Rocco Zifarelli Video Masterclass

In the first instalment of this six-part video feature, Rocco Zifarelli demonstrates some smooth soloing over a fast-paced, blues fusion backing track. Jon Bishop is your guide.

- Jon Bishop

This month we are delighted to welcome Italian fusion wizard, Rocco Zifarelli to take on various Jason Sidwell penned backing tracks over the next six issues.

Rocco has been film composer legend Ennio Morricone’s guitarist for over 20 years and is a fabulously talented player. We start with a slick sounding, fast-paced offering entitled Route 666. The tempo is a brisk 155bpm so it’s worth having a fretboard roadmap established prior to setting sail on such a freeform, improvised solo.

As Rocco explains, the track starts out in the key of G Minor. The standard approach is usually to employ G Minor Pentatonic blues and rock vocabulary. However, the backing track is more harmonically advanced than just that one key and requires various other scales and concepts to be used to navigate it effectively.