• • • HOW TO PLAY THIS MONTH’S SONGS• • •

“ ORB”

Ichika Nito

THIS SUBLIME- LY BEAUTIFUL solo instrumental by YouTube sensation Ichika Nito features the young guitarist and composer performing some seemingly superhuman sleights of hand with a gentle, flowing touch and great expressiveness. Using a dreamy clean electric tone with some delay and reverb and employing hybrid picking throughout, as well as numerous finger slides, natural harmonics and tapped notes, Nito starts off simply, with a sequence of sparse diatonic 10th intervals that effectively outline a four-bar chord progression in the key of E natural minor. He then proceeds to spin a series of inventive and more densely textured and technically complex variations on his initial idea in a way that brings to mind what baroque-era composer Johann Pachelbel famously did with his “Canon in D.”

Beginning in bar 5, Ichika lays down a percolating rhythm of mostly 16th notes, crossing strings on just about every note and making great use of the open B string in conjunction with notes fretted high up the neck on the G and high E strings. When playing this section and those that follow, take care to not inadvertently “bump into” any ringing open strings with your fretting fingers. Also, there are quite a few wide fret-hand stretches required, so ease into them and rotate your wrist as needed to reach the notes.