[Jake’s Ibanez Prestige 6-string guitar is tuned to Drop-C. Low to high: C G C F A D.] 

Luck As A Constant – 2nd Solo (4:50 – 5:20)

With this solo I wanted to do something that was slightly shreddy, a little bit jazzy, a little bit flamboyant. It goes back and forth between two licks at a time.

Bars 1-2

I’m switching from a selective picking technique straight into full alternate picking when I get to the higher strings. It has this almost ‘rolling’ effect in the beginning – you roll your way to the top and then that’s where it starts getting a little bit shreddy and you’ll have to go into the alternate picking to make that happen and make the notes pop out.

Bars 3-6

This is the part of the solo where it gets almost ‘sarcastic’ sounding as Misha would always put it. There are these wild bends and [slides] going down the fretboard, followed by an almost octave-shape lick. It touches on the octaves, but there are also these other notes in there and it sounds almost like it’s clumsily going through to the next part, which is a much faster lick.

Bars 7-8

In the studio we had our good friend and now bass player for Periphery, Nolly [Getgood] – he was playing some Per Nilsson licks… I just thought some of the way that dude phrases stuff was really cool, so I was trying my own hand at it. That’s where I got the inspiration for this lick. It’s all tapping, but there’s a bend in it, that when you pull-off with your finger, you’re double-tapping the same note. It’s a very quick succession of notes.

Bar 9

Dimebag Darrell is a huge influence on my playing and one of the inspirations behind how bendy and wild this solo can be. I did this really gnarly bend with a tap, and that just kinda gives it that Great Southern Trendkill vibe.

Bars 11-12

Then it goes into another really playful set of notes that you wouldn’t necessarily anticipate. I really wanted it to be like ‘pretty – then crazy, pretty – then crazy.’ The last crazy part is this pull-off lick – I don’t really know how I came up with that. I was messing around playing licks and I thought I could fit that in in a neat place rhythmically.

Luck As A Constant Clip

Outro Harmony

I wanted to do a huge, epic Killswitch Engage‘y harmony. I guess when I was in the studio writing it, I was kinda thinking ‘what would Adam D. do? What would Adam D. and Joel do?’ And I did that! And that’s it – that’s the solo.

[Special thanks to Peter Boyle for his top-notch transcription work!]