ANCESTRAL (STEVEN WILSON) Guitar Solo - TRANSCRIBED

#GuitarSoloTab #GuitarLesson #GuthrieGovan #GuitarSolo #AlternatePicking
In "Ancestral", great piece from Steven Wilson's album "Hand. Cannot. Erase.", our guitar master Guthrie Govan has made a solo really... ancestral!!! Jokes aside this is a really emotional one, the song has a very suggestive atmosphere, very intense and the same is the effect of the solo that Guthrie played! Truth be told, Guthrie is one of the best guitarists ever, even though, in my opinion, this is his easiest solo to play, it's still Guthrie... So it's simply very difficult! I don't have any suggestions that can lead to shortcuts for performing the solo, just a lot of work and a lot of practice, but I try to highlight some things that can help you get a better performance.
1) The KEY of the piece: The key of G# Minor is quite unusual in guitar pieces and this makes it more difficult to recognize all the references we have on the instrument to orient ourselves through all the diagrams and fingerings of a scale. This will make it more difficult for us to memorize all the parts, our brain will tend to memorize numerical sequences of keys when it is easier to remember a part by recognizing the movements we make through known fingerings. What I recommend is that you take advantage of the well-known key of A Minor by raising each phrase you study by one fret (A is a semitone higher than G#). For example, if I raise the first phrase, the first six notes of the solo, by one fret I can easily recognize the CAGED shape of A minor, the fingering of an Am7 arpeggio that resolves on the 9th, then I lower it by one fret referring it to G# and I can more easily remember all the notes of the phrase. I did this for every phrase of the solo!
2) FAST Guthrie's LINES: Guthrie's fast lines are the ones under which you find all the picking symbols, Guthrie is a master of all the techniques on the guitar but the alternate picking seems to be one of his favorites and this solo is full of lines like that. They are found in bars 12-13, 17, 22-23, 24-25 (this one is not that fast but very interesting), 31-33. My advice, as always, is to slow down each sequence a lot and practice each part very slowly, but for these lines it is better to look deeper and break them down further into fragments. Guthrie is very creative and in a single line he changes pattern, changes neck area and scale shape many times so I practice each sequence both in its entirety and divided into shorter fragments, always starting from the first note of the fragment that I isolate up to what would be the first note of the following fragment or the decisive note of the entire sequence (after having obviously memorized them one fret above in the key of A minor and lowered them again as in the previous point), checking every single picking verse. For example, I would divide the line in bars 12-13 like this: first five notes (this is a sort of blues lick), 6th to 15th notes (two-note per string stuff with shifting position at the end until the string change), 13th to 19th (thirds and fourths in the Pentatonic Scale), 19th to 28th (switch to three-note per string diatonic scale, always with thirds jumps), last five notes (at the end it changes again and finishes descending by adjacent notes). Divide each single line of this type in this way. It will take longer but will lead to a better result.
3) SCREAMING BENDINGS: The last interesting aspect is the bending: making the guitar notes scream adds a lot of emphasis and a lot of pathos to the whole solo. Well, this is perhaps the most difficult aspect to describe because everyone can get there in a different way, I'll tell you how I do it! For me everything starts from the "ear" and the imagination: if I hear in my pre-listening, I imagine the note that sounds in that way then something, a psychophysical communication, tells my hands how to act to create that sound. Technically I hit the string with the pick very strong while with my left hand I have a very strong grip, the bending is fast and precise in immediately reaching the intonation and the modulation that follows (vibrato or slow release) happens in my head anyway, I think it, I imagine it and my hands do what my mind is feeling. I practice it starting from four or six previous notes, depending on the rhythm of the phrase.
Good luck!
I leave you some LINKS for DOWNLOAD:
-SCORE and TAB (Guitar Pro):
drive.google.c...
-SCORE and TAB (pdf):
drive.google.c...
-BACKING TRACK:
drive.google.c...
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D'angelico New York Deluxe, Blackstar JJN - R20, Sennheiser e906, Steinberg Cubase.
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[@mariavazquez1969]

Sounds really, really REALLY GOOOOOD!!!!

[@DarioOrlando]

Thank you very very much, Maria 🙏

[@ayushbagchi7316]

Awesome

[@DarioOrlando]

@@ayushbagchi7316 thank you very much, mate!

[@brunoperezba]

Great stuff, man! Also, thanks for the tips on the description!

[@DarioOrlando]

@@brunoperezba I'm glad you read my advices! Thank you very much!