Why I Suck... Series 5! The Plan for 2024....

 The votes have been cast, the polls have have been tabulated and the results are in! After what has been a quite startling year for the YouTube channel with the Style Guide videos now regularly racking up view counts in the thousands as opposed to around 70, allow me to reveal the plan for 2024!

January – Satchel (Steel Panther)

February – Brian May 

March – Nuno Bettencourt

April – Gary Moore

May – Albert Lee

June – SRV (Soul to Soul)

July – Hendrix (Electric Ladyland)

August – Allan Holdsworth (sharp intake of breath...)

September – Jeff Healey

October – Justin & Dan Hawkins (The Darkness)

November – Steve Lukather (Toto)

December – Randy Rhoads

So there we go, quite the classic rock slant this year but seasoned with a little country & blues and continuing with my attempt to transcribe every note Jimi & SRV ever committed to tape!

Meanwhile I am now in possession of a new PC with far more powerful video editing capability which should mean I'll be able to actually edit videos.. hopefully some clever stuff like multiple cameras, colour balancing etc., all courtesy of my long-suffering good friend (and ferociously takented keyboard player) Leigh of Dave The Rock Band & Guilty Pleasures fame!

So as well as the One Minute Licks (which haven't really been One Minute for quite some time but no one seems to be complaining...) and the Style Guides, there will be actual lessons and performances going up and I'm planning a few "Five Minute Lessons" to be a slightly more in depth but still easily digestible guide to various techniques and solos.. but I want this channel to be reactive and a genuine resource for all you  guys out there in internet-land, so I'm very open to suggestions!

So roll on 2024, let's do this! Happy New Year to everyone out there :-)

Why I Suck.. Series 4, Episode 11 - Zakk Wylde!

 The 1980s were an amazing decade for guitar playing – pioneered (arguably) by the incredible virtuosity of one Edward Van Halen, a guitarist capable of absolutely blistering fretboard gymnastics became the absolute must-have accessory for any self-respecting rock and metal act. Amidst the blizzard of 3 note per string legato and swept arpeggios however, one man stood tall, with pinch harmonics that made wolves howl and vibrato that could choke a dinosaur – and that man is longtime Ozzy Osbourne cohort and Black Label Society frontman, Zakk Wylde!

I've always had a fondness for Zakk's playing – rootsy pentatonics cranked up beyond 11 with insane speed, attitude and that aforementioned vibrato just resonated with me even if I've never been much of a metal fan. In interviews Zakk has often stated that when he got serious about playing he made a conscious decision about sticking to the pentatonic as a way of differentiating him from his peers, using chromaticism where necessary to season this basic framework. He also credits an instructional video by country legend Albert Lee with influencing much of his hybrid picking and double stop techniques.

So, as is now customary, let's start with a little potted history while warming up the fingers...

Born Jeffery Phillip Wielandt on January 14^th 1967 in Bayonne, New Jersey, Zakk initially began playing aged 8 but didn't really get serious about it until around age 14, when he would regularly practice all night after getting home from school, catching up with sleep during school time (disclaimer – for parents and kids reading this, JM Guitar Tuition does not endorse this as a sustainable approach) – Zakk himself has described the following day often being “rough”...

There doesn't seem to be much information surrounding Zakk's early playing career pre-Ozzy, and he credits a side-interest in powerlifting as being instrumental in how the pair met – Zakk claimed that he met Ozzy around 1987 at a weightlifting meet and offering to cut him a deal on some steroids in return for a job with his band, as things had recently gone bad with guitarist Jake E. Lee (which is a complex story in its' own right) – Zakk put together a demo tape and the rest is history! He has gone on to be Ozzy's longest serving sideman despite stints away focusing on his own bands Black Label Society and Pride & Glory and the two have a close longstanding relationship. In terms of influences, Zakk has consistently referenced Frank Marino from Mahogany Rush, Jimmy Page, Randy Rhoads, Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin, and a passing nod to Elton John – in addition to his guitar skills, Zakk is a fine singer and pianist (and I bet he never brings his lyrics on stage.. just saying ;-) ).

Potted history thus complete, let's take a look at some licks! We'll dive in with an absolute classic – the blistering end part of “No More Tears”. Here Zakk is using D minor pentatonic with a sextuplet picking pattern moving through positions 1, 2 and 3 of the scale before moving to arpeggios on the Bb and C chords of the underlying progression using 1^st inversion shapes before finishing on a howling D root note right up on the 22^nd fret. I'll demonstrate Zakk's uncompromising pick attack and vibrato on the demo video so stay subscribed to the YouTube channel for that one!

For this second example, we'll take a look at Zakk's solo work on the Book of Shadows album with a lick taken from “Sold My Soul” in E minor. Zakk starts off with a trademark soaring harmony bend using position 4 of E minor pentatonic, before trilling his way up the E minor scale along the G string before a massive overbend on the D note at the 19^th fret sold with some of his signature wide vibrato – as ever, it's the articulation, the sheer fire with which he plays which makes this line stand out.

Like many players, Zakk has a few signature patterns that he gravitates towards when he puts pedal to the metal and gets into serious shred territory – this third example is drawn from “Farewell Ballad”, a solo recorded for Guitarist magazine back in 2006, using the D blues scale – notice that Zakk is using the exact same fingering pattern on both string groups and you can even trace a line here back to the Magic Three Notes (a concept students of mine will be familiar with), simply extending out to include both positions 1 and 2 of the scale.

For our final example, I've drawn from the solo to “Crazy Babies”, based in B and then E minor pentatonic – Zakk sets up a “call” hook in B minor pentatonic with signature savage vibrato, before bending the 9^th fret G and pulling off to the 7^th before tapping with the pick hand on the 21^st fret G, bending up and pulling off to the 9^th and then the 7^th, back to the E root on the 9^th before a blistering run grouped in fives through positions 4, 5, 1 & 2 of the E minor pentatonic!

This has been an absolute blast, Zakk has long been one of my absolute favourite guitar players and working through his stuff has been a joy.. and I do think I can feel my vibrato getting wider by the day! Keep an eye out for the demo video and see you soon, happy practicing!

Why I Suck.... Series 4, Episode 10 - Angus Young!

Have AC/DC ever actually done a bad song? This was amongst the questions I set out to answeer this month... and while many detractors would simply say they've been making the same album since 1976, I would counter with the idea that if they got it right first time, why mess?

Since their inception in 1973, AC/DC have come to define rock and roll - “Whole Lotta Rosie”, “Highway To Hell”, “You Shook Me All Night Long”... the list of anthems is endless. And frankly, I defy anyone not to find the absolute and utter joy in a good AC/DC track cranked up high! But their path hasn't been wothout it's share of tragedy – original singer Bon Scott died of alcohol poisoning in 1979 and rhythm guitarist Malcolm succumbet to dementia in 2017, the band replacing Bon with flat-cap toting Geordie Brian Johnson and Stevie Young, Malcolm's nephew, stepping in to replace him. Their last album, “Power Up” was released in 2020, marking 45 years of pounding rock & roll antherms – quite the feat, never mind the fact that it debuted at No. 1 in the US!

Throughout all of this, their most recognisable image has always been the diminutive Gibson SG-wielding, school uniform-wearing figure of Angus Young, responsible for the searing blues-based solos that are a hallmark of AC/DC's sound. I've been a fan ever since as a nipper I first heard “Thunderstruck” as a nipper and even though I wasn't entirely sure what it was I was hearing, I knew it sounded like FUN! So, before we tackle his licks, a quick potted history (as is customary).

Born 31 March 1955 as one of seven siblings in the Cranhill district of Glasgow, the young (sorry) Angus began playing the guitar at age 5 or 6 nder the tutelage of his brother Alexander and when the family moved to Australia in 1963 after suffering through what was at that point the worst winter on record, he kept with it, practicing solidly through his teenage years even as he dropped out of school and worked a variety of jobs including apprenticeships as a butcher and typesetter. Initially he began on a banjo, restrung with six strings (although details on how this was done are beyond my Google Fu), before graduating to a cheap acoustic that his mum got him. His signature Gibson SG career began with a second hand model bought in 1967, and Angus has often stated that being a shortish chap made the SG a good fit – certainly the excellent top fret access the SG affords has stood him in good stead, as we'll see further on!

Aged 18 he founded AC/DC with his brother Malcolm founded after both having played in a variety of bands – taking their name from the letters on their sister Margaret's sewing machine - and recorded their first single “Can I Sit Next To You Girl” for Albert Productions with their first singer Dave Evans. Meanwhile Angus was working on his stage outfit, working through gorilla costumes, Spiderman and even his own superhero “Super-Ang” - and there are some amazing what-if moments there – before finally settling on the schoolboy look at Margaret's suggestion. She would actually concoct his first uniform before it fell apart from overuse and he reverted to his Ashfield Boy's School uniform, and (hilariously) they fed the public the notion that Angus had been born in 1959 not 1955 and was therefore 14...

The band quickly established themselves as a popular blues and hard rock act before recording 1975's High Voltage album – which was where I got started transcribing Angus's solos. The idea being, of course, that I can go back and do some more another time! No reason SRV, Jimi, EC and the Kings should be the only ones to get multiple blog posts, right? And this was a LOT of fun!

So, to business – we begin with something my teenage self would have chewed his own arm off to learn (but never thought to try and work out), something I term the Angus Young Lick. I've tabbed it in E, but this is a pattern that I noticed cropping up – with variations – across pretty much any solo where Angus wanted to put pedal to metal and do something widdly. This is based around the 3 Magic Notes, and you can see a repeating 4 note cell extrapolated across the strings. Play this slowly to begin with and across all keys, as the accuracy builds you'll be able to crank to Angus-level speed before you know it!

And of course it wouldn't be my blog if I didn't get all OCD and figure out a way to play it backwards, right? So there you are, that one's on the house.

The next example is taken from “Can I Sit Next To You Girl” which as best I can figure is in A but detuned a full tone – however it modulates to E for the end solo and here we see a variation on the Angus Young Lick as he blasts through E minor pentatonic in first position at the 12^th fret – notice that as well as the signature pull-off pattern, there's a bend in there as well as the classic perfect 4^th finger roll on the 14^th fret D & G strings – this is a nod to Angus's roots in blues players like Freddie King.

As well as being able to burn through the minor pentatonic like a man possessed, Angus is also a master of string bending, as this next excerpt taken from the outro solo to “Back In Black”. Here you'll find a harmony bend and then a whole tone bend first milked with absolutely stinging vibrato, and then notice the way he alternates between the bent versus straight note before closing with another classic E minor pentatonic blues lick featuring perfect 4^th rolls this time on the first finger and bending the minor 3^rd (G) a quarter tone sharp so it nestles in between major and minor. You don't tend to associate AC/DC with subtlety, but there's plenty to be found in Angus' playing!

It's not all minor pentatonic though – in this final example, taken from “The Jack”, Angus pulls out a glorious run that mixes minor and major pentatonics with some chromaticism in there too, just to keep you on your toes! Note the major 3^rd and 2^nd in there, along with a nifty 12th fret whole tone bend performed with the index finger before rolling back to cover the 12^th fret E and B – subtly counter-intuitive and Angus makes it flow beautifully. It's a very neat trick to get under the fingers.

So that wraps up this month – it's been a blast going through the early AC/DC stuff and I'm very much looking forward to revisiting Angus & co again soon. Brace tourself for next month though, as Zakk Wylde is up next! See you then and keep yourself subscribed to the YouTube channel (now over 500 subscribers!) for the demo video.

Why I Suck.... Series 4, Episode 9 - John Mayer!

 OK, I'll admit to not being too jazzed about this one. When I thought of John Mayer, I couldn't shake this image:

But this was a student suggestion, and I am a river unto my people so here we are! And I'm happy to report that I wound up enjoying the experience much more than I thought I would – so, as is now customary, let's begin with a short potted history before tackling some licks.
Now, this is a little uncanny – John Mayer not only shares my initials, he damn near shares my exact birthday – October 16 1977 – and his seminal guitar inspiration moment was Marty McFly's performance of “Johnny B. Goode” in Back To The Future... good man. I'm already sold on the guy. However, whereas I had a few false starts before finally getting into guitar in a big way at 17, Mayer was straight there, his dad renting him a guitar at age 13 and a neighbour giving him a Stevie Ray Vaughan cassette. This led to the young John becoming fascinated with the blues and starting to delve back into history, discovering the Kings, Otis Rush and Buddy Guy – again, very relatable, I started doing something similar after catching Rory Gallagher's Old Grey Whistle Test performance when the BBC screened it following his untimely death.

He would play and practice the guitar with singular focus throughout his teenage years – to the point where his parents began to worry and took him to see a child psychiatrist – and in 1997 enrolled in the famous Berklee College of Music in Boston (the same year I enrolled in the rather less famous Access To Music in Leicester...) but left after two semesters to form a duo with a friend, Clay Cook. The two would find some success locally around Boston but eventually split citing musical differences (I win! I FINISHED my course!)

The next stage in his career was to record the EP “Inside Wants Out” whilst living in Georgia, produced by Glenn Matullo and with the help of David LaBruyere, featuring several songs co-written with Cook, and released on his own label Mayer Music. Reception was warm and Mayer and LaBruyere used this momentum to begin touring through Georgia and surrounding states. The follow up, 2001's “Room For Squares” we now consider the breakthrough record, with several hit singles including “Why Georgia” And “Your Body Is A Wonderland”. This was followed by a tour with Counting Crows, and followed by 2003's “Heavier Things” and 2006's “Continuum” establishing him firmly as a pop-star singer songwriter... who also just happens to be a proper, bad-ass guitar player on the side!
So let's take a look at a few licks.

This first is from “Belief” on the “Continuum” album, and is just a flat out Clapton/ SRV/ Hendrix style D minor pentatonic run (proper guitar playing), but notice the finger roll and quirky 4^th interval jump between the D and the A, and the slightly unusual repeated finger slides between the A and the G. There's a neat little twist at the end when instead of finishing with the root D, Mayer pulls off to the C (b7th), lending the line a moodier, bluesier feel.

Speaking of bluesy feel, this second example is taken from Mayer's epic solo on “Covered In Rain” from the album “Any Given Thursday” using Bb minor pentatonic – interestingly in a Bb major context - and students of mine will recognise the Magic 3 Notes principle underpinning this one, but developed many steps beyond the basics! Mayer also colours the pentatonic with the 2^nd (C) as well as the 6^th (G), blending major and minor pentatonics in a similar manner to Clapton and his hero SRV.

A similar approach is at work in the third example, taken from “Slow Dancing In A Burning Room”, again from “Continuum”, this time sing C# minor pentatonic. Note the use of quarter tone as well as full tone bends, and the stinging vibrato. The phrases ending on the G#, E and C# also spell out a C# minor arpeggio – a neat coincidence, and the kind of thing that a player of Mayer's calibre will gravitate towards unconsciously.

Our final example comes from the clearly Mark Knopfler- inspired solo from "Wild Blue" using A minor pentatonic. Note the assertive way it starts off – bending the 7^th fret G and alternating between the G on the 8^th fret B string (b7) and A on the 5^th fret E string (root), the kind of idea that a player like Albert King would have milked. Again, you can just about see the Magic 3 Notes at the core of this lick with several layers of development laid on top of them – proving once again that it's not what you use, it's how you use it!

And with that, we'll wrap things up – I've enjoyed this far more than I thought I would and it's great to see someone almost smuggling classic blues/rock guitar playing into the pop mainstream, so good on John Mayer for that! Check back next month as we drink deep from the well of Rock & Roll as we tackle... Angus Young!

Why I Suck... Series 4, Episode 8: Buckethead!

 Well, I was looking for a challenge...

I first encountered He That Is Named Buckethead in an ancient issue of Guitar For The Practicing Musician – and with all of a year's playing under my belt, I'll be honest with you, I could make no sense of what this apparent sorcerer was trying to demonstrate.. but as with Malmsteen & Shawn Lane last year, I wanted to dip a toe in the pool of Impossible Guitar Playing and see if I could get a feel for what was going on with the benefit of a few years of hindsight. And I have to say that I actually found it nowhere near as daunting as I was expecting – not easy mind you (not by a LONG shot), but who wants easy? You never get better by just trying the easy stuff!

So as is customary, a brief potted history of the 'Head... as much as I can glean, at least, there are few confirmed facts about Buckethead floating around the internet and I would guess that's just the way he likes it. However, it is generally agreed that he was born Brian Carroll on May 13 1969, and grew up in a California suburb not far from Disneyland, where he spent a lot of time as a boy.

He began learning guitar age 12 and progressed through a number of teachers - including notably Paul Gilbert - and first started gaining recognition when he entered a competition in Guitar Player magazine in 1988 (so age 19 - 7 years experience...) with a song called Brazos, scoring runner up and getting a very favourable write up from the editor. This led to a number of collaborations before an unsuccessful tryout with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers - now isn't THAT a what if moment? - which seems to have become a recurring theme throughout his career... but we'll come back to that.

1988 was also the year that Brian grew (and grew, grew and grew..) to become a man named.. Buckethead. After seeing the movie Hallowe'en IV he went out and bought a Michael Myers- a-like face mask and then later, while eating a KFC bucket that he had the burst of inspiration to put the bucket on his head and ths was born the character of Buckethead.

Hmm. Now having been in many and varied states of inebriation over the years I can attest to having had this same flash of inspiration myself, and now it's got me thinking I might have been missing a trick..

As Buckethead, he has performed and recorded with a wide variety of collaborators and solo projects, having a near miss being Ozzy Osborne's guitarist - Oz was not a fan of the buske, apparently, although he did credit the man beneath it with "playing like a motherf*cker", but his next real breakthrough moment came in the confused years after Axl Rose sacked Slash and the entire rest of Guns & Roses, replacing them with a raft of session musicians.. including our man Buckethead. Legend has it they actually signed the deal on a rollercoaster in Disneyland after Axl presented him with a leatherface doll he'd been hankering after.

Buckethead recorded Chinese Democracy with the band and toured with them in 2001/02 but.. "creative friction" between him and Axl saw the two part ways.. Buckethead citing the sheer difficulty of getting anything done with the band - which tracks well with the interminable delays on the album itself and the notorious G'n'R habit of coming on stage hours late.. whereas Axl cited Buckethead's demands for a private studio called the Chicken Coop wherein he could watch hardcore pornography in order to "gain inspiration"...

..yeah. It's at this point that you realise that Buckethead's commitment to a role has probably cost him more than a few career opportunities. Since then he has continued as a busy and successful solo artist, and here is where I want to bring up the man's UNBELIEVABLE work ethic and creativity. I mean, I spent lockdown finally getting Two Pint Solos done and felt pretty good about that.. only to discover that in the same period (2020-21) Buckethead recorded... 19.

And that's only the tip of the iceberg. In 2015 he recorded... 118.

Not a misprint. 118 solo ALBUMS. With a conservative 5 tracks/ 1/2 an hour length, that's 590 tracks, 590 hours of music. That's an album every THREE DAYS. Whichever way you look at it, that is beyond incredible. To hell with the mask and the bucket and the gimmicks, that is a simply phenomenal cognitive load to come up with all that, let alone play and record it. Even assuming everything is one take – and I really don't see how it could be anything else – that is a staggering accomplishment. So whatever your feelings regarding the mask/bucket/ various psychodramas, it's undeniable that Buckethead is clearly an awe-inspiring, incredible musician.

And with that, let's turn our attention to some of his licks! Most of this month's examples are taken from “Soothsayer” - knowing very little of his material, in time honoured fashion I turned to google, typed in “Buckethead” and “Soothsayer cropped up as his most famous piece so I started there. As it turns out though, it's almost ten minutes long.. so a bit of a switch from tearing through “Axis:Bold As Love” last month!

We'll start with the rolling legato scale fragments - “Soothsayer” is in Bb minor, and Buckethead is using the 3 note per string relative major scale of Db. This line focuses mainly on the E & B strings and notice the subtle changes with each repetition – Buckethead tweaks the pattern each time to ensure it's never a straight repetition and you can apply that approach to your own playing.

The second example illustrates Buckethead taking a legato pattern – one that is a defining feature of Slash's speedier licks, interestingly – extrapolating it across a six note “octave block” fingering idea (students of mine are going to be familiar with this way of visualising scales and then finishing it with an EVH-style 3 note per string run.

Example three showcases a more melodic, intervallic approach as Buckethead uses slides to create a slippery futuristic melody, managing to craft the Bbminor scale into something altogether weirder! Notice how using slides instead of bends, hammer-ons or pull-offs gives even a familiar set of notes a slightly alien sound!

And I have left this little cracker for last – just as I thought I was done with “Soothsayer”, Buckethead pulls this on me – a 2^nd inversion Bbm arpeggio (based on a Dm shape), extended out with b7 and 9^th via a tap and slide manoeuvre and then a first and third finger tap on the repeat.. wow!

As always, I can wax lyrical on what I've learned from this incredible player, but what I'm mostly taking away is the more accessible scale fragment legato stuff – similar to Sophie Lloyd, I recognise a lot of what I do, but just done better! Meanwhile, I've got a lot of practicing to do before the demo video goes up.. don't forget to Like, Share & Subscribe out there and keep your eye out for some John Mayer next month!

Why I Suck.. Series 4, Episode 7 - Jimi Hendrix Pt. 3 "Axis: Bold As Love"

 

As guitar icons go, they really don't come any bigger and more famous than one James Marshall Hendrix. Having covered his blues playing in 2020, and transcribed my waythrough “Are You Experienced” in 2021, this time my goal was to make it through the “difficult second album” that is Axis: Bold As Love. Often seen as the unloved “middle child” between the groundbreaking (for its time) “Are You Experienced” and the 2 disc psychedelic opus “Electric Ladyland”, this is nonetheless an interesting look at the band musically and historically.

Certainly, the feel of the album is a lot less urgent overall, the sound of a band having “made it big” and now struggling to work out quite where they take things from here – there are a lot of hilariously cliché “counterculture” lyrics “White collar businessman flashing down the street.. hoping my kind will drop and die but I'm gonna wave my freak flag high”, but of course back then all that stuff was genuinely new – and some quirky straight up pop songs - “She's So Fine”, “Wait Until Tomorrow”.. but what I found most surprising is the comparative lack of much in the way of Hendrix guitar heroics.. anyone catching the “One Minute Lick” series through July will have noted that it really has been all variations on pretty much the same theme!

What does take centre stage throughout this album, however, is his signature fluid chord/ melody partial chord rhythm style – most famously on the sublime “Little Wing” but also present on “Castles Made Of Sand” and the title track itself, “Bold As Love”... so we're going to take a slightly different slant with this month's article and look at how some of these parts were created.

The basic principles come from breaking the underlying chord down into two or three note clusters, keeping one note static while moving another to a note from the parent major scale and then back. So for example, Jimi might imply a G chord (G B D) by playing the G and D notes at the 3^rd fret B & E strings, then decorate that by adding in the E note (6^th) on the 5^th fret B string before returning to the D at the 3^rd fret, or hold down the D while moving the G to the A and back, usually using a hammer-on/ pull-off manoeuvre.

Don't worry, this will seem a lot less confusing when I do the demonstration video!

Typically, Jimi would hold down the 5^th while moving the 3^rd to 4^th and back again, implying a major-sus4-major resolution, or hold the root down while moving the 5^th to 6^th, or occasionally flip that technique, holding the 5^th down while moving the root to the 2^nd (or 9^th) and back again – and here are two examples, the first being the utterly gorgeous and iconic three minute masterpiece that is “Little Wing”, followed by the equally beguiling but often overlooked “Castles Made Of Sand”:

Little Wing:

Notice in this example as well as the harmonics and partial chords, the fondness Jimi has for first inversion A string root chords, as well as the slid stacked 5ths with the ringing G string flavouring the F & G chords.

Castles Made Of Sand:

 

And of course we couldn't overlook the title track itself, Bold As Love:

Notice the chord sequence here - yep, it's a I V vi IV... even Jimi used it!

However, it wouldn't be a Hendrix Style Analysis without including at least some lead work – and here we have a slightly unusual example, taken from the epic end solo of Bold As Love. Here Jimi is outlining the chord sequence using arpeggios, following a three string pattern using the first inversion starting in the 3^rd on the G string and finishing with a stretch to the 3^rd on octave higher on the high E – this is the same technique the Eagles famously used on the “Hotel California” solo some years later and arguably presages the work of shred virtuosos like Yngwie Malmsteen, who interestingly released a cover of “Spanish Castle Magic” .

So there we have it, a slightly different slant on the playing of a true legend – this has been really interesting as I've always had a thing for Hendrix's partial chord work, probably even more so than his lead stuff – and judging from tracks like “Lenny”, I'm not the only one! It's a really useful skill to be able to weave in and out of what your bandmates are doing, rather than be constrained to a rigid rhythm/ lead role, so I highly suggest taking as much as you can from this album and seeing where you can apply it.


Next month, we take a leap into the dark side as we embrace the bizarre shred lunacy of Buckethead! THIS should be interesting... meantime, don't forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel and click the notification bell as all this month's examples are going to make a lot more sense when shown in context!

Why I Suck.. Series 4, Episode 6: SRV Pt. 4 - Finishing Up "Couldn't Stand The Weather"!

And we are back with a long standing blog favourite, the mighty Texan Tornado himself, Stevie Ray Vaughan! Over the last few posts we've covered his electrifying first album, “Texas Flood”, grabbed the odd track here and there from the back catalogue before last year making a concerted effort to tackle the second album “Couldn't Stand The Weather”, and... running out of time half way through! So this time around I resolved to pick up where I left off and get this done, seeing what I could learn along the way.

Did I succeed? Well, yes... sort of! As it turns out there have been a variety of different issues of “Couldn't...”, beginning with the initial 1984 release:

Scuttle Buttin'

Couldn't Stand The Weather
Things I Used To Do

Voodoo Child
Cold Shot
Tin Pan Alley
Honey Bee
Stang's Swang

And then the 1999 re-release added:

SRV Speaks (not really applicable here!)
Hideaway
Look At Little Sister
Give Me Back My Wig
Come On Pt III

And then in 2010... the Legacy 2 CD issue adding another 19 tracks! So I contented myself with getting all the original and '99 tracks...

By this time, SRV was firmly established as a modern blues icon with the Double Trouble line up of Tommy Shannon on bass and Chris Layton on drums, although sax player Sam Harrison was brought in to guest on the jazz track “Stang's Swang” and at this point the stresses of touring had not yet led to the subsance abuse issues that would ultimately cause the band so many problems, so this album sees the band and SRV himself having establshed their sound and style on “Texas Flood” and starting to branch out past the 12 bar format on tracks like “Stang's Swang” and “Couldn't Stand The Weather” - although tracks like “Tin Pan Alley” are absolutely soaked in minor blues feel, so they are still very much in touch with their roots at this point. The next album, “Soul To Soul” - which we'll be tackling next year at some point, Putin/plague/random asteroids allowing – would see literal mounds of cocaine being snorted off the hammond organ during recording sessions, which rarely works out as a sustainable strategy...

Anyway, time for some licks! The first example is taken from “Tin Pan Alley”, a slow blues in C minor using the C blues scale, and this lick is dripping with signature SRV techniques – notice the use of slides in unusual places to connect up positions 2 and 1 of the blues scale, as well as the use of repetitive phrasing – almost as if SRV is “making his point” using a variety of musical devices (semitone slides, whole tone slides) to do so before resolving to the root note C on the 10^th fret D string, and then tailing off descending the scale down to the low E.

The second example is taken from “Look At Little Sister” in the key of E, using E minor pentatonic and focused around our “3 magic notes” - 14^th fret G, 12^th & 15^th fret B, and featuring the 12^th fret high E, pounding out high tempo triplets and using the double stop effect on the 12th fret B & E to keep the sound full and dynamic despite the fact there's no rhythm guitar filling out the sound – this is a really useful trick if you're playing in a trio and want to avoid the “drop” when you switch to a solo!

Double stops were always a big part of SRV's style, right back to "Texas Flood", and in this example from “Honey Bee” (again in E) we see him switched into high gear, again using triplets and doublestop 3rds to keep the dynamics up and intense – starts with E & G – root and minor 3^rd of the I chord, moving to A & C, the same root and 3^rd of the IV , then B & D (you guessed it, root & minor 3^rd of the V) and then E & G an octave higher than the start position.

Finally, we'll take a look at the “pedal tone” idea from “Come On Pt. III” here, SRV is once again in E, using E minor pentatonic, but here he's creating a visceral dynamic effect kicking in the wah pedal and pulling off to the open high E string from the 15^th fret and using a three against 4 “hemiola” effect – a three note melodic passage forced into a four note rhythmic grouping meaning that the accent note falls in a different place in the beat each repetition – this passage is all about momentum and dynamics, far more so than melodic effects. He then develops this idea, bringing in the 15^th fret and open B strings before resolving down a more conventional E minor pentatonic idea.

So that wraps another look at the gift that keeps on giving in the form of one of the greatest blues guitarists ever to have lived – next up, one of his heroes, as we're back to Jimi and this time I'll be attempting to transcribe the whole of “Axis: Bold As Love”... let's see how this goes!

Keep an eye on the YouTube channel @jmguitartuitionuk for the demo video – past 300 subscribers at the time of writing, welcome one and all! Always room for more though, so drop me a line for things that you would like to see covered, and see you next month!

Why I Suck... Series 4, Episode 5 - Brad Paisley

 I'm going to come right out and say this, I genuinely love country music. There's something about wide open chords, perfect 5^th harmonies and the twang and cluck of Telecaster through a Fender amp that just does it for me.. along with the lyrics, of course. Just like the blues, these are chock full of tragedy and humour, depending on the song (“Since the moment I left Milwaukee, Lynchburg, Bordeaux France, I've been making the bars lots of big money, and making white people dance” - “Alcohol”) – and then, of course, are those dazzling, gravity-defying Nashville licks. And this month we're looking at one of the finest purveyors of said hot country guitar licks – Brad Paisley!

I first became aware of him learning “Nervous Breakdown” for an RGT performance exam around 2010 – and one of the results of this past month is that I discovered the tab I learnt it from was wrong in several places, the moral of the story being USE YOUR EARS – and then plain forgot about him for a while until coming up with my 2023 list! So as is by now tradition, a brief potted history of Mr Paisley and then we'll pull apart some licks.

Born on October 28 1972 in Glendale, West Virginia, Brad first encountered the guitar aged 8 being given a Sears Danelectro Silvertone by his grandfather, and immediately showed great aptitude and promise, performing at school functions and forming his first band aged 13 – Brad Paisley and the C-Notes -with his then guitar teacher, Clarence “Hank” Goddard, and writing his first song “Born On Christmas Day” (which would resurface on a 2006 album, “A Brad Paisley Christmas”). This song would see him propelled forward further after the band played a local Rotary Club function attended by one of the directors of Jamboree USA, a long running country music radio series with a huge following, and after graduating with a degree in music business he was snapped up as a singer by label Arista Nashville, also signing a songwriting deal with EMI.

From that point the hits came thick and fast - “He Didn't Have To Be” from his first album “Who Needs Pictures” made number 1 in 2000, followed by “Me Neither” and “We Danced” from the same album. In 2002 he had another smash with “I'm Gonna Miss Her (The Fishing Song)” and in 2003 “Celebrity” - from there he's gone on to be one of the most consistently successful country performers, and is still at it, releasing the song “Same Here” February 24^th of this year (2023) which features contributions from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and with proceeds going to UNITED24 to help rebuild Ukraine you can get hold of that here: https://open.spotify.com/track/7cOqcCReryIN1M0WVN2msv

Right, so with the potted history out of the way, let's get to some licks! The first example is the blistering riff – that's RIFF, mind you, not lick, this thing propels the entire track – that underpins “The Nervous Breakdown”, the instrumental track from “Who Needs Pictures”. This uses largely the G minor pentatonic (R b3 4 5 b7) and is based around shape 5, with the addition of B and E open string passing notes providing a bit of colour in the shape of the major 3^rd (B) and major 6^th (E), powered out using a consistent 16^th note rhythm. Notice the use of b7 intervals and the call-response-call-conclusion riff structure – something that underpins all manner of great riffs, all the way from Smoke On The Water! You can flatpick this but you'll probably find it easier to use hybrid picking, at least on those wider intervals, and it will help with the all important “twang factor”.

Staying with “The Nervous Breakdown” for the second excerpt, this is a long flowing line mixing up the G major blues scale (R 2 b3 3 4 5 6 – G A Bb B C D E) dialing in some b7 tanginess from the F And even an Eb grabbed in passing, but these notes really aren't held for long enough than to do anything but to provide some “sour to the sweet” given the effect of the overall run – again, we're pumping out the 16^ths absolutely remorselessly, with Brad basing the run around a “sequenced 4s” idea mixing picked and legato notes with heavy use of that characteristic open string twang.

It's not all just about that twang, though - “She's Her Own Woman” has a bluesy chord sequenced in G that features a variety of interesting twists, including a C# diminished 7 (see? They DO get used in the real world!) chord – with an arpeggio spelt out as R b3 b5 bb5, C# E G Bb in this key. Brad negotiates this with first a G blues scale lick, before a twisting, jazzy C#dim7 arpeggio which resolves back to a G major pentatonic line. The key to undertanidng this is that the tonic note G, is present all though this, and the results are similar to a twangier, down home take on the Joe Satriani Pitch Axis theory.

We'll end with the very end cadenza of “She's Her Own Woman” - I did do more than just these two, but if I were to try and list everything cool I learned this month we'd still be here come Christmas – as this a wonderfully quirky Nashville take on a very SRV-esque blues scale phrase (again, in G) – sowing, once again, that most of the time the real differences between so many styles of music lie more in the marketing than anything else. Brad comes of the end chorus on a Cmaj7 and adds in a wide interval doublestop, milking the dissonant b5 of the blues scale against the high root note before hyrbid picking his way down the scale and finishing with that most country of notes, an open G!

Another month and we've scratched the surface of another amazing player – do go check out his work, I really do recommend it. Join me next month for SRV – will I manage to get “Couldn't Stand The Weather” finished? Let's find out!

Why I Suck.. Series 4, Episode 4 - Eric Clapton Pt. 3 - Post-Cream

 And we are back with the guitarist known to some simply as “God” - Eric Clapton! This is actually the third instalment covering EC's playing – the first covered hisdays as a Bluesbreaker and the legendary “Beano” album, in the second we took a look at his seminal work with supergroup Cream, and so in this one we'll be taking a look at What Eric Did Next. Now, there's actually a fair bit so we'll be skipping quite a lot of detail and just picking out a few salient points on his journey to become the vastly successful solo artist he is today.

In the immediate aftermath of Cream's demise, one of his first appearances was THAT solo on The Beatles' “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, brought in as a guest soloist as George Harrison was struggling to get the “crying” sound from his guitar that he wanted, and certainly working through Clapton's solo is heavy on the wide string bends. But the next band was Blind Faith, formed in 1969 and featuring Cream drummer Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood and Ric Grech of Family. Billed as rock's first “supergroup”, the band managed one six-song album (albeit featuring a hit single, “Can't Find My Way Home”) and a US tour before disbanding – however, Clapton had become good friends with the support act Delaney & Bonnie, and this group would evolve into the next group, Derek & The Dominoes. This is the group with which EC wrote and recorded the song he is most closely associated with, “Layla”, famously written about his infatuation with the wife of his friend George Harrison (I'm going to spoiler the lick part of this post – there isn't anything from Layla as the focal point of the guitar playing is the riff, which I assume everyone reading this can already play..).

Iconic as the title song undoubtedly is, the album itself sold poorly, and Derek & The Dominoes went the same way as Blind Faith, and this was instrumental in Clapton falling into heroin use. 

Surprisingly, this failed to solve anything. However, it fortunately proved not to be terminal, and after various interventions from friends including Pete Townshend, Clapton was able to kick the habit and get back to music, assembling a touring band with which he recorded his first solo album, “461 Ocean Boulevard” which included the hit Bob Marley cover “I Shot The Sheriff”. This was the genesis of Clapton's solo career and set him on the path he still walks now.

However, it would be wrong to include any history of Clapton that didn't mention the tragic death of his 4 year old son Conor in 1991 after accidentally falling from a 53^rd floor window of a family friend's apartment in New York, inspiring the acoustic ballad “Tears In Heaven” which he performed on the “Unplugged” album in 1992, one of the first of the MTV “Unplugged” series. As well as managing to kick heroin, Clapton also struggled with alcohol abuse but impressively managed not to relapse despite this tragedy, and he runs a rehab centre in Antigua to this day.

So that's history dealt with – let's take a long at some of EC's playing through this period.

This first lick is taken from “Let It Rain”, from Clapton's self-titles solo album released in 1972. Interestingly, the song is in D major but it revolves heavily around the A chord making it more accurate to view it as being A Mixolydian (R 2 3 4 5 6 b7 – A B C# D E F# G) and in this lick Clapton is blasting A major pentatonic (R 2 3 5 6 – A B C# E F#) over the top, and you can see him utilising the “3 frets back rule” - taking the F# minor pentatonic shape (R b3 4 5 b7 – F# A B C# E) as the basis for this lick, starting in 2^nd position and moving back to first. Notice the 3 against 4 idea – technically known as a “hemiola”, this places a three note melodic phrase in a four note rhythmic grouping so that each time the notes fall onto the beat in a different way, often creating the illusion of something being much more complex! Another great example of this are the fast parts of the “Alright Now” solo, or basically anything John Squire and Noel Gallagher played in the 90s..

I did say I wasn't going to put anything from “Layla” up, but on the same album is the track “Bell Bottom Blues” with some terrific and emotive playing from Clapton. This lick is tucked away right before the fadeout and features EC milking string bends from the A minor pentatonic (A C D E G) scale at the 17^th fret – notice the C bent first up to D (3^rd to 4^th) and then just a quarter tone to in between C & C#, so in between minor and major. In the second bar Clapton performs a series of string bends on the same note, bending it up a tone, then alternating between bent and straihht, before finishing with a downward bend and a couple f howling G notes bent up to As to finsh the track off with a resolution to the root note.

In this third example we leap forward to the 80s – VERY 80s – with 1989's “Bad Love” and in the age of shred Clapton's solo is a welcome dose of good taste classic rock. This particular lick uses D minor petatonic and is based primarily around positions 3 and 4 of the minor pentatonic, and notice the “3 Magic Notes” motif – pick/ hammer/ pull, down to the next string and back up – he translates across the strings. It's a subtle thing, but these elements can help tie a solo together and provide a sense of narrative. The howling harmony bend that finishes the lick off provides a fitting climax to the run.

Finally we move things forward to more-or-less present day with a live version of Cocaine from 2017. This particular performance has some absolutely incendiary playing from EC and showcases his deft use of the Mixolydian (R 2 3 4 5 6 b7), both directly and by blending elements of major and minor pentatonic scales. To give some theory, E Mixolydian contains E F# G# A B C# D, whilst E major pentatonic contains E F# G# B C#, whilst E minor pentatonic contains E G A B D. When you blend them together you get E F# G G# A B C# D, so effectively getting the Mixolydian plus an additional minor 3^rd (G), which EC alternates with G# to milk the blues feel.

This particular lick is an absolute barnstormer, with Clapton going full pedal to the metal here (performed with a healthy dose of wah pedal too) – note F# bent up a semitone (2^nd into minor 3^rd), the repetitive 3 Magic notes phrasing grouped first in 4 then in 3s to build intensity, the C# (6^th) bent to D (b7th) and the quirky wide interval finger roll he performs on his way down the scale, as well as the use of chromaticism to spice up the ending, which finishes on a bluesy b7 rather than the safer root note.

I think Clapton often gets overlooked by a lot of guitarists as the “Radio 2 Guitar Hero”, the non-guitarist's guitar hero – and to be fair, tracks like “Wonderful Tonight” do him no favours there – but getting deep into EC's playing in his later days has shown me there is a lot to learn here and that the guy is the genuine article. Certainly, working through the epic live “Cocaine” solo was something of an eye opener as you really could feel like Clapton has taken some steps forward, proving that even the big names can still practice, can still improve as long as the will is there to do so. That EC clearly does is something I think we can all take as an inspiration.

Back next month with Brad Paisley, so break out the Stetsons and the Telecasters and get ready for some down-home country shred, y'alls