Learn to play some more fun and easy licks in the style of Mike Campbell with Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman, aka Uncle D. Mike Campbell is the guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and one of the unsung heros of the guitar. So get the free tabs and follow along with Uncle Ds instructional video and you will be rockin’ these classic licks tonight!
Introduction
How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing this video lesson and today I’ve got three more fun licks for you in the style of Mike Campbell.
So right now, Guitar Control is giving away this really awesome daily practice routine to improve your lead guitar chops. This was put together by our very own Silvio Gazquez, a two-time Guitar Idle finalist. This routine covers the four main concepts that are necessary for lead guitar; alternate picking, legato, sweep picking and tapping. All the tabs and exercises are all included in this free ebook and there’s a link in the description where you can get yours.
So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at these.
Mike Campbell Lick-1 – It’s Good To Be King
All right, so all of these examples we’re using are from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers songs. So this first one here to look at is a lick from It’s Good To Be King. So the whole thing about this is it’s just another pentatonic sequence idea. There’s one part in here that I mess up on a lot because he does it exactly opposite of how my hands naturally want to do it. So with this we are in E minor pentatonic, so we’re just using this first pattern here, pattern number one. So I’m on the 15th fret of the B string and I’m hitting this on the and of four; so it’s like one, two, three, four and… So we’re gonna hit this and bend it and it’s tied to the downbeat of one of the second measure and we do a full step bend and throw some vibrato on there. Now we’re gonna pick 15 and pull to 12, still on the B string, and we’re gonna pick 15 and 12 again, but this time we’re going to pick both of them; so we’ve got pick, pull, pick. Then we’re gonna go to the 14th fret on the G string and we’re going to do a bend and release to 12 and then to the 14th fret of the D string. So that’s like a Mike Campbellism right there, he does that kind of thing a lot. Then we’re gonna go back to the 12th fret on the G string and then to the 14th fret and then we’re gonna pick and again and bend and release… Then we’re going to go to the 12th fret on the B string to the 15th fret and then back to 12. So a lot of these sections in there where he’s picking everything and a way that you can kind of make it your own and take stuff from this is and change some of the stuff where maybe he’s picking everything to do hammer-ons or pull-offs or maybe there’s places where he does a hammer-on and you can change that to a pick or a slide. This is all just really kind of basic stuff out of the pentatonic and he is the absolute master of taking something that’s really simple and just making it sound awesome and it really serves the song… Okay so now we go to the 12th fret on the B string to the 15 back to 12 and then back to the G string and we’re going to pick 14 pull to 12 hammer to 14; that part right there I want to start on 12 and go 12 to 14 back to 12 and he does it the opposite. So then back to 12, 14 on the D string and then 14 on the G string and that’s another one of those cool rolling finger ideas. And then back to 12 and we’re going to do a quarter step bend so you want to pull this just a little to put a little stank on that note and then back to 14 on the D string with some vibrato… So if you really slow it down like that it just sounds like a really neat blues lick, but he does play that quite a bit quicker. On a lot of the older material from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers he did a lot of things that were faster than what he did later on.
Mike Campbell Lick-2 – Breakdown
All right, so the next one to look at is from Breakdown and this is one of my absolute favorites of his. I think this is just really awesome the way this is laid out and it’s really simple, but it’s so melodic and sounds so good; it’s just like a really kind of cool unique way to use the pentatonic scale. All right, so I’m going to start here on the 10th fret of the B string and I’m using my second finger. So I’m going to pick that and slide to eight and then back to ten. And then I’m going to follow that with the ninth fret on the G string with my first finger, and this is like one and, two and, three, and then on the downbeat of four we’re gonna do the same thing, but now it’s going to be on the G string. So I’m going to pick this nine, slide to seven, back to nine and then to seven on the D string… Okay, then we hit that seven there on the on the D string with some vibrato and that is coming in on the and of one and it’s a dotted quarter note so it’s the and of one plus all of beat two. And then starting on the downbeat of three, we ended here on the seventh fret on the D string, so we’re gonna pick that slide to five and back to seven… and then on the and of four to the seventh fret of the A string. So you can see we’ve got like a pattern here… Okay, so we hit that seven here, we’re hitting that on the and of four and then on the downbeat of one, well actually I’ll be one of the third measure it’s a rest and that’s going to give you just a second to come up to this next part. So we’re gonna do this kind of a rake thing on the downbeat of two. I’m just barring the fifth fret of the G, B and high E strings, but you don’t want like that… you want… I just kind of palm mute a little bit as I ascend it to make those notes softer. We’re going to hit that and then we’re going to go to the eighth fret on the B string and that’ll be on the and of two and it’s tied to a dotted quarter note so it’ll ring out through the downbeat of four and then on the and of four we come back to the fifth fret of the B string… Then we’re going to play the fifth fret of the B string again to the seventh fret of the G string… and then the sequence kind of starts over and has just a little bit of a different ending…
Mike Campbell Lick-3 – American Girl
All right, so the last one we are gonna look at, it’s on the very outro of American Girl and again you know it’s another way, in this case he’s playing something that’s a lot faster, but this is like actually not too hard to play quickly. So we’re gonna start here with your pinky on the 10th fret of the B string and then I just take my first finger and I just barre it across the seventh fret of the first three strings. You know we’re not playing the high E string, but just put it like that, and then we’re gonna pick ten pull to seven… and then follow that with the seventh fret of the G string. So we’ve got ten pull to seven, and then we’re going to take our middle finger and put it on the eighth fret and I do it as a down stroke; down, pull, up, down, pull, up… So that’s basically the sequence as far as the timing and the technique and then we’re just going to move it up a whole step. So now we’re picking 12 pulling to 9 and then 10 and each one of these sequences you repeat four times… Okay, so for the next one we’re going to move it up a step and a half so now first fingers can be barre 12 and pinky is going to be on 15, but we do have one slight difference here. So we’re gonna do the 15 pull to 12 and now instead of going 13 we’re going to go 14, so it’s going to be your third finger, so same technique. Then we’re going to move it up again a whole step from there so now we’re barring at 14, picking 17 and pulling to 14. And now we’re back to the original shape so it’s going to be a half step up on 15 with your middle finger and then the whole thing would just repeat…
Conclusion
All right, so there you have it, three more fun, not too terribly difficult licks to play in the style of Mike Campbell from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
