Why I Suck... Series 5, Episode 12 - Randy Rhoads!

And once again we delve into the "Gone Too Soon" file..

According to guitar teaching legend Troy Grady, if you were learning guitar during the 1980s, you were in one of two camps - either a fan of Eddie Van Halen or Randy Rhoads. 

Now, being as my first abortive attempt at learning the guitar was in 1989 aged 12, I can neither confirm nor deny this theory - but it does make a good line ;-)

Eddie has already been covered in this blog, and I also covered legendary Ozzy sideman and solo artist Zakk Wylde back at the end of 2023, so for the final month of 2024 (Christ that feels weird to write!) I decided to go right back to the start of Ozzy's career and tackle the very first player to occupy one of the most legendary guitar spots in the whole of rock and metal - Randy Rhoads.

Born December 6th 1956 in Santa Monica, California as the youngest of three children to music teacher parents, young Randy began playing the guitar aged just six. His father had left and remarried when Randy was just 17 months old, and faced with the need to support her family, his mother Dolores opened her own music school in North Hollywood, drawing on her experience as a professional pianist and bachelor's degree in music.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Randy was a shy and introverted child, practicing guitar religiously and quickly became highly proficient - lacking a stereo, the three children would create their own music in the house.

Moving into his teenage years, Randy became entranced by artists like Alice Cooper, the Scorpions and Leslie West from Mountain and began teaching himself the licks he heard, particularly on the bootleg recordings that were popular with the time. After a couple of early bands Randy and high school friend Kelly Garni formed Quiet Riot - at this point, Randy had graduated high school and was teaching at his mother's music school, and it was during this period that Ozzy Osbourne had quit Black Sabbath and had come to Los Angeles to form a new band. 

There is some.. confusion.. in Ozzy's accounts of the audition process, but what is undeniable fact is that Randy was hired and joined the band for Blizzard of Ozz in 1979. Tragically, his life would be cut short three years later aged just 25 in a hideous - and it would seem, completely avoidable - plane accident, and the guitar world lost an incredible talent.

I set myself the rough goal of transcribing the whole of the Blizzard Of Ozz album and, thanks in part to having already done Crazy Train a few years back, managed it! So this is where we'll be drawing this month's licks from. So buckle up and brace yourselves, there's a lot to get through!

OK, let's begin with "Crazy Train" - this lick is the fill Randy plays at the end of the first chorus, primarily based around F# minor pentatonic but incorporating elements of the blues scale and the natural minor.

On the face of it, this could be a Jimmy Page / Angus Young pentatonic widdle blitz (not that there's anything wrong wiith that), but when you look closer you notice Randy leaning heavily on the b6 (D) and making repeated use of the b5 (C) at the end of the lick. This is a great way of spicing up licks and runs you already know - try this in different keys, and try making it fit the Dorian (R 2 b3 4 5 6 b7) and Phrygian modes (R b2 b3 4 5 b6 b7) too (I'll show what I mean in the demo video). Most likely, Randy would have developed this by replicating pentatonic lines and "tweaking" them to contain notes from more exotic scales - this is a great technique to try out.

Moving away from scalar passages for a moment, this second example taken from "Mr Crowley" shows Randy using an arpeggio idea (similar to Hotel California or Hendrix's "Axis") to outline the Dm - Bb - F - C chord sequence:

He then follows this up with a couple of trills involving the b2 (Eb) and a tremolo picked passage based around an E diminished 7th (R b3 b5 bb7 - E G Bb Db)  arpeggio with the b2 and b7 added for extra dissonance, before finishing off with a band from the E to the F and back again as the chord moves to C, thus targeting the 3rd to resolve the line. 

Trills seem to have been an important part of Randy's signature neoclassical approach, and this next example taken from "Revelation (Mother Earth)" illustrates this:

This track revolves around an Em - B chord progression that we can view as based in E harmonic minor (R 2 b3 4 5 b6 7 - E F# G A B C D#) and trilling his way up that scale across two octaves before finishing with a Bach-style pedal tone idea, playing the A, G and F# notes against the high B on the 19th fret. 

Now, I've saved the best til last with the final example. Taken from "Steal Away The Night", this is based around an E diminished 7th arpeggio - R b3 b5 bb7, E G Bb Db.

Randy starts by sequencing his way across the arpeggio in groups of 3 with a triplet rhythm - again, taking traditional classic rock rhythmic phrasing, but with a twist in the note selection - before going into a "Magic 3 Notes" style hammer/pull idea which he then moves up the neck symmetrically in intervals of a minor third (3 frets). This fits together beautifully because the whole premise of a diminished 7th chord is that it's stacked minor 3rds (thus you could see the arpeggio as G, Bb or Db diminished 7th, but I chose E because METAL).

There's a thread I see with Randy's playing on this album of him trying to forge his own identity by taking some of the pentatonic/blues vocabulary of the 60s & 70s and being more adventurous with his note choices, trying to blend blues-rock rhythmic phrasing with classical note choices, and I think I'm going to have to coime back and transcribe the follow up "Diary Of A Madman" to see how this developed.. but seeing this somehow makes his untimely death all the more tragic as it's clear he was just finding his feet as a musician at this point, and what he could have gone on to accomplish can only be guessed at. 

Join me next month for a (relatively) unsung guitar genius who is thankfully still with us (and long may that continue!) as we investigate one of my personal Guitar Crushes - Neil Zaza!

 

Why I Suck, And What I'm Doing About It... Series 6, The Grand Plan!!

 Another year over, and what have you done?

Well, quite a lot as it goes - All of SRV's 3rd album Soul II Soul, the first half of Electric Ladyland, a shedload of Steel Panther, some classic Queen, The Darkness' classic "Permission To Land" and now "Blizzard Of Ozz"!

All that (and more) can be found in previous posts here on the blog and the now rather more established YouTube Channel... but that's 2024, and 2024 is now (unbelievably) the past.. so what of the future? 

Right, here we go, SPOILER ALERT... this is The Plan for 2025!

January - Neil Zaza II (as his first blog post didn't get a video... and I just have massive Guitar Crush on this guy!)

February - Chuck Berry (Hail Hail Rock & Roll!)

March - Robben Ford

April - Stevie Ray Vaughan (In Step)

May - Danny Gatton

June - Rory Gallagher II (commemorating 30 years since his untimely death at 47.... my current age!)

July - Hendrix (Finishing Electric Ladyland)

August - Charlie Christian (dipping my toe in jazz...)

September - Roy Buchanan

October - Joe Bonamassa II (Finishing up Live At The Greek)

November - Billy Gibbons

December - Johann Sebastian Bach, and yes I know he isn't a guitarist. But his work has influenced countless musicians, including Yngwie and Paul GIlbert, and if it's good enough for them then I should damn well give it a look!

So there we go, blues, jazz, rock & roll, rock & classical.. should be an interesting year! 

As always, thanks to all who support the blog and the channel, I hope you find this stuff useful - see you in 2025!

Why I Suck... Series 5, Episode 11 - Steve Lukather!

 In the slew of guitar heroes dating from the late 70s and 80, there is one name that seems to come up time and time again - not always the guy doing the spotlight solo necessarily, but the guy setting the stage, structuring the song, putting together the perfect part under enormous pressure and then getting it in one take...

..and that name (as you've probably guessed) is Steve Lukather. Whether you're a fan of mega-band Toto and the amazing guitar acrobatics which he could regularly perform with them, or a fan of his multifaceted successful solo career, or you own any of the thousands of records Lukather has played on over the years, it's impossible to draw any conclusion other than that Steve Lukather is one hell of a guitar player.

I first came across him when learning "Rosanna" for the band I was in at the time and there was something about the combination of melody, bluesy attitude and chromatic quirkiness that really resonated with me.. I even owned a Musicman Luke signature series for a time (predating the acquisition of the Green Special). So you won't be surprised to hear I've been looking forward to this one.

So, presented for your delectation are four of the choicest licks I've come across this month from transcribing Toto solos (and I'm pretty sure Rosanna is a good candidate for a Five Minute Solo video lesson) - but first, as is csutomary, a little potted history:

Born October 21 1957 in California's beautiful San Fernando valley, the infant Steve played around with drums and keyboards but it was only when given a cheap Kay guitar and a copy of "Meet The Beatles" aged 7 that he began to teach himself guitar, stating in interviews that it was George Harrisons' solo on "I Saw Her Standing There" that piqued his interest and made him want to play.

During the early 1970s, while at high school, Lukather was taking lessons with noted jazz and swing guitarist Jimmy Wyble, and became interested in the idea of a career as a session musician - it was also during this period that he met the musicians who would become the founding members of Toto, including Mike Porcaro. Already an established musician playing drums for Steely Dan, he quickly became Lukather's mentor, and after Lukather did his frst session for Boz Scaggs in 1973, he was asked to join Toto when it formed in 1976 and went on to have a long and successful career with them, right up to the present day as they are touring again in 2025.

So, a little historical context now given, let's check out some licks!

This first one is from "Animal" in C#m and illustrates my favourite elements of Lukathers' playing - his ability to decorate basic pentatonic phrases with just the right amount of chromaticism without ever quite going overboard:

Here, we're starting in basic Box 3 C# minor pentatonic at the 14th fret, jazzed up with lashing of chromatic passing tones before moving a minor 3rd shape chromatically down the G and B strings and finishing off with a whammy bar enhanced run down the scale finishing on the 5th (G#).

But it's not just outside note choices that can spice up familiar phrases. In this lick taken from "Carmen" in Em, Steve does a neat trick in the descending E minor sequence, playing a four note melodic grouping in a triplet rhythmic grouping, resulting in the "hemiola" effect.

 We've spoken about before in this blog, where a different note from the sequence fall son the beat each time. What's particularly cute here is that it's generally heard the other way around - a three note melodic grouping played in a two or four note rhythmic grouping (think the widdly bit from Free's "Alright Now" solo, or basically ANY BRITPOP SOLO EVER).

Even a guitarist as proficient as Lukather isn't above using the Magic Three Notes from time to time, and this next solo from "Gril Goodbye" illustrates - Steve takes the concept onto the B & E strings, but the basic idea is still intact, tarted up with a bend and a pull off  - pulling back the spring before letting go into a chromatically-enhanced (there's a good way to describe his playing!) F#m pentatonic flurry.

Note the climactic pre-bend and finishing note B - Steve knows the next chord is Em so targets the 5th, giving a feeling of anticipation before the last part of the solo.

For all his enviable command of the flash stuff though, Steve knows when to dial it back and let the melody take centre stage, something he does to great effect on "I Think I Could Stand You Forever" in A Mixolydian (think D major scale notes but played from the A).

Here, Lukather articulates the verse vocal melody using slides, limiting himself to tasteful embellishments in the last couple of bars (the two mini-trills) and finishing on a rather lyrical bend/pull-off/hammer-on combination with a bend up to the E - again, the 5th of the underlying chord. A satisfying resolution, but one less... obvious than going back to the root.

As always, the deeper I go into these players styles, the more I find to admire - I think I could stand to transcribe Mr. Lukather forever! 

Keep an eye out for the "Licks Of The Legends" video on the YouTube channel  and see you next month for another 80s icon, the awesome Randy Rhoads!

Why I Suck... Series 5, Episode 10 - The Darkness!

 Sometimes a band just comes straight out of nowhere and before you know where you are, they're everywhere - radio, TV, festivals, guitar magazines.

So it was in 2003 when the Darkness appeared seemingly out of the ether (in fact, rather more prosaically, Norfolk) - and the music world was alight with spangly catsuits, ear melting falsettos, Gibson Les Pauls and (crucially) PROPER BIG GUITAR SOLOS!

Suddenly, we had a brand new 21st century guitar hero in the shape of a gangly skinny young chap by the name of Justin Hawkins, gleefully embracing all the over the top silliness and flamboyance that makes rock & roll FUN again. 

Not just that, but they could PLAY. PROPERLY play. 

"Permission To Land" was on more or less permanent rotation in my car for a good few months back then and pretty much every band I've been in since has done - or at least attempted - a version of their breakthrough smash hit "I Believe In A Thing Called Love", so to lighten the transition into the winter months, I figured it would be fun to take a dive into the guitar styles of the Hawkins boys and transcribe the whole thing - and this time, I managed it! 

First, as is customary, a little potted history - The Darkness formed in Lowestoft in 2000, but both Hawkins brothers Justin born 1975, Dan in 1976 - began learning guitar at a very young age. Justin also began developing his signature vocal pyrotechnics and flashier guitar skills - heavily influenced by Queen's Freddie Mercury and Brian May respectively - but it wa Dan who actually found success first as a session guitarist (including for 90s pop queen Natalie Imbruglia) after moving to Camden before the Darkness formed.

The pair recall frequently moving through the local music scene as a pair, often with Justin adapting to vocals and keyboards as well as lead guitar while Dan would frequently turn his hand to bass and drums as well as rhythm guitar. It was only really with The Darkness that the pair would attempt the twin guitar attack which they would describe as influenced by Guns & Roses, AC/DC and Thin Lizzy, with harmonised lines and call/response phrases between the different guitars.

Sadly, after "Permission To Land" the band couldn't quite recapture their previous success with follow up album "One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back"  and the former members went their separate ways, Justin struggling with substance abuse and rehab issues - however, they reformed in 2013 and have continued with consistently successful tours and releases ever since.

So, with the history lesson complete, rev up the fingers and the Les Pauls and let's take a look at some licks!

We'll start with a Dan Hawkins solo - the lead break in "Get Your Hands Off My Woman". This track is in D minor but modulates to G minor for the solo:

We kick off with a rhythmically displaced group of pull-offs to the open G and D strings - 4 then two groups of 6. Interestingly, this begins by spelling out a Gm7 arpeggio - G, Gb, D, F - and then Dan moves up to the B note on the 4th fret G to spell out a G7 - G B D F. He follows this with a spot of Chuck Berry style double stop and string bending using G minor pentatonic, before ending with a climactic series of unison bends finishing with the D note on the 10th fret E and 13th fret B as the song modulates back to it's original key of D minor.

Dan Hawkins is undeniably a fine guitar player, but it's his elder brother Justin who does most of the flash stuff - interestingly, open strings form a big part of his style, blended with the repicked bends, major scale legato and singing vibrato clearly influenced by Brian May. This next lick is the climactic (using that word alot in this post...) open string run from the end solo in "I Believe In A Thing Called Love", using the E major scale pulled off against the open E (with the exception of the final D note bent up to E.. but I think we can forgive that as a Les Paul only has 22 frets!).

The third example comes from the end solo in "Love Is Only A Feeling" in D major and here Justin is using a long slippery legato line down the D string before finishing off with a very tasty bit of rhythmically displaced tapping. He tops it all off with a climactic (there's that word again) bend on the 22nd fret B string, bending the A (5th) into the B (6th) - which we can also view as the root note of the relative minor (B minor). Don't worry unduly about following the tab exactly as it's much more about getting the rhythmic idea with the fretting hand and then adding a melody with the right.

The final example shows Justin taking on a very Brian May trick of basing a solo around the vocal melody - this is from the intro solo to "Holding My Own" again in D major, using the D major scale and starting with the D major/ B minor pentatonic scale shape, finishing with a sliding sequence down the D major scale and (dare I use the word again? Yes, I dare... it's The Darkness, after all!) climaxing with a repicked bend milked with vibrato from the E on the 9th fret G into the F#, the 3rd of the home key.

So that wraps up a thoroughly enjoyable look at one of the few classic rock icons that the 21st century has yet produced - strange to think that 2003 is now equidistant between 2024 and 1982! Just goes to show how age plays with your perception of time... but I'll be quite happy if they blast this out in whatever old folk's home I wind up in ;-)  

Why I Suck.. Series 5, Episode 9 - Jeff Healey!

 It's a theme I've noticed over the years running this series that all too often, incredible talent is fused with heartbreaking tragedy. The untimely deaths of Hendrix and SRV are well known, but regular readers will have read the same fate with Freddie King, Gary Moore, Rory Gallagher and Shawn Lane..  amazing musicians gone long before their time. And this, sadly was also the fate  of Canadian blues virtuoso Jeff Healey.

To be fair, Jeff's entire life story reads as if it were written by the blues itself. Born March 25th, 1966 in Ontario, Canada, Jeff was adopted (so, for whatever reason, abandoned by birth parents) - and then before he was even one year old, he contracted retinoblastoma, a rare form of eye cancer leading to his eyes having to be surgically removed.. you couldn't make this up. 

Despite this start in life, the young Jeff began playing guitar aged 3, developing his characteristic approach of laying the instrument flat on his lap and reaching over it with his fret hand. During his primary school years he attended a boarding school for blind children and by aged 9 made his first TV appearance on the TVOntario children's programme "Cucumber". By 1979, at 13, he was performing in local rock bands and by 1984, aged 18 and attending Etobicoke Collegiate, he was playing with the Canadian Stage Band All Stars. 

Influenced by Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy and Albert Collins - as well as jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong - Jeff was fast building himself a reputation as a blues prodigy and in 1985 was invited to join Albert Collins and Stevie Ray Vaughan on stage at Toronto Albert's Hall. That same year he would form the Jeff Healey band and release "See The Light" which was subsequently used in the Patrick Swayze '80s classic action movie, "Roadhouse". This was Jeff's breakthrough moment, culminating with the major hit "Angel Eyes" which made No. 5 in the Billboard Top 100. 

The Jeff Healey Band had a consistently successful run through the 90s, and in 2000 Healey began to focus more on jazz, forming the Jazz Wizards, but ultimately cancer would come back to haunt him in 2007 and in 2008, aged just 41 he was dead of sarcoma. 

So a cruel start, and a cruel end, but he certainly accomplished an incredible amount with the short time he had. Stories like that serve to kick things very much into perspective - and also to serve as inspiration. So it seems a fitting way to memorialise an incredible talent and will by analysing Jeff's playing and stealing whatever we can!

The first two examples are from the breakout hit "See The Light", a funky 12 bar blues in D minor, and Jeff is absolutely on fire in the solos here. This first example is drawn from position 4 of D minor pentatonic (which you can visualise as being based around an A minor shape Dm chord) up at the 17th fret, kicking off with a powerful whole tone bend from C (b7) to root (D) on the high E string, followed by a blistering run through the scale positions' top three strings in a demonstration of tension and resolution. The really interesting part is Jeff's deft control of string bending in the second bar - bending from the G (4th) on the 20th fret B string up to first the Ab (b5 from the blues scale) before resolving to the A (5th). This control of the intricacies of string bending brings to mind Albert King as a powerful influence on his playing.

In this second example we can see Healey using a fairly stock "3 Magic Notes" based format but adding the root notes on the 10th fret E and 12th fret D - notice his use of rhythmic displacement, playing the same phrase in different parts of the bar to ensure that different notes fall on the beat - often creating the illusion of there being more going on there than there actually is! - a trick we've seen before on the blog called a hemiola. The stars of the show here though are the chromatic passing notes, Healey navigating his way through the scale using the intervening notes for flavour - because they're not held long enough to grab the attention, they're only really sensed in passing by the listener, adding "grease" to the core D minor pentatonic notes.

This third example is taken from the ballad "Angel Eyes" in C and Jeff is milking the C major / A minor pentatonic scale in position 4 around the 12th fret. This ideas really hangs on bending the 2nd (D, 15th fret B string) into the major 3rd (E) before resolving down to the 5th (G, 12th fret G string) with some singing vibrato, before making his way down through position 3 of the scale  in the second half of the lick and finally coming to rest on the root C (10th fret D string). This creates the effect of a question and answer/ call and response phrase, the 5th  leaving the listener hanging (similar to how Albert King would use it) before finally coming to rest on the root. This is an interesting concept and on the demonstration video I'll show you a couple of ways you can bring this into your playing.

The fourth example is really two separate call and response ideas taken from Jeff's cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" played around the vocal line in the second chorus (where the song modulates from A minor to A major). In the first lick, we're focusing on a D-shaped A arpeggio with the addition of the 4th for a sus4-major resolution and an unusual bend from 5th (E, 9th fret G) up to 6th (F#)  before ending on the 3rd (C#, 11th fret D). The second lick revolves around position 2 of F#m/ A major pentatonic, focusing on the repetition with variation of the F#-G# C# E idea, varying articulation and timing (I'll be able to demonstrate this better n the video), before concluding with a dramatic slide up to the A note (root) on the 10th fret B. 

Although I've focused on Jeff's blues based playing, he also was an exceptional jazz player, and I think we'll be returning to take a look at that facet of his playing before long... meanwhile, dust off the catsuit and the Les Paul Custom, warm up that falsetto... as we shine a light on The Darkness!

Why I Suck... Series 5, Episode 8 - Allan Holdsworth!

 Forget Buckethead. Never mind Satriani, Vai, Eric Johnson & Paul Gilbert, or even Brent Mason - THIS was the single most intense (guitar playing) challenge I've ever encountered.

The name Allan Holdsworth may lack the widespread appeal of a Clapton, Hendrix or Slash but those of you interested in the higher technical end of guitar playing will recognise as being synonymous with an absolutely ferocious level of musicianship and technique, with a harmonic vocabulary so advanced as to practically seem like magic. 

And I, foolish mortal that I am, decided I was going to spend a month learning and analysing his licks to see what I could learn, perhaps absorb some of his style and incorporate it into my own.....

Hubris. That's what this was. Pure, unalloyed, hubris. BUT - I think it's important to share this, because when you're learning any sort of skill, it's not going to be 100% smooth sailing all the way. You're going to hit obstacles, you're going to - bluntly - fail. And that's what happened here. Just because I've been playing 30 years (!?!) doesn't mean I know everything, not by a long shot.

But to quote a small green wise individual, "the greatest teacher, failure is" - so even an experience like this is a chance to learn - more on that later! For now, as is customary, let us look at a (very) brief potted history..

Born in Bradford on Augist 6 1946 and raised, by his maternal grandparents - grandfather Sam was a jazz pianist - Allan received his first guitar at.... 17?????

Right, that's it, I assumed he'd started aged no more than 3... so I have no excuse! 

Sigh.

Having now received a guitar, young Allan was tutored by grandfather Sam and began a career around the Yorkshire club circuit in the mid 1960s, making his recorded debut with  'Igginbottom in 1969 on the album 'Igginbottom's Wrench, which I present here for your perusal..

https://youtu.be/zgzIPSF6rbY?si=yov9_8J7ChkazjJu

This is fascinating, as you can hear Allan's atonal jazz approach and the proto version of his incredible legato technique already present, before it became honed to such phenomenal effect later on.

He continued a successful - if somewhat niche -solo career through the 70s with bands like UK and Soft Machine, but got a fairly major career boost in 1985 after releasing the album I.O.U when none other than Eddie Van Halen brought it to the arttention of Warner Bros, and Holdsworth left his native Yorkshire for South California.. unfortunately the collaboration with Warner didn't last, but Holdsworth was able to sign to the Enigma record label and released his next album, "Metal Fatigue" - he would continue a successful - albeit, once again, niche - solo career to his eventual death in 2017.

So with a very brief overview of his life and times, what about the playing? 

Well, as with Brian May, looking at licks in isolation is going to miss the point a bit, so let's begin with a couple of his signature approaches, particularly with scales.

Holdsworth would describe his approach as trying to move beyond conventional scale fingerings, instead viewing a scale across the whole fretboard and finding different "pathways" through it. So for exxample, if we were to look at a C major scale (C D E F G A B) we would start on the E as that's the lowest accessible note - frequently Holdsworth would take a 4 note per string approach, so that would mean in this case:

 E F G A along the E string

B C D E along the A sring

F G A B along the D string

C D E F along the G string

G A B C along the B string

D E F G along the high E string followed by a position shift and then A B C D with a bend to the high E.

Some of you are looking at that and thinking "that's E Phrygian - YOU FOOL", and you're both right and wrong, as it really depends where you resolve to and the context - for instance, over an Em and resolving to an E absolutely will create an E Phrygian vibe, whereas over a C will just mean you're in C major and resolving to the chords 3rd.

It's possible to use a sequencing approach (3s demonstrated in the video  and tabbed here):

but Holdswoth doesn't really do that, preferring to use legato - hammer ons, pull-offs and slides particularly - to flow around the neck. So I'd advise practicing this approach "finding your way" through the notes rather than trying to stick rigidly to a set fingering pattern.

Holdsworth applied a similarly holistic approach to chords, looking at the notes of a particular chord and then mapping out every possible combination. He seems to have had a particular antipathy for the major 7 chord, so let's take a look at a C major 7 - R 3 5 7, C E G B.

If we build this chord from a C, we get the potential combinations of:

C E G B    C E B G    C G B E    C G E B    C B E G   C B G E 

leading to the fingerings below:

Now do this for every note in the chord - start from the E, then the G, then the B. 

Then do this for EVERY CHORD.

Now you understand why it's possible to look upon an Allan Holdsworth transcription and simply go mad with fear.

The final two examples are taken from "Proto Cosmos"  - that's it, all I was able to manage all monoth was two minutes of a single track - and the first is the ind of thing that could work quite nicely over a blues in E or B, featuring a nice mix of a six note box B Mixolydian for the legato flurries before resolving to the D - b7 over the E, b3 over the B. Shunt everything up a semitone and you could even stick that over the top of "Mustang Sally"!

Finally we'll take a look at a typically Holdsworthian "outside lick" - although something like this is so insanely harmonically dense as to basically be impossible to analyse, I think it's worth pointing out the use of the b3 (D) to begin with, the symmetrical shifting finger patterns in the second bar, and the final resolution to the F# (5th), illustrating a prime principle of - start and end with a chord tone and end with a chord tone, and you can get away with damn near anything in between!

So, to sum up, this has been a slog this month. Not to detract from the enthralling brilliance of Holdsworth's playing - the fact is, I simply dropped myself into the deep end far too soon. So, the plan is to look at some of the players Holdsworth namechecked as influences (including jazz legend Charlie Christian), and then start with transcribing "Igginbottom's Wrench", and from there try and follow his progress chronologically.. I think that's the best way forward!

Next month, we'll be looking at the fiery blues playing of another gone-too-soon blues legend, the incredible Jeff Healey! Stay tuned, don't forget to #LikeShareSubscribe to the YouTube channel ;-)

 

Why I Suck... Series 5, Episode 7 - Jimi Hendrix, "Electric Ladyland" Pt. 1

 And we are back with probably the most iconic guitarist since the electric guitar was invented - say what you want, but when anyone - even a normie - compares anything or anyone to Jimi Hendrix, you straight away know that that is a high bar to clear.

For me, I've been all over the place with Jimi since I started playing - from straight up not "getting" what the fuss was about, to be being flat out obsessed by, before levelling out to what I hope is a more considered position as someone who (in technique terms, at least) may not be in the same league as a Malmsteen, Vai, Satriani etc., but as someone who made a massive contribution to the electric guitar in its early years, redefined and hugely expanded the boundaries of what was considered possible with the instrument, and someone who still has plenty to teach a player who chooses to drill down deeply into his recorded works.

Since I refocused the blog for 2020, Jimi has cropped up every year along with SRV - giving you a pretty good idea of my influences as a guitar player - from a look at his blues days, to transcribing "Are You Experienced" and in 2023 "Axis: Bold As Love", so it was no surprise that this year I set myself the goal of transcribing all of "Electric Ladyland".. yeah. Someone forgot that EL was a double album, someone never bothered to  heck that it has two tracks that are each 15 minutes long, and that someone, ladies and gentlemen.. was me. 

So, I'm dividing this into two halves, with a view to finishing EL in 2025 (unless of course Putin has other plans for us all...) and I'm going to have to say... I'm not an unqualified fan. AYE was full of the "Holy crap, I can't believe we're doing this" enthusiasm of a band in their first flush of success, "Axis.." is (although lacking a little in guitar solo moments) a pretty tightly edited and focused album of great pop songs (mostly) written by a chap who just happens to be an incredible guitar player. By comparison, EL is what happens when nobody says no to you.

Don't get me wrong, the high points - "All Along the Watchtower", "Voodoo Chile" - are INCREDIBLE, even now, and there are some earworm tracks that are slow burn growers - "Long Hot Summer Nights", " Little Miss Strange" - but there is a lot of indulgence, tracks with no obvious structure or hook that I honestly think would have been edited out of the previous two albums - "Have You Ever Been To Electric Ladyland", "1983 A Merman I Should Turn To Be".

Certainly, reading accounts of how the album was recorded mirror some elements of SRV's "Soul To Soul" - excessive drug use, increasing detachment from reality, a record company enabling all the excess ad indulgence because they know damn well anything emblazoned with the right name will sell regardless... it's hard not to be a little bit cynical about the commercial imperative but also hard not to think "Jimi- you knew better". Certainly fellow Experience members Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell found themselves incresingly isolated from the recording process, exacerbating tensions within the band, hence why EL was the final Jimi Hendrix Experience album. 

Your mileage may vary of course - and if it happens to be your favourite Hendrix album then fair play, I can see the appeal even if it's not necessarily for me...

But, however you look at it, it's a Hendrix album. Which means there is some phenomenal guitar playing on it... so let's take a look at some of it!

Let's start with the absolutely epic blues jam tht is "Voodoo Chile" - at 15 minutes long, this an absolute smorgasbord of E minor pentatonic blues licks - as anyone who follows the YouTube channel will be aware - and this one is a corker, about 12 minutes 30 seconds in, and shows Jimi in full on pedal to the metal mode:

E minor pentatonic (naturally) and this shows Jimi really milking a repeating pattern based around the 3 Magic Notes concepts (students of mine will recognise that) brought up on to the E and B strings - notice first the duynamic nature, Hendrix building tension with a held bend (D - b7 - into E - root), before into a flurry of repeating pentatonics before finishing with an even bigger bend, G (b3) bent into A (4th) and actually going slightly past the target pitch for the feel of the note going almost out of the atmosphere and into orbit!

Notice too the timings - 5 note groups on the first bar (use a 5 syllable workd like "opportunity" to keep yourself in time here) before developing into a blistering sequence of 32nd note ("helicopterhelicopter, helicopterhelicopter" ) - fans of Zakk Wylde might recll him doing a similar trick on the "No More Tears" guitar solo climax section.

In a s similar vein, here's a section nicked from the solo to "Come On (Let The Good Times Roll)" - again, E minor pentatonic, but Hendrix is mixing in the open strings - I should mention that this gets a little messy in place as Jimi really was gunning it and hoping for the best, so I've tabbed what I believe to be the "intended" lick:

Notice the mix of bends going on here - whole tone, half tone, amd pre-bend and the slightly unusual venture up to position 3 of the minor pentatonic as Jimi bends the 19th fret high E - although I suspect he was probably visualising the kind of E minor arpeggio we heard on Axis: Bold As Love.

The last bar contains one of his signature "up/down bends" that are all over Electric Ladyland, bending up on the 15th fret B, catching the G at the 14th fret and sounding the pre-brend as you bring the string down - if that sounds complicated, don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds and I'll be demonstrating how to do this in the upcoming video!

On the subject of arpeggios, these seem to have been increasingly becoming a part of Jimi's style, as they crop up towards the end of "Little Miss Strange", tracing the chord sequence Gb - Ab - Bb using second inversion shape (5 R 3) and colouring the basic triad by adding in the 4th and 3nd:

So if you've ever wondered where Yngwie got the idea from, wonder no more....

The last example is taken from the start of the solo to "Long Hot Summer Nights" using the Eb minor pentatonic and again based on the Magic Three Notes, but again, look at the string bending - whole tone, quarter tone (in between minor and major 3rd), repeated unison bend and then a classic blues/rock pentatonic run in the final bar concluding on the root note.

So we'll wrap things up there- yes, I know I haven't touched on "Voodoo Child (Slight Retun)" but I'm saving that for a more in depth video... although YouTube is not exactly short on tutorials on how to play that! Meanwhile I hope you enjoy playing through the examples, make sure to check in on the YouTube channel for the demonstration video (not for getting to like, share & subscribe - past 1000 now!) and I'll see you next month for... 

...brace yourself...

..Allan Holdsworth!