Why I Suck... Series 3, Episode 11 - Stevie Ray Vaughan Pt. III

 The weather out there is frightful.. but playing the blues can be so delightful... and we find ourselves taking another look at the unmistakeable style of the one and only Stevie Ray Vaughan! Last year I polished off the remaining tracks on his debut album “Texas Flood”, as well as the utterly gorgeous “Little Wing”, so this year I cracked on with his second studio album with Double Trouble, 1984's “Couldn't Stand The Weather”.

This album saw SRV start to experiment with grooves and styles distinct from the 12 bar format more so than on “Texas Flood”, most notably with the title track, but also included a pedal to the metal cover of Hendrix's “Voodoo Chile” along with an absolutely epic 9 minute minor blues in the shape of “Tin Pan Alley” and some startlingly convincing jazz work on “Stan's Swang” - and of course let's not overlook the absolutely blistering open string work on the opening track “Scuttle Buttin'” that famously even had Metallica's Kirk Hammett shaking in his boots!

We've already covered the history of SRV's tragically cut short life in his first entry here so I'll let you go back and reread that (and this one) – meanwhile let's take a deep dive into some of the playing on this album!

For the first example, I've outlined the riff to “Scuttle Buttin'” - well, I couldn't leave this out, could I? Here you're dealing with the open string blues scale and don't discount the difficulty open strings present – quite often this sees players struggle wth their hand synchronisation as the picking hand is working while the fretting hand isn't, so go slowly and you may find that making small “micro movemets” with the fret hand while you're picking theopen strings can help alleviate this problem. Also, SRV would regularly switch articulation between bends, slides and pull offs so feel free to experiment with the basic shape of the riff. I'll be expanding on this in the demo video.

In this second example, we're taking a look at an often-overlooked aspect of SRVs playing – his rhythm work. Although feted – rightly – as a brilliant lead player, SRV had a phenomenal sense of groove and in the rhythm figure for the title track “Couldn't Stand The Weather” Stevie Ray got his groove on and then some. We can summarise the harmony as being roughly a Dm7 – but check out everything going on here, octaves, muted 16ths, bends.. this is a terrific riff to work those rhythm chops up to speed. Essential here is keeping your pick hand moving in a constant 16^th note rhythm, just moving it away from the strings to create gaps in the rhythm and using fret hand muting to keep the chord voicings clean and free from unwanted open strings ringing out and messing up the clarity of the part.

The third example is taken from the cover of Eddie Jones' “Things (That) I Used To Do” in the key of G and of particular note here is SRV's use of the 2^nd (A) above the usual minor pentatonic/ blues scale note palette, used in the turnaround to imply the V chord – in this case, a D7, of which A is the chords' 5^th. There's a lovely bit of chromaticism here as well, A-Ab-G, all connected by a wonderfully greasy slide/pull off combination.

For our final example, we'll turn our attention to “Tin Pan Alley” by Robert Geddins which gave SRV the chance to showcase just what he could do with a slow minor key blues (in C minor, specifically). There is an absolute truckload of great playing to choose from here – I've picked a lick that comes in about 1.50, utilising the 2^nd position blues scale (you may also recognise the Dm-shape Cm arpeggio shape inside that pattern) and also brings in the 6^th from the major pentatonic (A). This creates a neat diminished 7 arpeggio – C, Eb (b3 from the blues scale), Gb (b5 from the blues scale and A – C Eb Gb A, R b3 b5 bb7. Theres some wonderfully delicate legato work here too, and check out the hybrid picked double stop to finish off as SRV resolves the b5 into the natural.

So that wraps things up for this month, keep an eye on the YouTube channel for the demo video and get the Les Paul ready for next month's as we cover Stoke-On-Trent's favoured son, the one and only Saul Hudson, aka Slash!