Steve Morse is the guitar virtuoso's virtuoso – and his technique masterclass will push your upper-fret bending and phrasing to the limit

Steve Morse.

In this lesson, we are looking at Steve Morse’s performance on Guitar Techniques editor Jason Sidwell’s track The Pledge. For this, Steve used a combination of composed phrases and improvised ideas to link up the melodic hooks. 

There are plenty of chord changes and pivots in tonality, and Steve skilfully negotiates these with simple melodies that are based around the chord tones. No single scale can be used effectively, so Steve’s combination of composed ideas and chord tone playing helps to ensure the melodies fit with the track.