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Melodic Rock Guitar Concepts

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Steve Morse has co-authored an instructional book Melodic Rock Guitar Concepts that was published February 1. It is 88 pages in English, plus 75 downloadable audio examples and backing tracks, along with clear notation and tablature.

Melodic Rock Guitar Concepts shows you the influences that have shaped Steve’s unique guitar style and he shares how he has adapted is favorite country licks into a rock context. You’ll also discover how Charlie Parker was a great influence, and how to recreate many of Steve’s chromatic bebop inspired licks.

You’ll also learn how Morse visualizes scales and master a set of challenging picking drills to sharpen your technique.

To conclude, Steve presents a guitar masterclass on how to create tension/resolution in your solos while adding some outside-inside interest.

The material here is taught around four original tracks, specially written for this book.

Track 1 – Teaches you dominant chord focused phrases with a New Orleans-style funky rocking groove

Track 2 – Offers major chord focused phrases over an energetic, driving rock tune

Track 3 – Teaches you minor chord focused phrases with a mid-tempo hard rock blues with a twist

Track 4 – This is a heavy blues that showcases tension and resolution and explains how Steve utilizes the Half-Whole Diminished scale

For each track you’ll learn:

  • The rhythm guitar part
  • A complete solo, often with multiple guitar parts
  • A detailed solo breakdown taught via a series of two- and four-bar examples

The book is available in Kindle and paperback format from Amazon, and as a PDF from the publisher. Amazon also offers to check out a few sample pages (click on the Look inside logo above the cover).

Thanks to SteveMorse.com for the heads-up.



4 Comments to “Melodic Rock Guitar Concepts”:

  1. 1
    Gregster says:

    Well done Steve ! I hope that many players pick-up, listen & learn from this effort. Great to see the primary chord flavors featured, & if I’m guessing that the final scale flavor offered is the melodic minor / Pomeroy /diminished whole-tone scale etc etc, then people are being spoiled indeed ! ( *Melodic minor scale is a Major scale with a b3, & has a special & unique sound privvy to Jazz folks typically ).

    Great to learn from a master.

    Great work & thanks ! I hope that all is well at home !

    Peace !

  2. 2
    Uwe Hornung says:

    “( *Melodic minor scale is a Major scale with a b3, & has a special & unique sound privvy to Jazz folks typically ).”

    Not to forget that great cutting edge jazz rock standard Greensleeves of course!

    ; – )

    Ross explains it first – natural, harmonic and melodic minor in one and the same folk song – and then plays the melody at 04:55 …

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSlHnVpMy9E

  3. 3
    Gregster says:

    @2 Good post Uwe ! It’s often tricky to grasp & remember the names & subtleties of the many & varied minor scales available to us, so a post featuring 3 x different ones being played in music & not just written down on paper is a good post imo, since we hear them in context !

    For anyone wanting to learn all these different sounding scales, you’re best off imo to record a drone / bass note on a keyboard for say 10-minutes ( with or without rhythm, it doesn’t matter ), & then play a scale over the top of this. It allows your ears to hear & learn the differences, so that you can better gauge when to use them, as you’re now familiar with them. You’ll soon learn what notes are good to rest on, & others that want you to move on to a better choice.
    Simply keep your start-note the same as the bass-note / drone, & play away.

    Peace !

  4. 4
    Uwe Hornung says:

    And for all those who always think that Steve was such a wholly unlikely choice to replace Ritchie: There is one great, yet never mentioned commonality between the two, they are both not just blues scale pentatonic twiddlers, but combine wildly varying scales in their solos, an art only seldom found even among the most prominent rock guitar heroes.

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