marty friedman's playing style

[Fragle]

hi all

firstly, i want to say that i can pull of that minor pentatonic blues/rock soloing pretty well. i'm no zakk wylde, but my style is somewhere near to his. i can also make it sound more RR like by throwing in some arps and fast 3nps patterns(again, i'm definteley now Randy Rhoads, thats just the direction). but what i absolutely CANNOT do is that insane friedman stuff.
everytime i listen to for example countdown to extinction, i wonder how anyone is able to come up with such crazy stuff. i can at least understand what dave is doing, but what the hell is marty doing? i dont know much about him, so maybe anyone can tell me what he's thinking when soloing? does he use special scales/modes etc....so basically, what is it that defines his unique style? I'd love to integrate parts of his stlye in my own.


greets
fragle

ps: btw when i said that stuff about arps and 3nps patterns, i didnt mean i'm a alexi laiho or something. id love to play like him, though, but i'm just not fast enough...i max out at about 180bpm 16th notes when picking, legato its about 200....not enough for playing laiho or other shreddy stuff. but i'm no speed freak so i'm fine with that. i'd rather have a unique style, and thats why i'm asking about friedman, because he's unique in my book.

[Chameleonfong]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

Other than the speed and scale, his unique
bending also plays a big role. He likes to do 1 1/4 or 3/4 bends making it sounds like he's a little off the key. Which IMHO is the hardest to emulate.


Fong

[taxistationary]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

I was in a Megadeth tribute band (basically), for around a year, and i was the "Marty" in the band, so to speak.

He uses alot of sweeping arps, maj, min, and dim patterns.

Scales are where he gets tricky. For him it seems like it depends on the song for scale choice. Songs off of his older MD work use alot of the Phrygian mode aswell as the Harmonic Minor and Dimished scales. Very middle eastern sounding.

The newer MD stuff like "Cryptic Writings" was more of a standard Pentatonic and minor scales type deal.

"Countdown To Extinction" was in between the two, probably his best lead work. Around that time he'd do alot of sweeping arps from his older times, and throw the basic diatonic minors in there that became new MD. I remeber learning the "Symphony of Destruction" leads. What a nightmare..."Hangar 18" wasn't a piece of cake either though!

Good luck!

[delt]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

hangar 18 == fuckin awesome song. [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img] specially the 2nd half, those solos scorch totally¤%±@%£¢¦¤¬%@¢¤%!!!!!!

cheezy but fun video [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[buttheadmane]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

Originally posted by delt:
hangar 18 == fuckin awesome song. [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img] specially the 2nd half, those solos scorch totally¤%±@%£¢¦¤¬%@¢¤%!!!!!!

cheezy but fun video [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">i totally agree w/ the 2nd half of hangar 18, hell, the whole song is badass. the leads are pretty crazy in that song, but he does use a mix of harmonic minor and phyrgian mode stuff. his solos have always sounded really interesting.

Mr. Yates

[buttheadmane]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

also if u ask me, he also does a lot of the same stuff jason becker does too. thats probably because they worked together.

Mr. Yates

[Fragle]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

well, thank you for your informartion about the theoretical side of things. i guess i'm gonna learn some of his leads and see how it works...hell, at least its not insanely fast stuff [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

greets
fragle

[Miffy rules]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

Theory aside, Marty's play style is more "free", in contrast to, say, Jason Becker. Listen to Cocaphony and you'll hear that Marty uses alot of "out-there" notes, sometimes off-tempo (such as in Hangar 18), while Jason plays mostly arpeggio built on chords, symmetric sequences, sextplet, 16th note, etc. However, as far as melody goes, I'd say Jason has a richer imagination. [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img]

[buttheadmane]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

Originally posted by Miffy rules:
Theory aside, Marty's play style is more "free", in contrast to, say, Jason Becker. Listen to Cocaphony and you'll hear that Marty uses alot of "out-there" notes, sometimes off-tempo (such as in Hangar 18), while Jason plays mostly arpeggio built on chords, symmetric sequences, sextplet, 16th note, etc. However, as far as melody goes, I'd say Jason has a richer imagination. [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">i do agree, but when it comes to sound, they sound alike, not necessesarily the same, but enough alike. but yeah, jason does have a bigger imagination. the only other difference is that jason plays a lot faster and adds a lot more chord and tone (not guitar sound but overall feel of the song) changes than marty does.

[delt]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

i find Marty Friedman's style a little "staccato" .. probably because of the tone he uses.

[SixStringSuicide]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

Correction....Jason PLAYED faster [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] ...he certainly doesnt play anymore. Ill assume you fans know that story.

[Thoraby]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

I think I remember Marty saying tht he doesn't know any actual scales, that he just plays by feel, meaning that he hears a melody in his head and plays it.

I think it was on the FAQ on his site.

[VitaminG]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

Originally posted by SixStringSuicide:
Correction....Jason PLAYED faster [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] ...he certainly doesnt play anymore. Ill assume you fans know that story.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">well, you can assume right. Most of us here are old enough to remember when Cacophony was new, when Jason scored the big DLR gig, and when we heard the news about his unfortunate situation with ALS.

Nice redundant correction. Nice how the little "winky" in your post almost seems to denigrate Jason's condition.

I love how Jimi/Stevie/Randy/Criss USED to play, because obviously they can't play anymore. Is it really worth your time to correct someone when they use the present tense rather than the past tense when referring to a musician's recorded performance? If I was listening to Number of the Beast and said how much I enjoy the way Adrian and Dave trade off against each other, would I be wrong? They obviously aren't interacting with each other right now, in fact, the performance I'm listening to was recorded 22 years ago.

[InFlamed666]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

I'm sure i read that Jason Becker was still writing\composing guitar stuff using a PC and had released a recent album, or is that someone else who 'was awesome until nature took over' style of story? [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

[maddog]

Re: marty friedman\'s playing style

Marty rarely mutes the strings at the bridge. Because of this he doesnt sweep for very long when using distortion. In my opinion Marty can be very very messy when playing live (back in the cacophony days). He does a lot of sweeping with a clean sound on his videos but not really with distortion because he runs into problems with muting as I mentioned above. One of the scales Marty and Jason use in the Hiro Joshi *spell check* scale. He cant get enough of it! I can though lol