Check out this free lesson from Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman. This lesson will Challenge Your Guitar Chops With String Skipping using two different ideas. Be sure to get the tabs so you can follow along.
Introduction
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I want to show you a couple of string skipping ideas that you can incorporate into your playing. I’m not going to lie and say they’re really easy because they’re not. If you’re not familiar with the technique it’s simply just a matter of instead of playing notes that are sequential, you know from string to string, you’re actually going to be skipping over strings and there’s some cool sounds and things that you can get from doing that. So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look and Challenge Your Guitar Chops With String Skipping.
Overview
All right so the very first one is just something I made up a long time ago when I first got introduced to string skipping. It through Paul Gilbert and the string skipping stuff he does is incredibly difficult, but I’m going to show you the very first thing that I learned from a Paul Gilbert lick. So this thing that I did much, much, simpler, so basically what it is I’m just playing the notes of a scale, but instead of just playing you know straight up the scale I’m using some legato, some hammer-ons and pull-offs and I’m skipping over every other string. So this is in the key of E minor and I’m using the fifth position of the scale, so if you know your modes it’s the Mixolydian pattern and it’s going to be starting on D.
String Skipping With A Scale
So we’re starting on D here on the 10th fret of the low E string. So the sequence is 10 12 14, 10 12 14, 10 12 14, 11 12 14, 12 13 15 and 12 14 15. I don’t remember exactly why I decided that this was the pattern that I wanted to use for doing this, it may have just been because of being in the key of E minor, that it was just the location that it was on the fretboard, but anyway this whole this idea can be used for any of the seven modes. So what I’m just going to do legato, so I’m going to pick and hammer and hammer and then I’m going to skip the A string and go to the D string and I’m going to pick hammer and hammer and pull and pull. So at first you might actually want to start off with that. It’s just three notes on the low E and then jump to the D string. Then now I just simply start on the A string and do the same thing but now I’m going to skip the D string and go to the G string. So when I go back to the A string it’s the same pattern, but when I go to the G string now I have to move up a half step so I’m at 11 12 14, we’d start on the D string and go to the G string then to the G string and then to the high E.
So as you can see it’s not a super easy one to play, but it’s not incredibly difficult either, it’s just something you just have to work with and I would just break it down like that, work on it when you can play just the E and the D string and then work on adding in the A string and so on and so forth across the board.
String Skipping Arpeggio
Okay so then the one that I wanted to show you that like I said, this is the one that first got me into this from Paul Gilbert and instead of being out of the scale, it’s actually a string skipping arpeggio. So we start off here, we’re on the seventh fret of the G string with your first finger and I’m gonna do this legato, it seems like he may have picked all this but I can’t pick anywhere near as fast and efficient as Paul Gilbert does, so I’m gonna do it with legato. So I’m starting at the seventh fret, it’s pick and then hammer to the ninth fret and then hammer to the 12. So it’s a pretty big stretch right there, then I’m going to skip the B string and go to the high E and I’m going to go 7 10 12. So it’s pick hammer hammer pick hammer hammer pull pull, back to the G string, pick pull pull and then skip over the D string and end on the tenth fret of the A string.
Now the way he does it and I do it too and I recommend you to try to work this into it too is that there’s a one more note but he actually taps it. So when you get up to the high E, tap the 15th fret pull pull. So this one is quite a bit more difficult than the one, at least in my opinion, than the one that I made up and I think this sounds a lot cooler too. Now you can also do some stuff like that, just tap some different notes up and down that are in the scale. So I’m doing this, I’m doing down hammer hammer up hammer hammer pull pull down, just like that.
Conclusion
All right so I hope you enjoyed Challenge Your Guitar Chops With String Skipping and you got something out of it. String skipping is a pretty cool technique and it’s just a really easy way to add a little musicality to a major scale. As I said, you can do that same idea for the one that I made up just by you moving around, changing keys, but also changing the sequence, so any of the three note-per-string seven major modes work really, really well for doing that. Some are a little harder than others just because of the transitional changes. I played around with and I decided that Mixolydian was the best for me, but that may not be the case for you. I’ve had students before that have done really well with Ionian and another one that really liked to do it with Locrian of all things.
Anyway, that is all I’ve got for you today. Thanks for watching and if you like this lesson be sure to give it a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if there’s something you’d like to see covered in a future lesson either by me or somebody else here at GuitarControl.com.
Thanks for watching Challenge Your Guitar Chops With String Skipping and have a great day.
