Saturday, March 29, 2014

Brent Mason guitar solo on "Don't Try This At Home" (live TV performance)

Don't Try This At Home - Brent Mason solo (PDF)



You can view my transcription by clicking on the link above.  This was a project for my guitar lessons while in grad school.  The performance I used for this transcription came from a live TV recording for the The Nashville Network (TNN) from 1999.  That is the same year The Players (Mason, Michael Rhodes, Eddie Bayers, John Hobbs, Paul Franklin) released their own self-titled album, on which this song is included.

Here is the video of the live performance...



Some highlights of his solo.

Measures 6-7, 19-21, 23-24, and 34-35 feature a common chickin-pickin motive of descending a blues scale but using a half-step approach to the major 3rd scale degree.  In some cases, once Mason gets to the 4th degree (i.e. note A over the E7 chord), he'll immediately enclose the major 3rd (G#) using a half-step below (G, the minor 3rd).  In all cases, he precedes the major 3rd with the minor 3rd (or augmented 2nd) and will either slide up or hammer-on.  Bars 34-35 feature this technique over the IV7 (A7).

Depending on the position and fingering, he will jump to a lower note on the next lowest string before the minor3rd-major3rd connection.  Measure 20 is one example, and this is where I'm either unsure of some notes or I just decided to play something slightly different.  The second note in bar 20 (E) is not really important.  In jazz, this would be approached as a note to ghost (or under emphasis).  That E is kind of difficult to finger because it is in the same fret as the note before it.  What I started to do is use another finger to play this lower, "ghosted" note.   The half-step slide going into measure 20 I tend to use my middle finger.  Thus, I use my pinkie to play a F#.  But remember, this note isn't being stressed.  Similar to be-bop, alot of country playing is dependent on accents.  Not every note is struck with equal weight.  The wave, or arc, of a musical line is sometimes more important than each individual note.

When I have some more time, I may dive into this solo some more.  But for now, I just wanted to get this out here.  I hope some people find it useful, instructive, inspiring, and just plain fun to try to play.

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