What the hell is Brad Paisley thinking?

[polishcomedy]

I have his two tab books, and as I'm trying to study his lines, it seems there's no method to his madness. A lot of his licks are just slop that perfectly land on the right note each time. Weird chromaticisms, jumping around the fingerboard hapazardly, out of key open string licks...yet, listening to him play these licks on the albums everything sounds kosher. I guess if you do it fast enough it works. My country playing is so square in comparison

[mudbean]

Originally Posted by polishcomedy

A lot of his licks are just slop that perfectly land on the right note each time.

This statement is just hilarious. It's not slop, dude, it's genius.

mud

[blargfromspace]

That's country guitar playing for you - it only really works at speed! It sounds great and I wouldn't bother trying to find out the theory behind it, just do it. And good luck, polishcomedy, good luck

[dalandan]

I forgot who I heard it from but a respected player once said: Country is just really fast and twangy jazz.

You have to consider that Brad loves the guitar playing of many Jazz and jazz-fusion players. The guy doesn't want to sound like another Stevie Ray Vaughannabe.

The man has spent hours practicing and getting things right. I'm not surprised he's this good and I'm happy for him and honesty hope to be at least half as good.

[oceanman2]

I hear ya, Polishcomedy. On the page it looks like a trainwreck, but when those notes are audibly strung together, it's a thing of beauty. Who's to explain? Magic of style, all that jazz.

[JPW2105]

It's great slop though.. completely mental, but great.

[drf64]

It's not just Country. Roy Buchanan's stuff is the same way. It may be that a lot of this stuff is inaccurately tabbed.

[markw51]

As long as you hit a lot of right notes a lot of wrong notes in between can sound great.

[jaygerr]

These are the two books that I have :

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/...isley/18627722

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/...t-Hits/6708465

I could be wrong, but I think some of the transcriptions that I've seen are wrong. The first book that I listed seems to be pretty spot on, though. Dalandan is right. Paisley loves jazz guitar and he also does do a ton of chromatic stuff.

Btw, Polishcomedy, I love the videos. Keep up the good work.

[ADinNYC]

I can't imagine trying to tab Brad's stuff. I just did a pretty straight forward solo by Vince and it took me hours. It's so hard to document all the little nuances that make a solo what it is.

[Dave Hopping]

He's brilliantly demented.I agree with Polishcomedy that some of Brad's trickery sounds like slop,but isn't.More like it's a lot of outside notes and open-string licks(with more outside notes) combined with sweeps and who knows what else.In a way,it puts me in mind of Albert Lee's playing in that it sounds instinctive,rather than plotted out the way Vince Gill's electric solo work often appears to be.
To be honest,I've only worked briefly on Paisley material,and haven't had to cover any of his solos note-for-note,but I think that a Guitar Trainer might be helpful in working his stuff out.Slowed waaay down,it's a little easier to see what he's doing.Probably easier to see what he does than to do what he does.

[jazztele]

to give you the jazz perspective (brad and others have said country is jazz on the back pickup) there are no bad notes, only bad resolutions.

in otherwords, it's not how you fly the plane, but how you land it. Try it! take a progression, pick a target chord to land on. You can play anything you want, chromatics, open strings, in or out of key, whatever, but when you get to that chord you've targeted, resolve and hang on the third (or root or fifth, but the third is a little more colorful and really hammers home the chord)

[guitarslinger92]

Brad just does his thing. I once heard him say that to get anywhere with the guitar you gotta find notes and progressions that no one else uses. and he successfully does that I think.

[zoppotrump]

for this kind of stuff, I highly recommend the "amazing slowdowner" !
really very helpful little programm and i can figure out the tunes much better than out of a tab ( which are often very sloppy and inaccurate)
you can find it hear :

http://www.ronimusic.com/

[ADinNYC]

Originally Posted by zoppotrump

for this kind of stuff, I highly recommend the "amazing slowdowner" !
really very helpful little programm and i can figure out the tunes much better than out of a tab ( which are often very sloppy and inaccurate)
you can find it hear :

http://www.ronimusic.com/

this program! Nothing else I've ever used slows songs down so well with very little loss in sound quality.

[fezz parka]

Originally Posted by jazztele

...there are no bad notes, only bad resolutions.

Dude. Charlie Parker.

[MrDJoers]

Originally Posted by zoppotrump

for this kind of stuff, I highly recommend the "amazing slowdowner" !
really very helpful little programm and i can figure out the tunes much better than out of a tab ( which are often very sloppy and inaccurate)
you can find it hear :

http://www.ronimusic.com/

+100, to your whole statement!

When students want to learn a song I don't know that's what I reach for. Tabs are junk.

[octatonic]

I transcribe a lot of Brad Paisley.

It would seem he just does whatever he wants.
I find his improvisational skill to be brilliant.

As far as using Amazing Slowdowner.
Guys, really check this application out.
It is called 'Transcribe!'.

http://www.seventhstring.com/

Amazing Slowdowner is fine- it does what it does quite well, but Transcribe! is much better.
It gives you a waveform that makes it easy to loop sections and a bunch of other features you are really going to enjoy having.

I own both but I haven't used Amazing Slowdowner in probably 3 years.
Transcribe! is so much better.

[limbe]

Thanks for the tip on the slowdowner.Though I only play other peoples songs at home it´s fun to know how they really should be played and also gives me an insight their different styles like picking patterns,choice of chords and so on.

[polishcomedy]

I'm not the kind of guy that normally buys tab books, but I'm on a huge Paisley kick, and figured if someone already took the time to do all these songs I'd rather just snag 'em. Trust me, I've done plenty of transcribing in my day of jazz fusion, among other things. Stuff like Allan Holdsworth, Frank Gambale, Scott Henderson, Shawn Lane, etc. I got the two Guitar Recorded Versions: "Best Of" and his album, "Play" (I briefly looked over Cluster Pluck, and that one's going to be a doozy what with John Jourgenson's screwy stuff and all).

I also got the books because I was interested in viewing the arrangements of the pad tracks. Something I've always found fascinating about country and pop music is the multiple layers of tracks to make recordings sound richer. Most people probably don't realize how many different tracks are on a simple pop tune. With rock it's usually fairly simple (unless you're talking about duplicating guitar tracks to thicken the tone or whatever).

I fully understand jazz, but with most jazz the lines are more coherent and structured, unless we're talking about Ornette Coleman, or what have you. It's possible some of the tab is wrong for the Paisley books, but so far it seems pretty accurate to me, and considering the way he plays, even when it seems off it's probably right, lol.

If you study the hordes of country instructional materials out there the licks are very straight-forward. You get from point A to point B using such and such structured lick. However, with Paisley, I can't find a single "traditional" style lick. He takes 'em and throws 'em in a blender. Very hip stuff.