411 Bliss

There’s old country. There’s new country. Then there are the Dixie Chicks.

Natalie Maines, Martie Seidel and Emily Robison have taken the Texas-bred sound of a fiddle, banjo, dobro and crystal-clear vocal harmonies into whole new territory. They are the rare act that comes along a few times in a generation that is destined to shake things up, rewrite the rules and become the new musical trendsetters.

The public has certainly noticed. The Dixie Chicks’ first Monument album Wide Open Spaces has become the biggest selling album ever by a country duo or group - racking up some 6 million sales by the time their second album, Fly, was completed. The tremendous sales only demonstrates that while the Dixie Chicks have established themselves as a true country music act, they have also won over audiences outside the country genre. In a music field routinely known for selling to the conservative 30 and over crowd, more than 60% of the Dixie Chicks sales have been to consumers under the age of 25. Their concert audience is as likely to be comprised of entire rows of young women in their early teens and twenties as it is to include middle age couples and entire families complete with pre-teen girls dressed like their musical idols and singing every Dixie Chicks’ song word for word.

The press has certainly noticed. Publications from Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and People to Harper’s Bazaar, In Style, Seventeen and TV Guide have documented how the Dixie Chicks are bending the music world to their will and making country music more ‘hip’ than ever. With the wrap-up of 1998, numerous national publications named them the “Breakout Act of the Year” and recognized Wide Open Spaces as one of the “Best Of” albums of the year. USA Today credited the Chicks with single-handedly returning the banjo to country radio and Rolling Stone summed it up when they called them “the badass queenpins of country.” At a time when much of the press on country music has lamented the ’sameness’ of the sound and the artists, no less than the Los Angeles Times conceded that “the Dixie Chicks are the perfect antidote.”

The music industry has certainly noticed. The Dixie Chicks’ fellow musicians and industry peers, in particular, have overwhelmingly acknowledged their contribution. In a year’s time, they have been honored with two Grammy Awards (Best Country Album and Best Country Vocal Performance Duo/Group), two Country Music Association Awards (Group of the Year and the Horizon Award), plus three Academy of Country Music Awards (including Album of the Year), one American Music Award and two TNN Music Awards. On Nashville’s Music Row, where the unspoken business strategy often seems to be “if we can make it work once, we can beat it to death,” the music industry has obviously been taking notes. It’s likely not a coincidence that almost every record label in Nashville has signed a female trio since the Dixie Chicks exploded on to the scene. But clearly what makes this act work is not just that they are a female trio. The difference is this: There simply is no other act in any musical format that sounds like the Dixie Chicks

Learning how to play lead guitar is an art and it can only be mastered applying some of the most important and advanced techniques like string bending and tremolo picking among many others.

The most important part of playing the lead guitar is playing it well and using the several techniques to your advantage without going out of tune. Such guitar techniques come into picture only in the advanced stages.

The tremolo or the whammy bar as many call it is a useful tool when it comes to lead guitar techniques and can bring out a distorted, sometimes melodic sound that is common in hard rock or heavy metal bands like Metallica, Megadeth and Dreamtheater. Some of the other lead guitar techniques include doing the slide and string bending.

Slides

Playing slide style guitar is great fun, and opens up a new world of sound and tones that you cannot get with fingers only approach. There is no end to the different types of slides and materials you can use to make slides. When doing the slide on a lead guitar, you need to take care of an aspect, which is raising the strings of your guitar a little higher of the neck. You can always use an extension nut for this purpose. For sliding you can use your hand or another instrument called the slide. When you press the slide against your guitar strings, the pitch of the strings change and you can even vary the pitch to an extent by moving your slide upwards or downwards on the guitar neck. Slide is a lead guitar technique that is also known as the bottleneck guitar. It is an effective technique because it helps you to create pitch transitions continuously on your lead guitar.

String Bending

String bending also known as radial pitch-shifting is an important technique of playing the lead guitar. To create string bending, you have to move the string that has been held down in a particular direction, which is normally perpendicular to the axis and is always parallel to your fingerboard. This is a type of pitch-shifting that is most often used by in a rock or heavy metal band. String bending is most commonly used with other distortion techniques for making the lead guitar playing sound smoothly and melodic. It is limited to not more than 1 or 2 semi-tones but you will get to use even 3 semitones once you are highly skilled. Instances of 5-semitones can also be seen especially when you hear the guitar solo played by David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) in Another Brick In the Wall Pt.2 from the album “The Wall.” This solo has become an anthem in Rock music history.

Tremolo Picking

Tremolo picking is when you play one note rapidly. It’s basically alternate picking, but usually faster. When you need to play some fast phrases on your lead guitar, you can use tremolo picking. With the help of tremolo picking, you will be able to play a particular note multiple times in quick succession. It is also known as double picking and you can do it with your finger or with your pick. The main reason for using tremolo picking in lead guitar is because it adds more sustenance to melodic lines.