Steve [00:00:00]:
Hey, Steve Stine here, and thank you for joining me for another episode of the Steve Stine Guitar podcast. Now, if you're listening to this, you can always watch the video if you'd like to, over on YouTube. You can find Steve Stine Guitar podcast over there. And if you're watching the video but you'd rather be listening to this in your car or something, you can certainly go over and listen to the podcast on Apple Podcast or wherever it is that you like to listen to your podcast. So today, what I thought would be kind of nice to talk to you about is the process that I go through when I'm trying to figure out a solo that requires a little bit more work, a little bit more effort on my part, something that isn't just super easy to play. So the example I'm going to use today is the solo for warheads by extreme. Now, I'm in the middle of a remote collaboration with some friends doing this song, and if you're familiar with the tune, if you're not, you should certainly check it out. But there, it's a really funky, groovy, musically involved song, as a lot of extreme tunes are.
Steve [00:01:03]:
Nuno Bettencourt's an incredible guitar player. So when I was recording all the rhythm parts for this, you know, it took a little bit of time to kind of dial everything in because it's really tight. But I was a little apprehensive about the solo because I had never played the solo before. And, you know, when you agree to do a remote collaboration with somebody, you. You know, I just say, okay, I mean, if people want to do it, I'm gonna do it. And then I. I'm in the hot seat if there's something in there that is difficult for me to play. So what I thought I would do is explain to you a little bit about how I approach playing things like this, because this is always a topic of conversation when it comes to learning stuff.
Steve [00:01:45]:
You know, do you learn something note for note? Do you learn it kind of note for note, or do you just kind of play it the way you want to play it? Well, in this case, I most certainly am not just going to play it the way I want to play it. I want to try and play it as accurate as I can, but still be me in the process. So the first thing I would do is I would listen to the song, you know, pull up Spotify or Apple Music or YouTube or whatever, and I would listen to the song over and over and over and really start dialing in how that solo sounds to me, how many sections are there? What does it sound like is kind of going on? And again, I don't mean from a guitar standpoint, necessarily, just as I'm listening to it, what am I noticing about the solo and, you know, like, faster parts or slower parts or stuff? That seems like it might be difficult in the process of listening to this. So getting to know the song, getting to know the solo, is one of the most important things to begin with. Before I ever start trying to work anything out, I just listen to it over and over and over. And because I am a bit OCD, you know, it's easy for me to get distracted on things, but it's also easy for me to really dial in and kind of move everything out of the way and just focus in on what I'm hearing. So once I've done that, then I need to start trying to figure out what's going on. Now, if it's slow enough, I'm most certainly going to do it by ear.
Steve [00:03:09]:
But if it. If I need some assistance on some other ideas, I'll go to YouTube and see if there's other people that have learned it. I'll go to ultimate guitar and look up the tablature. Now, this is really important when I'm doing this, these are suggestions to me. These are not necessarily the way that I'm going to play the solo, but they're ideas of how somebody else has approached it, and they can give me ideas on things that I would do. So, for instance, and if you're not watching the video, it's okay, you're still going to be able to hear this. But. So I'm tuned standard right now.
Steve [00:03:42]:
The song's actually half step down, but I'm just gonna kind of break down the beginning of this. So there's this thing at the beginning that he's playing really fast now. That feels awkward to me, and I think that's the way he plays it, because here's the other thing, is, I'll watch live footage of the artist playing it as well, so I can get ideas of how they're doing it, any changes that they've made from the studio version, which is something very important, too, that Nuno does in this solo versus the studio version, because in the studio version, of course, he can copy and cut and do all kinds of different things to put it together, and maybe he never has to do that. I'm just saying that the capability is there. When you're playing live, you don't have that capability, so you want to be able to execute it as comfortable as possible. So as I'm playing this, I'm playing nine on the third string, ten and twelve on the second string, and then nine on the first string. So it's like an a major arpeggio. And then we're adding in this extra note, this b, and then he moves up, and then now he's on the 10th fret of the second string, or third string.
Steve [00:04:54]:
Excuse me? And then twelve and 14 of the second string, and then ten of the first string, so it'd be the same shape. It's just that the frets have changed a little bit. Of course, now that's an uncomfortable position for me to play that in. So instead of playing it there, the way nuno does, what I did was I converted it. And I'm playing nine on the third string, but instead of using my first finger, I'm using my pinky, and I'm going to skip the second string, and I'm going to play v seven, nine on the first string. And now I can get it up to a speed that sounds like the song. And it feels way more comfortable than my hands, in my brain, in my eyeballs, right as I'm playing it, it makes more sense to me. And then when I shift, I'm going to move up to the 10th fret of the third string, and I'm going to play ten and then 7910 on the first string, okay? And then I move down and it's eight on the third string.
Steve [00:06:04]:
And then five, seven, eight on the first string. Then it goes back. Now, again, I'm not going to sit and try and teach you the entire solo, because that's really not what this is about. But my point is, I found a way to do it in a way that works better for me. So I'm still playing the same notes, even though sometimes that has to change, too. I mean, it depends on the. The situation and the, you know, the song and the, you know, that sort of thing. But I'm able to maintain the same notes that he's playing in the beginning, which I'm very happy about, but I'm playing it in an execution that makes more sense to me.
Steve [00:06:43]:
And it's important to understand that I am not Nuno Betancourt and he is not me. Right? We're all different people. So sometimes when we're trying to play somebody else's stuff, we've got to really look at it and go, okay, well, how long do I have to learn this? And what am I trying to accomplish? And what am I going to benefit by learning it in a way that this person's playing it? And all of those things are personal things that need to be answered by the individual. I don't need to convert everything about the way I play to try and accommodate this one song, this one lick in this. It's a remote collaboration I'm doing, and then when I'm done with it, I'll move on with my life. So I'm trying to figure out how to play it the best way I can without spending way too much time on this, because I've got other things going on in my life, right? So this makes sense to me, playing it that way. Okay, so now we come off that thing, and it goes into this, this next part here. And there's a number of different ways that you can play this, but what I'm visualizing is a major scale playing five, seven, nine on the 6th string, five seven nine on the fifth string, four seven, or, excuse me, six seven nine on the fourth and third strings, and then five, seven, nine on the last two strings.
Steve [00:07:56]:
Now, this is a shape that I commonly use when I solo with stuff, and he is using this, and what he's doing is creating a pattern, at least I think so, where he's playing the 6th string, then going to the fourth string, and then the fifth string going to the third string, and then the fourth string going to the second string. So he's just jumping over a string and then going back each time as he goes. Now, as I'm playing this, I'm gonna add a little bit of palm muting in there, because I think it sounds kind of cool. And I can pick them or I can slur them hammer ons, for instance. Maybe a little bit of both. I mean, that's. That's entirely up to me. Again, nuno might be picking them all.
Steve [00:08:45]:
He might not. Like, he's got a real great technique for doing this kind of palm muting thing, and then he'll do a lot of hammer ons and pull offs, and so he might be doing that again. I'm not really concerned of what he's doing. I just need to find a way to make it work as best I can, but it's something to think about. So I've seen this written a couple of different ways where they move across the fretboard, but keeping it in this position makes logical sense in my brain and my fingers and my eyeballs, so I'm good with that. The only thing about it is the next lick starts up further on the neck. So I've got to make sure that when I get done with this right there, I got to get off that. I got to hightail it off there and get to the next thing.
Steve [00:09:29]:
Now, what I think is being played again. I've seen a number of different videos of people approaching this differently. Watching Nuno. I think this is what he's doing, but I'm not sure is playing on the 6th string. He's playing 11, 12, 14, 11, 12, 14. On the fifth string, 6th string, fifth string. And then he just repeats. Repeats the octave on 13 1416 on the fourth and third strings, and then repeats the octave on the 16th, 17th, and 19th frets of the second and first strings.
Steve [00:10:01]:
So he's doing an octave now, again, it might not be that, but that makes sense in my eyes and my brain and my fingers, right, to play that shape. And then he just comes down that. Just a kind of standard motion. So that made sense to me. So that's the way I chose to play it. Again, it might be a little bit different, whatever. You might hear it differently, but that made sense to me. So now I've got the beginning built up, I've got the.
Steve [00:10:48]:
That little five, seven, nine stuff built up, and now I've got the. Now I might have to practice these, I might have to work them up, you know, technically. And that's okay, that's perfectly fine, but that's where I'm at right now. Now he goes into this thing where he goes. That's the little idea. Now, on the studio version, again, just little things I want to share with you, but it really doesn't matter. But on the studio version, he goes down to the 12th fret of the third string, live. He plays this a lot, and he goes to the twelve of the second string.
Steve [00:11:41]:
Now, was he doing that by accident? Was he doing it because it made it easier when he's playing it live? I don't know. I haven't asked him. Okay. But I noticed that. That playing the twelve on the second string versus trying to get to the twelve on the third string just made the whole thing easier for me. So, in watching nuno play it live, I went, hey, that makes sense to me. And so that would be something I would do, and so that's what I did. Now, the rest of that, his rhythm is a little bit different in there.
Steve [00:12:15]:
Things change a little bit for him. I didn't do that. I just kept the same rhythm the whole time. Because, again, that makes sense to me. It's kind of easy for me to play it through, and I don't have to change anything about the way I'm thinking. So I just kept that rhythm very much the same all the way through. Now, when you get to the end of it, he moves into this thing. So what he's doing is he's playing 13, 1517 on the second string with this first, I'd be playing my first middle in pinky.
Steve [00:12:52]:
And then you're pulling off. You're taking your right hand and coming over to the 10th fret of that second string. So you're pulling off to that 10th fret. Then you're moving down to nine with your whatever finger you're using on your right hand. And then here's the kicker, is, at the end, I think in the studio version, it's like, you know, it's like these kind of unison bands. But when I watch him play it live again, I'm watching more recent footage, is what I've been watching. He doesn't do that. He plays.
Steve [00:13:33]:
So we played octaves, and I can understand why, because trying to come from here into those unison bents, it's not that it can't be done. It's just that there's a higher level of possibility that mistakes could be made. And you encounter this as a live player when you're playing things. Sometimes, even though you might be able to execute something, there's what I call stress points when you're playing, and you can tell that something is stressing you out, and it's. Again, you could work on it, work on it, work on it, get it better. That's wonderful. But sometimes you don't have the time to work on it, work on it. Or even if you do work on it, you're still gonna have issues with it.
Steve [00:14:13]:
And so sometimes you just change things. Cause it just makes things easier. So what I saw Nuno do, which makes sense for me, is, as he's playing this thing and he's got his fingers over the top, he just, you know, kind of comes out of that. He gives himself a half a second to get ready. So he's coming out of there and, you know, does a little slide or whatever, and then comes back in with those octaves instead of doing the unison bends. So what's happening there is instead of taking these two licks and butting them up against each other so there's no room to breathe, he just leaves the tapping lick a little early, give himself time to breathe, and then goes into this octave thing. Now, again, maybe the next video, I would have watched that. I didn't watch.
Steve [00:15:02]:
He's doing the unison bends, right? I mean, it's okay. The octave thing makes sense in my brain and in my fingers and in my eyeballs. So just always remember that when you're learning things is, there's nothing wrong with trying to learn it note for note at all, but there's a realism to how you're going to execute it and how comfortable that's going to be and how good it's going to sound depending on how much time you have and just choices that you make. You know, I talk about this topic a lot with people because I think people just get really, really frustrated and confused with this. But there's a wonderful interview with Marty Friedman from Megadeth. If you know who Marty Friedman is, and he's talking about how, you know, trying to approach some of the players that came before him when he was in Megadeth, trying to approach the way Chris Poland would play a solo or something like that just didn't make sense to him. And it has nothing to do with Marty FrIEDMAN not being a great player, because Marty Friedman is one of my favorite players, and he's a phenomenal player. He's just not Chris Poland.
Steve [00:16:11]:
Right. He's Marty Friedman. So he does things Marty Friedman does. He doesn't do things that Chris Poland does. And so for him to just be open and honest and go, look, I can't really play the solos the way he did, so I did them the way that I would do them, that's just being truthful. Right. It doesn't mean you're any less of a player. You're just.
Steve [00:16:30]:
You're you for the rest of your life. You're gonna be you. You're never gonna be Stevie Ray Vaughan and or Steve Vai. But in, in the same respect, Steve, I'm never gonna be you either. Right. It's not just about guitar playing. It's. It's just about life in general, the way you approach things, and that's the way it works.
Steve [00:16:47]:
So just think about that a little bit as you're learning solos. If you are looking for a challenging solo, this is a really great one to look at. It's not the most insane thing ever, but it's got some really great ideas in it to try and build. And if this isn't interesting to you or this isn't what you're looking for, that's okay. Find a solo for yourself. But always think about how I and everybody else like me approaches a solo and make those choices for yourself. And kind of figure out what. What you need to do.
