Rocco Zifarelli Video Masterclass pt 5

This month we are delighted to have yet another chance to study with and learn from Italian fusion wizard, Rocco Zifarelli. This time we are looking at a very harmonically challenging piece by Jason Sidwell; Fortitude. The first thing to note is the piece has a 6/8 time signature. There are moments though where you could feel it as 3/4 time. The tempo here is 180bpm for each of the six quaver pulses so it’s well worth having a fretboard roadmap established prior to setting sail on a freeform-improvised solo.

As Rocco explains, the track has a lot of different chords and many of them are from different keys, so it’s not possible to navigate the song with just one or two scales.

In fact trying to improvise a solo using scales would be incredibly challenging and the results may not end up being that