURES (Rush's 1981 Release). It's hard to believe that these guys took only one week in the studio to record this album. From what I read, they were on a tight budget, working 19 hours a day just trying to finish it up. I'd listen to this scratched up album over and over again until finally I broke down and bought the cassette (yes, it was the 80's) from SOUND WAREHOUSE; remember that place?
I loved all the guitar solos, the riffs and especially the clean guitar parts. Alex Lifeson has some of the best clean guitar playing melodies ever; and most of them are on this album. His playing inspired me to make up my own. When I started playing 18 years ago, this is one of the very first things I ever made up:
This is at about 120bpm. It's a very simple melody and mostly open all open strings. If you want to make it a little harder, bump it up a couple of frets; like this:
Yes, very easy stuff.
This is the sort of melody that I would play at the end of a phrase to give a section some closure. It wouldn't sound too good if you repeated this passage a few times because of the notes it starts with; and the notes it ends with.
This next one however, is a melody that you can repeat over and over again. The first note is an open A on the 5th string and the last note in the 2nd measure is a C on the same string. If I were to end this on C, the melody would be left there hanging and would sound musically awkward; unless I start all over again at A.
Sometimes when I'm on the acoustic, I slap a capo on the 2nd fret and start playing. I don't know if it's the lowered action the capo gives the guitar or just playing in a different key that allows me to come up with new melodies. A capo usually holds down all six strings on the guitar. I thought, why not just use it on 4 strings and leave the other 2 strings just as they are? So I capoed the guitar on the 7th fret; holding down the D G B and E strings while leaving the low E and A strings open. It looks like this
So this is what I came up with:
Now, this can be played without the capo, but it would involve a lot of finger stretching and maneuvering to nail it. Using the capo let me make a simple A minor shape chord while giving the melody lots of sustaining notes. I don't know if the time signatures are correct but this is the best rendition I could get tabbed on paper. If you want to hear the song I put this on, you can hear it at www.myspace.com/guitarslavernie under Interests. It's about 0:21 seconds into the song.
So I suggest giving 2112 a spin if you haven't already. I can draw so much inspiration from listening to that CD it's not even funny. I won't even be half way through the CD and I'm already plugging in my guitar, stepping on my clean channel to see what comes out. If anyone would like the power tab for the 4 examples I used in this lesson, shoot me an email at guitarslavernie@yahoo.com and I'll send you the file.
Later on…