Megadeth’s Chris Broderick on Learning Guitar, Loving Eddie Van Halen

Like many great guitarists, Megadeth’s Chris Broderick clearly remembers the first time he picked up his choice instrument. At the time, Broderick was just a little tyke and shelved out a whopping (not really) $40 for his first guitar.

“[My friends] all played in a band together, and I was like, ‘Oh, that is interesting [laughs],’” Broderick told Glide Magazine. “I’d always go over to my friend’s house and constantly nag him to play his guitar all the time. And he’d be like, ‘No, no, let’s go ride motocross’ or something else.

“But I’d be constantly nagging him, so finally I bought a guitar from one of his friends, spray-painted it red, threw some black electrical tape on it and tried to become Eddie Van Halen [laughs].”

Van Halen, Broderick says, is the first band that really turned him on to heavy music. “It was not only [Eddie Van Halen’s] tapping, but also he knew a little finger style as well on the guitar with like ‘Spanish Fly’ and stuff like that. I thought that was really cool. I mean, it was everything about his playing; it was very unique and had a lot of fire behind it.”

Broderick joined Megadeth in 2008, and he says that past four years have gone by fast. “You know what, in a way it feels like an eternity, because it’s almost like a different life since I’ve joined Megadeth,” he said, laughing. “I do remember what I was doing before them but it is so different. It’s almost like the difference between when you’re touring and when you’re not touring. It feels like two different lives that you have.”

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Eddie Vedder to Play U.K. for the First Time

Eddie Vedder will play in the U.K. for the very first time this July.

According to NME.com, the Pearl Jam singer will promote his solo Ukulele Songs album with a European tour, starting in Amsterdam on July 25 and finishing in Portugal on August 3.

Vedder’s debut solo U.K. dates are at the Manchester O2 Apollo on July 28 and

Then London HMV Hammersmith Apollo on July 30.

Vedder’s band, Pearl Jam, are booked to headline this year’s Isle of Wight Festival, alongside Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, in June.

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Eddie Vedder Plots Spring Tour

Pearl Jam frontman and ukulele enthusiast Eddie Vedder is planning a Spring tour of the Southern United States. The singer-ukulele player will play a string of dates starting April 11 in Las Vegas, according to Billboard.

Vedder also will promote 2011’s Ukulele Songs with a stop at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, before the tour wraps up on May 16 in Orlando. Glen Hansard, known for fronting The Frames and the Swell Season, will open the shows.

Of course, Pearl Jam also has plans to tour this year. The band has announced a summer European tour that begins in Manchester, U.K., on June 20.

Eddie Vedder tour dates:

April 11: Las Vegas (The Pearl)
April 13: Phoenix, Ariz. (Comerica Theater)
April 16: Albuquerque, N.M. (Kiva Auditorium)
April 19: Tulsa, Okla. (Brady Theater)
April 22: Houston, Tex. (Jones Hall for the Performing Arts)
April 25: San Antonio, Tex. (Lila Cockrell Theatre)
April 27: Austin, Tex. (Bass Concert Hall)
April 30: Dallas, Tex. (The Music Hall at Fair Park)
May 3: New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
May 8: Jacksonville, Fla. (Moran Theater)
May 10: Clearwater, Fla. (Ruth Eckerd Hall)
May 13: Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (Broward Center for the Performing Arts)
May 16: Orlando, Fla. (Bob Carr Performing Arts Center)

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How to Fake it Like Eddie Van Halen: Symmetrical Scales

Symmetrical scales are one of the most fun – and easiest to wrap your head around – ways of making harmonically interesting music without having to spend 10 years at music school (although if you can afford to spend 10 years at music school, please do, then tell me all about it so I may live vicariously though you, ’cos that sounds rad!). Two very well known exponents of the symmetrical scale are Eddie Van Halen and Dimebag Darrell. Darrell was quite open about borrowing the idea from Eddie, whose most famous example of the technique can be heard on his solo to “Ice Cream Man” from Van Halen’s self-titled debut. Eddie’s “Ice Cream Man” solo starts in the key of the song but quickly evolves into a bizarre, out-there-sounding tumble through cascading note flurries.

So what is a symmetrical scale, and how does it help you to rock? Well, it’s simply a “fake” scale made up of repeating the same fret pattern on each string. That is to say: playing a symmetrical pattern on each string. It’s not really a scale in the traditional sense, since it actually incorporates fragments of all sorts of different “real” scales.

A word of caution before we go any further: some of the coolest-sounding symmetrical scales can involve very wide fretboard stretches, so make sure that you warm up your hands first. And for maximum rock power and ergonomic freedom, point your guitar headstock skyward to better align your hand with your fretboard. Seriously, don’t do this stuff until you’re warmed up.

Seriously.

Okay, now that this ominous warning of proper tendon care is out of the way, let’s look at some musical examples. Each of these is designed to be played over a simple 8th-note palm-muted E5 power chord vamp at 100bpm – just count “1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8” per bar as you chug away.

What you’re seeing in Figure 1 (Below) is a scale made up of the 12th, 13th and 15th frets of each string. The notes are E F G A A# C D D# F G G# A B C D E F G. As you’ll see, you don’t get a nice repeated octave until you get to the very last string, since both the lowest and highest strings are tuned to E. There’s something coolly robotic about this particular scale, and it also makes a nice hammer-on exercise. 

Figure 2 is cleverly designed to include a lot of repetitions of the same note on different strings, which should lead to some pretty interesting melodies.

Figure 3 is a lick constructed using the same pattern as Figure 2, but this time it’s got some melody goin’ on, rather than just being a scale run-through. I’ve purposely left off any kind of articulation here because there are many ways you could do it: you could pick every note; you could tap each of the 17th fret notes (and perform a “hammer-on from nowhere” when you need to switch strings immediately after the tapped note the second note of bar two); you could pick only the first note on each string and hammer or slide the rest – the choice is up to you. You can even create symmetrical patterns that require a bend from a specific fret on each string.

Now, of course, make up your own symmetrical scale and see what happens. Obviously you can make the stretches as wide as you like, especially if you decide to tap a note or two. You also don’t need to confine yourself to one pattern per string. Why not make a two-string pattern that you repeat? As always, have at it and have fun!

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Eddie Van Halen Talks Smithsonian, Michael Jackson

Earlier this year, a replica of Eddie Van Halen’s “Frankenstein” guitar was donated to The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The guitar god recently talked to Smithsonian Magazine about how the guitar initially came about.

“The original Frankenstein was a result of me tinkering and experimenting with different elements of electric guitars that I liked,” he said. “I created an instrument that wasn’t offered as an ‘off the rack’ guitar by any manufacturer at the time.”

Although Van Halen still has the first Frankenstein guitar, he doesn’t tour with it anymore.

“I retired it from regular use. It took so much abuse from endless touring and recording; I wanted to pay some respect to it and let it survive and not let it get destroyed completely,” he said. “At the same time it became something so well known beyond my wildest dreams that it’s value made it a target for theft and I wanted to protect it. I still play it every now and then. It’s priceless to me.”

While the guitarist didn’t talk about Van Halen’s upcoming tour or album plans, he did discuss his favorite artistic collaboration.

“Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ is a stand out for me,” he said. “Quincy Jones called me up and asked me to play on it. When I got there it took me 15 minutes to rearrange the song and I played two solos and told them they could pick the one they liked best. Then Michael walked in and said, ‘Wow! I really like that high fast stuff you do.’ It was a lot of fun to do. It’s crazy that something could take such a short amount of time and can grow into something beyond anything you could ever imagine.”

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