Alex Lifeson Help!

My roomate is getting a Yamaha electronic drum kit and wants to jam in about two months!
I'm pretty good on my git, but tackling Alex's stuff will be new to me even though I know Rush's stuff like crazy.
Any technique, tone, chord usage, or anything would be appreciated!
Thanks.

Alex loves to play chords, and lots of them! He doesn't use bar chords a whole lot, mainly triad shapes that allow him to play many chord voicings over the neck of the guitar and resolving to the next chord with as little movement as possible, like a piano player would do. This technique is also used eclusively by Hendrix, VanHalen, and Rhoads.

I'll try to give you an example of what I'm talking about. Suppose the chord progression was G to D, this is one way of doing it using triad shapes and voice leading. The chord tones are in parenthesis (sp?)

G chord: 1st finger, 2nd str., 3rd fret (D), 2nd finger, 3rd str., 4th fret (B), 3rd finger, 4th str., 5th fret (G)

D chord: 2nd finger, 2nd str., 3rd fret (D), 1st finger, 3rd str., 2nd fret (A), 3rd finger, 4th str., 4th fret (F#)

You'll notice you will be able to make this change extremely fast, and it will have a different sound then if you used bar chords or open str. chords, it's called voice leading. Good Luck

He does use a lot of open string chords and arpeggios as well. For example, if you know the formation for the F# barre chord with the root on the low E string (second fret), rather than laying your index finger flat to make the barre, lift it so that it is only fretting the root note, leaving the 1st and 2nd strings (E and B) open to ring. Now using that chord formation, and leaving the 1st two strings open, try shifting around the fret board playing all six strings ( as a chord or an arpeggio) and letting the 1st two strings ring out. If you listen to Hemispheres he does this type of chording a good portion of the time. As for his early sound, he used to play a hollow body much of the time and with a chorus pedal, light distortion, and some tweaking you can really get close to his old sound. His solos are original in their use of chording, but he is also keen on playing single note flourishes with fast tremolo picking, pinch harmonics, and string bends. I think Hemispheres is the consumate album for the range of his style. If you can play all of that album you can probably play anything he's done before or after. He is one of my favorite guitarists, a huge influence, and probably the most underated player in rock. To me, his stuff isn't extremely difficult to play (once you can figure the parts out), its just incredibly inventive and tasteful. I know there was a tab book out at one point which covered most of their albums through the mid 80's.

Alex Lifeson is my fave guitarist and I have spent many years during my 24 year life listening to brilliant players.
If you aren't familiar with Exit.. Stage left you are missing a treat. Xanadu starts with some beautiful volume swells (aka violining) and Lifeson demonstrates what a brilliant comand he has of combining this technique with pinch harmonics which (if he uses his fingers and not a pedal for the swells) is mega-hard. As for La Villa.. the Ghost of Aragon solo for me is the definitive statement of why the E. Guitar is the best instrument in the world. The phrasing and tone are extremely beautiful and fluid and there are some really fast exciting runs and dramatic squeals too.
Alex also uses lots of Sus4 chords, these are chords where the intervals are 1,4,5 and so have neither major nor minor feel and somehow seem unresolved. Personally I dig them and they sound great with 7ths and 9ths too.