Hey, how’s it going guys this is John McLennan with Guitar Control, bringing you this video lesson and teaching you how to play The Riff from “Missile Blues” by Wes Montgomery. It’s a great blues in the key of g and starts out with this awesome riff.
Check the image above to follow the chords and tabs.
We’re going to start on the fifth fret of the fifth string and were going to play that note d, and then we move up to g on the fourth string. The first note and the next note, now I’m going to play a g minor triad, next the top three strings we’ve got one, two, three, those are kind of short and then back down to the root, here’s your g minor triad back down in the root, and then I lay my third finger flat and bar. All top three strings on the first, second, and third strings, and back to three, three, three, just a real nice blue sound there.
Now, notice I’m using my thumb not using a pick, I hide my pick a lot of times in between my fingers like this, but Wes was all no pick you have that kind of sound where he just gets a real warm tone with his thumb. Really fun sound to experiment with, a lot of times I’ll just hide my pick there and if I want to play that for a short time, you see immediately when I go to the pick it doesn’t have that Wes warm tone.
To finally conclude the rest of this riff, we’re going to play an octave on the fifth fret and the third fret, I’m going to use my thumb to dampen all those strings and if you don’t have to use your thumb, you can use how Wes, would play the octaves. Try it or if you want to use a pick it immediately kind of cuts through a little more, but I really dig that warm sound of course. Be sure to subscribe on our YouTube Channel and we’ll see you on our next video lessons.
