I thought I would do something a little different on Guitar Noize today, it has been a while since I have posted a lesson so I chose a lick from Paul Gilbert’s “Norwegian Cowbell” from the 2008 album “Silence Followed By Deafening Roar”. The lick I chose is actually a passing run rather than part of the melody but I thought it was pretty cool as it moves through 4 modal patterns of the D Major scale and spans 11 frets across all 6 strings starting on the 3rd fret of the bottom E string which is a G Lydian pattern, moving up through a portion of the A Mixolydian pattern, then a 2 string run from the B Aeolian pattern and finally a 2 string run from the C# Locrian pattern. Check out the video above for a more in-depth explanation. The actual lick in the track is B Minor (relative minor of D Major) but as we are not playing over a backing we will say this is D Major to keep things simple. The tab for the lick is below:
Paul Gilbert lick
And to help you visualise the modes used in this run I have tabbed the complete modal patterns that this lick takes its notes from, on the example above I have included which notes are from which pattern.
Diatonic Modes

Hope you enjoyed the lesson and let me know if you found it useful.