Techniques of the heroes: Randy Rhoads part 2

Techniques of the heroes: Randy Rhoads Part 1

In this lesson I will take you through some of Randy Rhoads’ signature techniques, and how you can blend these into you own playing style.

Randy Rhoads wasn’t the regular type of guitarists in Rock bands of the time, who had learning mostly blues based music for a long time, but rather he had been studying classical music taught by his mother, and continued to study classical guitar until his tragic death. As such he used quite a bit more advanced theory than most other guitarists at the time, leading to his distinctive style. To start off with, I will explain the main difference between Randy Rhoads’ tapping technique, and the tapping technique of other guitarists like Eddie Van Halen.

Because Randy Rhoads was learning classical guitar, he needed to keep the fingernails on his picking hand long, which virtually made finger-tapping impossible for him. The way he got around this was to use his pick to tap the notes instead of his fingers. Here’s a tapping lick from the solo of Mr Crowley as an example. The tab will tell you to do it a certain way: follow that first, and then try the method of playing I that I have written below the tab. Beware newcomers, this will involve some finger stretching, so it’s a good idea to warm up by just jamming to some other songs you know before attempting this.

E||-10h13t17r13p10h13|t17r13p10h13t17p13||-10h13t17r13p10h13|t17r13p10h13t17p13-|
B||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
G||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
D||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
A||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|

E||-10h13t18r13p10h13|t18r13p10h13t17p13||-10h13t18r13p10h13|t18r13p10h13t17p13-|
B||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
G||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
D||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
A||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|

E||-8h12t15r12p8h12--|t15r12p8h12t15p12-||--8h12t15r12p8h12-|-t15r12p8h12t15p12-|
B||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
G||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
D||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
A||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|

E||-8h13t17r13p8h13--|t17r13p8h13t17p13-||--8h13t17r13p8h13-|-t17r13p8h13t17p13-|
B||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
G||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
D||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
A||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|

Now the thing to focus on here is the big gap between the frets when you are hammering on with your fretting hand. You will most likely have to use your pinkie finger, which is actually the strongest finger on your hand in case you didn’t know, and this will require some practice to get right if you haven’t been using this finger a lot. Once you can do this however it will really open up your guitar playing as wider fret-board jumps will become available to you.

Now I already have a lesson on the differences between types of tapping, so look at that if you want a more in-depth look at the differences, but just be aware that while pick tapping is going to sound sharper because a pick is harder than your finger, you will only be able to tap on with one pick, which makes multi-finger tapping impossible with this technique.

Now here’s how he wrote this particular part of the solo. He is simply using the natural minor scale in the key that the song is written in. Below is the natural minor scale laid out on the fret-board in two octaves so that you can see where he got the notes from.

E||------------------|-----------8---10-||-10---12---13---15|-17---18---20---22-|
B||----------------8-|-10---11----------||------------------|-------------------|
G||-7---9----10------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
D||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
A||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|

So why does this lick sound like it’s happy at the end of it when the solo is based on a scale that sounds sad?

He’s using what’s known as a major triad during the happy parts. This will make more sense to those of you who are aware of arpeggios and what they do, but for all of you that don’t know about arpeggios, he’s making sure that the gap between two certain notes in parts of the lick are the same gap apart as a root note in a scale, and a major 3rd. Look below to see what I mean. 

E||-8h12t15r12p8h12--|t15r12p8h12t15p12-||------------------|-------------------|
B||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
G||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
D||------------------|------------------||-10---------------|-------------------|
A||------------------|------------------||-10---------------|-------------------|
E||------------------|------------------||-8----------------|-------------------|

This phrase is played over the chord to the right.

The jump between the root note of that chord and the note on the 12th fret is four frets (also known as four semitones for anyone who’s interested, probably 2 or 3 people) higher than the root note. That is a major 3rd. This is what makes this part of the solo sound happy even though a sad scale is being used. Paying close attention to this can really make your guitar playing stand out amongst a lot of other guitarists out there if you pull it off right. I will be going into arpeggios in another lesson as they are certainly far too complicated to explain in just one lesson.

Next up is one of Randy Rhoads’s favourite techniques to use if he was doing an unsupported guitar solo: the diminished scale.

Alright, I’m going to give you an abbreviated version of this, as Randy Rhoads like many other players didn’t really use the full Diminished scale often, rather he simply used the notes that were most effective from the scale.

This scale is rather peculiar as it actually has more than one root note, but don’t worry, because this scale is designed to sound ‘weird’. Essentially, just use one note to start from, and then move up three frets each time and you are playing all the root note of the scale. This will make your playing sound like you are playing ‘outside’ of the music behind you unless you are aware of the music theory behind that music and only use the scale where appropriate. It is for this reason that Randy Rhoads would use this scale to make his sounds sound bizarre or unhinged, and this is also the reason he would use it more when he was soloing on his own rather than with a band playing behind him, as it is much harder to get the diminished scale to fit in with a band’s music than it is to use it when you are playing on your own.

This is what the diminished scale would look like in the Key of E if you were to play it from the lowest to the highest notes on your guitar.

E||------------------|------------------||------------------|------------18---21|
B||------------------|------------------||---------------14-|-17----20----------|
G||------------------|----------------6-||-9----12----15----|-------------------|
D||------------------|------------8-----||------------------|-------------------|
A||----------------4-|-7----10----------||------------------|-------------------|
E||-0----3----6------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|

This will take more practice to get right than most other techniques as you are essentially trying to make something that deliberately sounds bad, sound good. I would strongly recommend listening to some of Randy’s live solos, such as his solo on the ‘tribute’ version of ‘suicide solution’ if you want to get a good feel for how to use this technique. Shawn lane was another prominent player who used the diminished scale a lot.

Finally, I will go into Randy Rhoads’s way of playing rhythm or a riff.

He was always active throughout a song, never letting a gap in the music appear. As he was playing suicide solution, even on the studio version, he would slide little guitar phrases at the end of each bar if he could to give the song a flourish. This organic way of keeping a song moving was one of his most characteristic traits as a guitarist.

He was always aware of the scales that the song was based on, and used them to build these quick little phrases before equally quickly switching back to playing the main riff to the song.

Let’s use the example of suicide solution for this, using another tab uploaded by the user heartache99:

|-5---------------|-------------------------|
|-5---------------|---------0h1p0-----------|
|-2-2-5\--0-2-2---|-5\--0-2-------2-0-------|
|-----5\--0-2-2---|-5\--0-2-----------2-0---|
|---------------0-|-----------------------3-|
|-----------------|-------------------------|

Notice that right after Randy Rhoads had played the main riff he starts adding a little phrase in to fill the gap at the end of the bar? Learn Theory such as the modes or even just learn the blues scale and you will be most of the way there. After this you should concentrate on learning to be aware of these scales and where they are on the fret-board so that you can start playing them instantly if you are required to. This will be tough, but it is definitely worth the effort if you try hard enough.

You should also play close attention to the chords being used, as using notes from them will often make your guitar playing sound stronger as well.

That’s pretty much it for this lesson, and I hope that it’s served as a decent enough send-off to Randy Rhoads. I also hope this lesson has helped some of you out there understand what to do to play like he did. Take care you guys and I’ll see you all next time!