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Prog-Gnosis: Getting a Feel for PickingTechniques with "Somnarium"Posted 07/19/2012 at 4:10pm | byTosin Abasi

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The Animals as Leaders guitarist kicks off his newGWcolumn with a look at picking.

Hello everyone and welcome to my new Guitar World instructional column. Over the next fewmonths, Ill be demonstrating some of the techniques and approaches I rely on in the writingand performing of the music I play with my band, Animals as Leaders. Hopefully, you will findthese ideas useful in your own musical endeavors.

Id like to begin with a look at some excerpts from the song Somnarium, from the most recentAnimals as Leaders album, Weightless. The majority of the music I play with the group isperformed on an eight-string guitar, tuned (low to high) E B E A D G B E. In the examplesincluded here, the parts have been arranged for seven-string guitar (low to high, B E A D G B

E). If you have only a six-string, fear not, as only one notethe low Af at the beginning of bar 6of FIGURE 1is played on the seventh string. On a six-string, this note can be played at thefourth fret on the sixth string, though a quick shift up to ninth position will be necessary to playthe notes that follow.

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The opening riff in this song was written as an etude that I could use to practice my hybridpickingthe pick-hand technique that combines flatpicking and fingerpicking. Throughout bars15 of FIGURE 1, I pick the lowest note of each figure with the pick and follow it withfingerpicking, using my middle finger, ring finger and pinkie to sound the notes on the higherstrings. You will find some challenging pick-hand movement through this section as well assome really nice harmony as you shift from one chord form to the next.

In bar 6, outlining the Afmaj9(+5) chord, I switch to alternating between a flatpicked and afingerpicked note, and then I wrap up the phrase in bars 8 and 9 with a combination ofalternate (down-up) and economy picking. Economy picking, also known as rest-strokepicking, entails the use of the same pick direction when moving from string to string. In bar 8,there are two areas where three consecutive notes are performed by playing one note at a timeon successively lower adjacent strings. This also occurs on two strings in bar 9. For thesenotes, I use consecutive upstrokes when moving from higher to lower strings. Notice also theinclusion of a single bar of 3/4 in bar 5 alongside a basic 4/4 feel.

The riff shown in FIGURE 2 follows immediately on the heels of FIGURE 1, entering at 0:29seconds into the track. Here, I use the same approach but shift from Af major to Af minor.Using a similar motif but transforming it to a different tonality is a great way to expand on any

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musical idea. This figure once again is performed with a combination of hybrid and economypicking.

The last riff included here, illustrated in FIGURE 3, begins at 1:39, and I consider it to be thehook of the song in that it is repeated many times. Harmonically, I begin by moving maj9voicings down the neck, but I wrap it up with a slight twist, incorporating m(maj7). Also, therhythmic syncopation of the figure causes it to sound like the beat is turning around with eachsuccessive phrase, but, in fact, I think of it as alternating bars of 4/4 and 3/4.