Purple Praise - Andy Chamberlain
This issue we're going to look at probably my favourite electric guitar playing style, which is called "double stops," and it is wonderfully usable in many worship settings. Double stops means playing two notes at the same time and was employed to great effect by a certain Mr James Marshall Hendrix. Hendrix is of course known by non-musicians for his soloing, but this style used on more laidback songs like "Little Wing" and "Castles Made of Sand" is perfect for adding beauty and dynamics in worship.
The easiest way to understand double stops is by fretting a chord and playing any two adjacent strings. Then as the sound rings, use a spare finger to fret another note in the key on at least one of those strings. If you can add hammer-ons and pull-offs it will add to the overall texture too.
Strung on a ChordThe key to this style is to think of it as lead guitar but using chord shapes as your base rather than scales. It works very well with the CAGED system I talk about in our intermediate guitar course, but even if you're not familiar with it, you can still get some good results from a couple of basic shapes.
To demo this we are going to play some licks around an E chord. Barre your index finger across strings 1-5 at fret 9 leaving the low E open. Now place your ring finger on the G string (3) fret 11 and play the two middle strings. The combination of pulling that third finger on and off will give you the notes of E, F# and B.
Mix it UpThe same can be done for any other note in the key of E using this same shape. So keep your index finger at fret 9 and play any of the other notes marked with a red dot. Try any two adjacent strings and see what results you get. You are doing what's now known as little winging it! Even though we are in E this shape is based around the G shape in the CAGED system so bringing the barre up to fret 12 will help you play around in G, fret 7 will be D, fret 5 is C Fret 2 is A and so on. So give it a try.
For the minor chords start off by using an Em minor barre chord up on the 7
th fret which is an Am shape. Start again by playing any 2 strings and take on and off fingers 2, 3 or 4. So really any finger apart from the barred index finger. Next use any free finger to play other notes in the key of Em as outlined in red. Once again find other minor chords by sliding the barre up and down so Dm is fret 5, Bm fret 2 etc.
So, if you are playing lead guitar this is a great textural alternative to using pentatonicscales which can sound pretty "widdly-widdly" in the context of a lot of modern worship song styles. Use a clean slightly driven sound with long reverb for great results and even add delay or chorus effects to taste. If you use a pick play those two strings hard you'll get some really percussive guitar tones.
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Andy Chamberlain is a Director of Musicademy and the presenter of the Musicademy Worship Guitar DVDs – students enjoy observing his varying hairstyles as the DVDs progress. Andy was trained at the Academy of Contemporary Music, has played at festivals such as Soul Survivor, New Wine, Spring Harvest and Spirit West Coast (US) and has worked with many worship leaders including Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, Martyn Layzell, Vicky Beeching, Viola and Lloyd Wade.
