How To Play The Blues Like Freddie King

Why I Suck... Series 2, Episode 4 - Freddie King Pt. II!

 And we revisit the Palace Of The King! In the original article I gave a potted history of Freddkie King's life and career, so we won't belabour that here... suffice it to say that by the time he was my age at the time of writing, Mr. King had 7 kids and been dead for a year, and it's hard to think that the two things weren't intertwined... and of course his habit of substituting Bloody Marys in lieue of actual meals can't have helped... anyway, let's dive straight into the style!

As a primarily pentatonic player, one of the key facets pf Freddie's style was an ability to deftly switch between minor and major pentatonic – I think one of the best examples of this comes in his “pop” hit, “I Would Rather Be Blind”, where he moves between G minor pentatonic for the fills in the verses and switches to E minor- the relative minor of G major – fo rthe bridge section, and he takes a lightly more elegant approach than simply shifting everything three frets back:

As you can see, the minor pentatonic (R b3 4 5 b7) and major pentatonic (R 2 3 5 6) do share some notes – the root and 5^th. Not just that, but the 2^nd and 6^th – the “sweet” notes – are located just a semitone below the b3 and b7 in the minor pentatonic, and the major 3rd can be accessed by bending the 2^nd up a tone.

Another noticeable aspect of his style is the way he would “change gear” by shifting to different pentatonic shapes – generally he would use shape 1 to create fills around the vocal, before moving to shape 2 to begin the solo. However, he doesn't always stay there – there's a nice contrary motion effect he gets by moving from shape 2 to shape 1 when the chord sequence moves to the IV. Check out this lick from “Me & My Guitar” to see this idea in action:

This lick works by targeting the 5^th of each chord – bending the A up to a B over the E chord, and then D up to E over the A chord, finishing up with a quarter tone tweak in between minor and major 3^rd over the E chord.

There's some neat turnaround work in the same track, following the chord pattern – B7, A7, E7, B7 – outlining the arpeggios and with some chromatic passing notes thrown in and using the open E minor pentatonic with a healthy dose of major 3^rd added.

An often overlooked part of Freddie's technique was his use of hybrid or fingerpicking to access wider interval jumps across strings, and there's an interesting example of this in “Just A Little Bit” - jumping from the D to the B strings and back again, before faking you out a little bit... just when you think he's about to resolve to the root (Bb) on the low E, he instead reaches out with his pick hand middle finger to pick the high E instead. It's a really interesting, quirky effect.

The same solo ends with a neat “tension and release” scale run – a long, held bend from the b7 up to the root providing the tension, and a flurry of pentatonic triplets providing the release – think of pulling back an elastic band and then letting go! Also, check out the way Freddie would weave pre-bends into the run, as well as the bluesy aggression caused by resolving the lick to the b7 instead of the root:

So, plenty to take away and play with from this month – just remember kids, a Bloody Mary is NOT A nutritional breakfast!

Next month, an internet legend and very possibly a serious coup.. let's keep those fingers crossed....

Shred Like Sophie Lloyd! A Style Analysis