The whole tone scale is what happens when six notes collectively decide that gravity is optional. No leading tone, no half steps, no home to sprint back to — just a smooth, dreamy staircase where every single step is exactly the same size. Which is either gorgeous or mildly upsetting, depending on whether you were expecting an actual tune.
This is Lick #44: a short, fiery whole tone shred lick that crams sweep picking, alternate picking and a fistful of legato hammer-ons and pull-offs into roughly seven seconds. It is a compact tour of the symmetrical, floating whole tone sound — and yes, there is a PDF and a Guitar Pro file so you can drag the whole thing down to a humane tempo.
How the whole tone scale makes shredding easier
Here is the nerdy payoff: the whole tone scale is perfectly symmetrical. Every note sits one whole step from the next (C, D, E, F#, G#, A#), so there are only two of them in the entire universe — everything else is just the same scale wearing a different starting note. That symmetry is a gift for your fretting hand. Learn one shape — a little three-note-per-string fragment or one sweep pattern — slide it up a whole step, and it still works. Same fingering, new position, instantly more runway.
Musically, the whole tone scale adores a dominant 7#5 chord (picture a V7#5 leaning into your tonic) or any moment you want that dizzy, the-floor-just-vanished tension. The concrete takeaway: build one clean cell, then transpose it in whole steps up the neck. Wrap it in sweep picking for the wide jumps and alternate picking for the fast runs, and you get a lick that sounds far more complicated than the two-scale secret hiding behind it.
Fair warning: play this anywhere near a piano and it will start humming Debussy at you. Want the tab, the Guitar Pro file and the slowed-down version so your pinky stops filing formal complaints? It is all waiting on my Patreon.