Level: Intermediate/Advanced

Tuning: C# G# C# F# A# D#

I've always loved Lamb of God. They've attributed to many speeding fines and weightlifting injuries as a result of my body surging from their unique brand of heavy metal testosterock. I had a few requests on my channel to look at Mark Morton's solo from "Ghost Walking." It begins with a rather sexy sweep so I was intrigued from the outset. This solo has some fast pentatonic and diatonic shred as well as a few cool arpeggios. As usual we'll break the solo down into problematic sections and I'll leave a link to the tab and YouTube lesson at the bottom of the article.

Section 1 Tips

If we were in standard tuning this sweep would be a Dm6 sweep. I haven't dealt with too many of these myself but it feels cool to roll 3 notes on 1 string before a big 5 string sweep arpeggio. Let's take a look at this bad boy (see excerpt below).

Like all sweep arpeggios you're not going to be doing a fully fluent sweep motion the whole time especially on turn arounds. Make allowances for timing on moments of legato on the 1st and 5th string. Don't rush it and practice it slowly!

Section 2 Tips

The 2nd section works through a pentatonic with some cheeky extra Dorian notes to spice things up. Let's look at a D minor box shape pentatonic with an E (2nd note from the D Dorian scale) and a B (which is the minor #6 from the Dorian scale) which kinda gives us a diatonic-pentatonic hybrid (see scale shape below).

Now that we have the shape we can take look at this little lick now (see excerpt below).

I really like how this lick goes from staccato to legato. Really try and emphasise that build up triplet before you unleash the legatoey goodness. Also try messing around with this Doriany pentatonic in your own playing in various keys.

Section 3 Tips

This section deals with a very lengthy semi quavered triplet shred passage. Thankfully we're only dealing with 2 three note per string shapes and nothing too stretchy. Let's take a look at the lick (see excerpt below).

I would recommend practicing this a sh-t load with a metronome. Make sure you're playing a triplet per click (or three notes per click) and be very patient when building speed as this lick nearly destroyed me.

Section 4 Tips

The last lick in this solo uses a really fast pulloffs in a common D minor box pentatonic (see excerpt below).

This lick is basically the same 4 notes played 6 (ish) times. You can alternate pick the start of this lick of you can use economy picking to do a mini sweep between the 1st and 2nd string. Before getting this to speed try playing the lick using both picking techniques to figure out which one works best for you!

Hope you've enjoyed these tips peeps. Happy shredding!

By Chris Zoupa