How to Play “Lenny” by Stevie Ray Vaughan – Advanced Blues Guitar Chord Lesson w/ Jon Mclennan

Hey, how’s it going guys this is Jon McLennan with Guitar Control, bringing you this video lesson and today we’re looking at a blues in the key of E, this is based off Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “Lenny”. This tune just blows my mind, how amazing the guitar tone is, and every single lick is just a masterpiece for me.

I want to show you the first two opening chords and the interesting thing about this chord shapes, is that Stevie’s playing aren’t your typical blues chord progression chords. The 1st chord I’m going to play is an E major 13, it starts on the 7^th fret with second finger on the 6th string, and then go up to the 4^th string 6th fret, then 3rd string 8th fret, and then, on to the next two strings, my pinky is going to lay flat and get the 9th fret on the 2nd and 1st strings.

That’s the first chord E major 13, and that’s a really jazz chord lush voicing. One thing to note when I’m playing the context of the tune, when I have that e ringing, I’ll bring my second finger down and play the E note instead of playing the note on the 6th string. It’s just in the context of the tune that part’s ringing, but when you start out the tune you’ll get this real lush chord that’s actually rootless. There’s no E in this chord of course, the bass player comes in plays that note, so we’re just kind of staying out of his way, and playing the extensions.

The next chord is going to be an E major 6, this goes up to the 12^th fret with my second finger, and then 11th fret on the 4th string, 13th fret on the 3rd string, and 12^th fret on the 2nd string, and then the tricky part about this is you want to arc your fingers over so you dampen all the other strings so you can get a no open strings, just real shiny sounding cord. Notice I’m not in the neck pickup, but I’m just one click back on my strap that gets a real glassy tone, so the first two chords together sounds like this.

Then, you can play an open E and the harmonics in the 12th fret. The way you can do a harmonic is you just hold your first finger over the frets, you don’t push it down like you’re going to fret the note, you just touch the string to come into contact with it. Then you should be able to remove your hand and the notes. Then of course he gets Hendrix c double stop, Curtis Mayfield, Steve Cropper kind of playing, and that stuff is just so soulful, then the other section I played was the b section and that really is the same e6 chord but he moves it around arpeggiating the chord. Make sure to subscribe on our You Tube Channel and we’ll see you in our next video lessons, thanks for watching.

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