The Guitar Player's Resource
Joe Satriani is a guitarist, composer, songwriter, and guitar teacher, as well as a 15-time Grammy Award nominee and the best-selling instrumental rock guitarist of all time, with over 10 million albums sold. Back in 1988, Satriani was recruited by Mick Jagger as lead guitarist for his first solo tour. Satriani even toured for a short time with Deep Purple, joining shortly after the departure of Ritchie Blackmore in November 1993. Satriani has been the guitarist for the supergroup Chickenfoot since joining the band in 2008.
Since releasing a self-financed solo album called "Not Of This Earth" in 1986, Satriani has steadily released new music under his own name, from 1987's seminal "Surfing With The Alien" (which pundits are still dissecting to this day) through to 2022's "The Elephants Of Mars".
In recent years, Satriani has become highly visible in the guitar instruction video world, giving lessons, tips, tricks and techniques through sponsors such as Guitar World magazine, in order to help guitarists understand his philosophies and methods, that no doubt have contributed greatly to his success.
This lesson is a part of the "Shredding with the Alien" series where Satriani discusses melody, specifically, how to stretch out a melody. He also gives ideas on how to keep a melody minimal, and how to go in and out of scale while still relating the melody to the tonal center of the chords.
The idea to end melodic phrases on suspended notes to keep the listener engaged is brilliant!