Jack here, Jbf music and guitar lessons, in this signature guitar licks we’re at looking
3 Buckethead licks; a more melodic one, some quirky chicken pickin’ and some shred. These
have been taken from his live solos from the Nighttrain outro solo from his time playing
with Gnr, for a full lesson on the orginal Slash solo complete with tabs, check out this
video, card up there. But yeah, Buckethead really just let’s loose in that solo, loads
of great licks and well worth a youtube rabbit hole voyage!
Probably the easiest lick first, bonus tip! This minishape here is a very typical BH shape,
if you think of this A minor chord shape; you can hopefully see this is just an octave
of A Aeolian, the natural minor scale, Using it to go between the 12th and 13th frets like
in bar one or 13th fret on the B string to 15th fret on the E are both very typical BH
moves. Anyway! The underlying chords are: Am | F | G |Am, each being played for 2 bars,
but rather than follow the chords in a more typical blues fashion; like Slash does; BH
opts to keep a more modal, modern rock aesthetic using a memorable motif and adding in small
changes for variation; for a full breakdown of A Aeolian check out this video, with the
card up there. 4th being bent up to the 5th, down to the b3rd, 2nd , b3rd, 2nd , Root.
Bar 2; 2nd, b3rd, b7th, b6th, 5th, 4th; which is again being bent up a tone in the next
bar. Here the chords has changed to an F, but like I said this is more of a modal lick
than anything else. But in relation to that F chord we have 6th bend to the 7th, 6th released
to the 5th, #4th, 5th, #4th, 3rd. Bar 4, #4, 5th, 9th, or 2nd, Root, major 7th, 6th.
We’re changing chords on the last 8th note, so since we’re playing over a G, we’re
getting a 5th being bent up to the 6th, 4th, 5th, 9th, 3rd, 4th, 3rd, 9th. Bar 6; 3rd,
4th, Root, b7th, 6th, 6th- So as you can gather from that collection of intervals, there’s
not much root, 3rd, 5th, or even 7th action; which hopefully highlights what mentioned
before about it being more modal. Back to an A minor as the underlying chord and since
it changes to that on the last beat of bar 6; we have 5th, b6th, b7th, b3rd, b7th, 3rd,
2nd, b7th, 2nd, Root. By contrast really honing in on an A minor, or more aptly an A minor
7 add 9, referencing that b6th just so we know it’s an Aeolian lick and not a Dorian
one! But yeah, the main take away here is BH will often have a more modal approach,
varying a theme. I’d suggest playing around with this shape and seeing what liens you
can come up with!
Some Hybrid Chicken Pickin’ just like Welcome To Bucketheadland’s main riff, for a lesson
with tab click the link on the card up there. In a nutshell, you probably want to pluck
with the finger quite lightly to get it up to speed, also experiment with which part
of your finger you use; more of the pad, tip, left side right side, or even a bit of the
nail. Wrist angle is another factor to take into account; a
loose feeling it what you’re looking for. Compression and a healthy amount of gain will
definitely help out here! I’m just doing down strokes on that G string and using my
middle finger on the B. For more info on Chicken Picking check out this tutorial, with that
card there. But it’s really just a case of building consistency, if you can get it
nice, steady while just playing one shape that means you’re on track. For me flat
picking, but with more or less just the very tip of the Pick seems to work the best- let
us all know in those comments what works best for all of you; it’s bound to help someone
else out! Now, if this is too hard you can always just trem pick over the strings; Quick
trick tutorial for that with the card up there. Which is what I thought Buckethead as actually
doing, when I first heard his Nightrain solo many year ago. Ok, so we’re doing little
two note dyads. Firstly over the A minor Root & b3rd, then b7th and 2nd, back to the Root,
3rd thing then 9th and 4th. So even though this lick targets the chords more than the
previous one, there’s still a lot of modal playing going on. But yeah, we repeat these
bars and the chord changes to F major. You might notice the notes here; F and C are,
in fact, the Root and 3rd of F major, then we get the 9th and #4th, back to the Root
and 3rd for Bar 2 then #4th and 6th.
Here we change to G and initially play 4th and a 6th, but in the second half of that
bar get the notes B and D; G majors 3rd and 5th! A 9th and a 4th in the next bar; again
we’re really just playing a partial A minor over the G. Modes!
Then this little lick 3rd, 4rd 3rd, then we switch to A minor, so this is now the root
being bent up to the 2nd, 3rd and Root to resolve.
Probably saved the toughest one ‘til last here! A nice combination of picking and legato
means you can really rip through this one, while keeping that aggressive shred sound!
I’d play this over the A minor, we could play the last bar over an F major; but we’ll
look at that in a minute. Root, 2nd, b3rd, 4th, b6th pulling off to the 4th. Some legato:
5th, b6th, 5th, 4th. Then picking the 5th, 6bth, b7th, legato on the next string- Root,
2nd, b3rd; the last 6 notes all being triples, so watch out for the timing there! Root, 2nd,
b3rd, picking them all this time then the 4th. So, this lick is displaced; which hopefully
you can see with the overlay in the tab there, so chunking it in to those two sections might
be easier that breaking it into the bars. Anyway, Bar 2: b6th pull off to 4th, then
some more legato; 5th, b6th, 5th, 4th, picking tripelts on the G string; 2nd, b3rd, 4th legato
triplets on the B string; 5th, b6th, b7th. Back to 16th notes and we pick those same
note; 5th, b6th, b7th, then on to the E string with a Root, b3rd to Root pull off. 2nd, b3rd,
2nd, Root. Wrapping it up in Bar 4 with a 2nd to b3rd bend, release the bend, b7th then
b3rd- a very Buckethead move in and of itself. Bonus tip! If we played that last bar over
and F major we would get #4 to 5th bend and release, then 9th resolving to the 5th. Much
like the First lick, playing Aeolian; using it’s 2nd and b3rd will give a Lydian vibe.
Because these notes B and C are A’s 2nd and b3rd, they are F’s #4th and 5th. Modes!
Those were some awesome buckethead guitar lines, this has been signature licks guitar
lick that’s the playlist there, for more Buckethead picking patterns check out this
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