The Apex Shredator: Wanna Be Good, Maybe Great? Come On Y'all, Let's Al-ter-nate!

Pick, that is. Nothing else quite sounds like an electric guitar firing off a salvo of precise alternate picked runs; the "arrrgh! I mean business!" factor simply can't be matched by any other instrument (no matter what you say). For the maximum in sonic assault, alternate picking is your weapon of choice.

In this post, I'm going to show you how to take ordinary alternate picked 16th note patterns, that are 16 notes long and phrase all nice and tidy, and spice them up a bit by adding 2 notes (creating 16th note patterns that are 18 notes long). This will turn an otherwise cool, but plain-sounding run, into a whirling vortex of ear-bullets. Here's what I mean; take a gander at this D minor idea...

Finished gandering? It certainly sounds nice as is, but if we add 2 notes to it, we can make it sound much more complicated; how about we repeat the A and G in beat 4 of measure 1, and the D and C in beat 4 of measure 2? Let's see...

EXAMPLE 1:

Whoa! Our humble little pattern, perfectly happy to last exactly one measure before beginning anew, has mutated into a monster more at home in 9/8! What have you done, Apex Shredator!?!? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!??!?

As you can see, by adding the two notes to the run, we now have something that doesn't quite fit into 1 measure anymore, but that's what's cool about it. We have a pattern which, when played over a chord progression in 4/4, doesn't sound quite so pattern-y. To land on my feet in the above example, I finish off by running through the scale linearly, and ending squarely on D.

Let's check out some other 18 note runs I constructed from standard patterns; runs-of-the-mill, if you will.

EXAMPLE 2: A 3 measure descending delight...