The Guitar Blog

To kick off this relaunch, I’m letting everybody get a sneak listen to my favorite FMD song, Ding. Or, as most people know it by, the Nora song.

Ding is upbeat, quirky and hilarious — pretty much what FMD is all about, really. The song is in D major, playing around with the oh-so-familiar D-A-G progression. The intro may sound familiar, as it’s a nod to the old X-Men cartoons’ theme:

Ding, intro riff

           D                                G
                      ~                                 ~
e |-------------------------------------------------------
B |---5-6-5-----5-6-5-6---------10-11-10---------10-11--11
G |--7-----7---7-----7---//---12--------12-----12-----12--
D |-7-------7-7-------------12------------12-12-----------
A |-------------------------------------------------------
E |-------------------------------------------------------

In the intro, I’m playing that lick over implied Dm and Gm chords. The trick to making this lick flow is to use sweep, or economy picking, instead of the normal up-down-up-down strokes in alternate picking. This is handy if you have two or more successive notes on adjacent strings; it means you can get away with a single staggered downstroke for three notes, and reverting to alternate picking on the fourth note. The overall effect is a smoother transition than would otherwise have been possible with alternate picking.

The verse and chorus chords vary only on how the chords are strummed; apart from that, they’re both D-G, D-A-G. The verse has a more subdued, tension-building feel, owing to palm-muted downstrokes. The chorus is more lively, as by this time I’m playing it more vigorously, the accents coming from both the left and right hand mutings on certain beats. Think Crazy Train with a bluesy feel.

Between chords I embellish with a few pentatonic licks both in D major and B minor, which are virtually interchangeable. The key, however, is to always resolve in D for these fill-ins, so as to give a sense of closure between licks. Further down the song, I experiment increasingly with modal tonalities: the first real guitar solo, I switch from a B blues scale to a B minor pentatonic to B minor to B phrygian (while over G) and D lydian (again, while over G), albeit as passing licks, while keeping the Rock ‘n Roll/Funk feel throughout with a double stop every so often. The final tapping solo is a nod to Randy Rhoades’ leadwork in Crazy Train, and is in B dorian, finally resolving in D major pentatonic.

Here’s a partial tab of that tapping solo:

e----------------------------------------------------------------|
B---14p7h10po7h10-14p7-14p7h10p7h10--14p7--14p7h10p7h10--14p7----|
G----------------------------------------------------------------|
D----------------------------------------------------------------|
A----------------------------------------------------------------|
E----------------------------------------------------------------|

e----------------------------------------------------------------|
B-14p7h10p7h10--15p7--15p7h10p7h10--15p7--15p7h10p7h10--15p7-----|
G----------------------------------------------------------------|
D----------------------------------------------------------------|
A----------------------------------------------------------------|
E----------------------------------------------------------------|

e---------------------------(w/bar-----------------)-------------|
B-15p7h10p7h10--15p10p7-----9h12p9--7h10p7--9h10p9-------------10|
G---------------------------------------------------9s7-9bu(11)--|
D----------------------------------------------------------------|
A----------------------------------------------------------------|
E----------------------------------------------------------------|

Anyway, stay tuned for more FMD, and catch our gigs: we’ll be at Purple Haze and Kolumn pretty soon, and hopefully back at Mag:Net!