Black Swan (Guitar Lead 1)

Time to let it rip! Here's a 2 part harmony (aka guitarmony). This moment happens at 1:47 in the song. Like I mentioned before, it's hard to label this part as a verse or post chorus or whatever, since it's really just a part of a long musical journey through space and time.

In this vid I play both the lower and upper parts back to back. If you're playing just one part, choose whichever one you perceive as the melody (this is kind of subjective). For me personally, it's the lower line.

The guitars harmonize in 3rds using the D harmonic minor scale. The same 6 note motif repeats, each time progressively higher to build excitement. On the 4th time, there's a big bend at the end to add some sass. Finally, in a big climax there's a big diminished lick, because all solos need to end with a fiery hot lick!

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Going to do something a little different today, and use this opportunity to give a quick run down on what diminished means. 

Basically, it's what you get when you play every 3rd fret. If you did this across a single string, you'd get this:

-0--3--6--9-

Now, if you played the same pattern starting 3 notes higher, you'd have the exact same notes (because the first note is now at the end, just one octave higher):

-3--6--9--12-

This pattern continues if we continue to keep going up every 3 frets:

-6--9--12--15

-9--12--15--18

etc...

And the notes are always the same!

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The takeaway here is that any diminished idea can be repeated every 3 frets, and you get the exact same thing over and over again. It's a very cool effect, and quite simple in practice. Unlike most chords where you need to learn different shapes when you move it around, diminished is always the same shape over and over, every 3 frets.

Playing on only one string is very limited, so the main shape I like to have memorized and use is this:

--------------12-15-
-----------14-------
-----12-15----------
--14----------------
---------------------
---------------------

Or this:

---------------------
--------------11-14--
-----------12--------
-----11-14-----------
--13-----------------
---------------------

It's from these 2 shapes that I made the final run in this solo. The higher guitar simply plays these 3 frets higher for reasons outlined above.

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TAB is attached, drop any Q's down below!