Needs Tips on playing " Departure " by Brad Paisely

This is something I learned by figuring out how to play Brad Paisley stuff; He is THAT good. There are no tricks or gimmicks or special epiphanies that'll make you or me or anyone understand just how he plays. He is an amazingly clean sweeper and a dangerously fast picker, he could do that lick either way at full speed and then some, I bet.

If it were me I'd pick a way and get good at it. Sweeping it would probably be easier for me, but maybe you're better at alternate picking than I am. Just make sure you're rolling your finger across the G B and E's 9th fret with deadly precision and accuracy or it won't sound that great at full speed with overdrive. Oh, and practice it completely clean on the neck pickup to get the dynamics right, then flip to the bridge and crank the distortion/fuzz up beyond what you normally would and practice it to make sure you don't have any extraneous notes ringing.

 

When you do the thing where it's 3 notes on the 9th fret in a row, use your pointer finger (or whatever one is comfortable at that point in the phrase) and use the tip of the finger to fret the first note (on the G string), then "roll" your finger so you can fret the next note (on the B string) while lifting the tip of the finger enough to mute the G string. Then repeat for the 9th fret E string note. Think of the end of your finger (above the last knuckle) as a tire rolling across the fretboard. You'll be fretting the E string note almost at the knuckle of your finger, and it'll be awkward at first, but it can make those little arpeggio runs easier to sweep in the future.

 

Mark Knopfler type lick out of Lady Writer that one.

 

No kidding

Indeed he is. A guy I know who plays in a local country band asked if I'd seen Brad Paisley...I said, "yeah, I caught him on a country awards show hosting or something." He told me to go to Youtube and check him out..."Paisley is a FREAK!" is how he put it.

Brad scares me.
Seriously, I love his playing. My buddy still gives me the "I told you so" look.

 

There are many Knopfler licks in BPs arsenal - he's clearly a big influence

 

Hey, no prob. I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I've messed around with a lot of Brad Paisley songs and picked up some tricks along the way.

 

Not sure about the guitar, but he said in an article that on Departure it was his tele plugged straight in (no effects) to his Trainwreck Head.

 

A Vox AC30 will get you close. A Dr. Z amp with EL84's or 34's will get you closer. But in my opnion a delay pedal is the easiest way to get yourself instantly closer to Paisley's tone. And playing technique is a big part of it. You have to be pretty dynamic. Free flowing on some parts and snapping the strings with rage in others. Brad has an immensely strong left hand, too, and it shows in his playing. He'll do above-the-nut bends on the A and D strings without any problems whatsoever and all of his fretboard bends and slides are incredibly clean. So exercising your left hand with bending drills and squeezing tennis balls will get you closer, also.

If you can play his riffs and solos, then you're only a little bit away from having a pretty good replica of his tone, almost regardless of what amps and effects you have. You just have to dig a little deeper into each riff and figure out the subtleties of what Brad is REALLY doing to get that sound (how he attacks each note).

I've found it pretty hard to get his tone with non-tele pickups, though. Gretsch pickups can come close, but every other style doesn't have enough snap on the low strings to get the job done, and if you don't have the treble coming out of the guitar, you're not going to make it magically appear with amps and effects without heavily compromising your tone, from my experience.