HELLO, EVERYONE, AND welcome to my new Guitar World column! Over the course of these lessons, I’ll demonstrate many of the techniques I use for songwriting and soloing, from approaches to devising riffs to how I might develop a solo with various playing and phrasing techniques.
I’d like to begin by taking a look at my tune “Lucy G,” which I originally recorded, and also included on my most recent live album, . “Lucy G” is built on an “AABA” structure: the verse, or “A” section, is played twice, followed by the bridge, or “B” section, after which we return to the “A” section. The song is in the key of C# minor, but I prefer to think of it as C# Dorian. C# minor usually refers to the relative minor of E major, which encompasses the C# Aeolian mode (C#, D#, E, F#, G#, A, B). In this tune, the A note is replaced by A#, which is the major 6th of C# and the major 3rd of F#, which is the IV (four) chord in C# Dorian. As a result, the scale that best represents the harmony conveyed in this song is C# Dorian (C#, D#, E, F#, G#, A#, B).
