PERFORMANCE NOTES

“FALL TO PIECES”

Velvet Revolver

smoothly and comfortably perform the arpeggiated chords in this song’s clean electric intro and verse sections (see bars 1-12, Gtr. 1 part), you’ll need to use a picking pattern based on economy of movement. The fairly slow tempo allows for a few different picking possibilities, so experiment by feel until you find a combination of down-strokes and upstrokes that works well for you and flows. For those unfamiliar with the technique, it’s essentially a combination of alternate picking and sweep picking. Use consecutive down-strokes when crossing from a lower string to the next higher one, and consecutive upstrokes when crossing to the next lower string. Many guitarists do this instinctively, and I suspect Slash does that too.