Hey, what’s up? It’s Claude Johnson and welcome to
another lesson from Guitar Control. Let’s do some
more Hendrix stuff today. I really hope you enjoyed
my last lesson.
We talked a lot about kind of the more rock and electric,
funky kind of Hendrix style. Today I want to get into more
of the clean, melodic R&B kind of style and you’ll definitely
recognize the sound.
Now Hendrix plays a Strat and I would show you on my Strat,
but I haven’t played my Strat in a while and the strings are
a little bit rusty probably. So I’m going to show you on my
Tele-style Spear. A lot of people ask me what this guitar is.
It is a Spear RTST and we’ll try to dial-in kind of a Hendrix-y
tone and I hope you enjoy the lesson. So let’s check it out.
Let’s start with a chord progression, which is A, B minor,
C sharp, C minor, B minor, A. Now, if you’re not familiar with
these basic chords, don’t worry. But I would try to get up to
speed on that. A great place to start is my ultimate beginner
guitar course to learn those basics. And actually, a little
plug for that course, even if you’re intermediate or advanced,
it’s a great course to really build-up your repertoire with
75 killer songs. So check that out.
We have A — this is basically just going diatonically in the
key of A. A, B minor, C sharp minor; now chromatically. Without
the Hendrix stuff it would sound like. Real simple; sounds
nothing like Hendrix, right?
So, what do we do? First thing, our A chord, let’s fret it like
this; with our ring finger on the 7th fret of the D string, middle
finger on the 6th fret of the G string and first finger on the 5th
fret of the B string. Now, we could hook our thumb around to get
the low note on the low E string, but we don’t need to because
we’re just going to use the open A. But you could if you were moving
it around like as a shape. So now we have this.
How do we do that? Well, we’re just going to keep our fingers in
the same place, but our pinkie is going to do these little hammer-ons
and pull-offs. We’re up here on the 7th fret with our pinkie either
on the B string or the G string. This first one is a little triplet
on the B string. Hammer-on, pull-off and then just pick the G string.
We’re now going to hammer-on to the G string, but notice how we’re
picking two notes at once, which is called a double stop and we’ll
talk about that in a second. This is basically a suss sound. Kind of
a little wing tonality there. Again, remember, we’re not moving the
other three fingers.
Now the next riff we’re going to go up to our E minor chord.
This one we’re going to be using those double stops that I mentioned.
Let me just say a word first on the scale. Now, it’s really important
to understand the difference between major pentatonic and minor pentatonic.
In our first Hendrix lesson we talked about throwing pentatonics, but
that was like a minor kind of sound. That’s like the minor pentatonic.
Now in this case, that’s the major, very different sound. I go real deep
into this inside my course “Killer Guitar Control Secrets”. So check
that one out, too.
Basically you can play it here: 7th fret and 9th fret on the lowest
three strings. Seven, 9, 7, 9, 7,9; nice little box there. That’s a
nice little exercise. Try improvising. Hit your A chord, B minor —
you could also play B minor 7. But just try and… Try playing some
melodies in that little box. You could also actually hit… You can
go one up from there. That’s actually not in the A major pentatonic;
it’s from B minor. But here’s the Hendrix move.
What you’re going to do is you take any two notes that are together,
like on the same fret like here. Let’s say the A string and the D string,
7th fret, and you’re going to play them and then hammer-on to the next
note of the lower string that you’re playing — the next note in the
pentatonic scale. The higher string note it still going to ring open.
For example, instead of this… Just try this lick: 9, 7 on the A; 9, 7
on the A; and then 9. Try this. That first note I’m just basically playing
on the 7th fret on both the A and the D. You can — it’s really easy to
just get your feel down with this. You can kind of do whatever you want
with that.
When I go up to the C sharp minor, I’m kind of switching to this other
pentatonic scale, C sharp minor, and then C. Again, I’m switching scales.
That was another nice little Hendrix trick that you can use. It’s just
kind of — you’re switching scales every chord with a different
pentatonic scale.
This one is C sharp minor and then when I go to the C it’s kind of going
back to the major. We’re kind of going from major to minor, bouncing around.
You can just experiment. Try different chords. You can try major pentatonic,
minor pentatonic. If it sounds good, it’s right.
We finally get back here to some more of those double stops. Back to the A.
So to break it down even further with this major pentatonic stuff, if
you’re having trouble, let’s just take one chord, like an A and you can
just stay in this — basically it’s like an F sharp pentatonic on the
2nd fret, which is all the same notes as the A major. It’s kind of some
theory; don’t worry about it for now, but just try this. Second fret to
the 4th on the A, D and G strings. It’s almost the same thing as here;
just up here. Just try these double stops. Strum your A. Try that rhythm.
Real slow.
Thanks for watching and if you’re not on my email list already, please
make sure that you sign-up because we’ve got a lot of awesome stuff
coming at you. So check it out at guitarcontrol.com and I’ll catch you soon.
