Hi everyone. I'd like to share a really fast slurred lick today from my epic tune "Over Age". This lick chimes in as part of the third chorus when I wanted the song to stay hot after a "smoking gun" solo section.

I chose to share this particular lick with you because it's not an alternate picked lick, but slurred.

Slurred simply means playing the notes primarily with your left hand using hammer-ons and pull-offs.

Also, I'm thinking that you may be in the same boat I was before my alternate picking matured, in that I was really good at slurring notes with my left hand so I might as well show it off!

This lick will challenge your accuracy high up on the neck as well as give you practice playing sextuplets at a high rate of speed. Remember sextuplets are just triplets played twice as fast.

This lick also has an added twist to it that facilitates speed; and that is that the moving melody notes are tapped with your right hand!

So we have three things to learn about here:
1. Slurring Accuracy
2. Tapping Accuracy
3. Blazing speed

This part of the tune is in 4/4 time and I have indicated the downbeats on top of the tablature.

To play this type of lick, I hold my pick normally between my thumb and index finger; and do the tapping with my middle finger. Pretty standard stuff there.

For those of you who are following along with the CD, this lick appears in the song around the 4:46 timemark.

Also, this is lesson #4 in a series of studies where I refer to compositional skills and techniques that I used on my debut CD. I'd like you to have the CD so you can follow along with what I'm teaching. Just click on the link below for a special "Cyber-Student" price of only $6.49 + S&H (That's 46% off the regular web-surfer's price and I'll even cover any extra overseas shipping costs!)
http://www.willlandrum.com/studentspecial.shtml

Need more help reading tablature?
http://www.willlandrum.com/readtablature.shtml

Basic legend:
v   = downstroke
^   = upstroke
T   = right hand tap
ho  = hammer-on
po  = pull-off
DB  = downbeat


DB                DB                DB                DB
v  ho ho v  ho ho T  po po po ^  po po ho ho v  ho ho T
---------14-15-17-19-17-15-14----------------14-15-17-21--
14-15-17----------------------17-15-14-15-17--------------
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               DB                DB                DB
po po po ^  po po ho ho v  ho ho T  po po po ^  po po
17-15-14----------------14-15-17-22-17-15-14--------------
---------17-15-14-15-17----------------------17-15-14-----
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ho po ho
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15-14-----------------------------------------------------
------16--------------------------------------------------
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Article by Will Landrum of http://www.willlandrum.com Will is helping thousands of on-line guitarists with his all original content web site, free guitar teaching ezine and growing line of instructional software and products.

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