Guitar Tricks from the Jam Masters | Easy to Learn Video

Hey y’all Thanks so much for all the kind words and wishes… I really like the suggestion: “Secrets of the Jam Masters”… That kind of sums up what the course is all about — guitar tricks and secrets used by great jammin’ players like Dickey Betts, Jerry Garcia, Carlos Santana… Here’s another sample lesson from the DVDs… Hey, I’m Karan, welcome to my first DVD video. We’re going to have a whole bunch of fun exploring a bunch of different stuff. What you were just listening to was my nod to the Allmans and a little excursion in E major, and that’s the first stuff we’re going to be working with. So let’s go. I was playing against an E major, A major progression, very simple. Evocative of a certain southern rock band. And what I was doing was I was working in E major keys, E major scales, using the E major pentatonic, the E major scale itself and the chord tones from the E major. I’m going to show you a few examples of how you might utilize some of that and then I’ll play them for you in the context with the jam itself. The first one I’m going to show you is kind of a cascading thing using the E major pentatonic scale, starting at the octave. Then going to C sharp, then B, G sharp, F sharp, E, C sharp and then back up. So those are all the notes in the E major pentatonic scale and I’m just doing them in a descending fashion, making a little pattern. The second riff I’m doing more chord tones and the notes that I’m actually using are C sharp,E, G sharp, B, and I’m throwing in the A; it’s the [unintelligible – 02:14] in E. Resolving on that B. So those are all chord tones. You have a little bit more depth of harmony when you’re using the chord tones than you do when you’re using a pentatonic scale. And it uses a technique called ghosting where I’m going to take these three strings and I’m going to sweep across them in one motion. So I’ll get more notes in a smaller period of space than I normally would. That’s called a ghost. A little aside. As you’re working with the ghost, you’ll learn that you need to get ahold of a little muting with your right palm or all the notes ring out real sloppy. It will take a little time, but you’ll get used to it. So there’s the second lick. Okay, so I’m going to do another lick here. This is using basically the E major pentatonic scale again, but it’s slipping in a connecting note that you wouldn’t normally use, a chromatic note. So it goes something like this. Now, what I’m doing is I’m taking the F sharp note and bending it to G sharp and then A. Chromatically A sharp, B, same bend but starting from the bend, E, C sharp, B, resolving on the E.