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

Why I Suck... Series 4, Episode 3 - Rory Gallagher!

 The year was 1995, and I had it going ON – bar chords were sounding clean (ish), I could play most Nirvana riffs to a recognisable standard and had even made a fair bodge of the solo to Oasis' “Live Forever”.. honestly it felt like the sky was the limit.

And then a little article a Guitar For The Practicing Musician caught my eye.. a chap called Rory Gallagher had died. Still, it wasn't a name that I recognised. I thought nothing of it and went back to practicing selections from “Definitely Maybe” and dreaming of owning a 335..

And THEN, I noticed BBC2 running a repeat of “The Old Grey Whistle Test” featuring Rory. And my jaw hit the floor.

Seriously, this guy was absolutely on fire – howling bends, effortless legato, the whole fretboard at his mercy – but I think what impressed me most was the scat singing, the way he could vocalise a phrase and double it flawlessly on the guitar at the same time.. how did you learn that?? Rory made his guitar seem like another limb, something that wasn't a foreign object that he picked up but something that was a part of his body and he could use as naturally as his voice. And then he went to the open C tuned Telecaster and pulled off the same trick with a slide and then there were the phenomenal acoustic chops on display with his haunting rendition of “Out On The Western Plains”... that was when I realised what it was to be a truly great guitarist, not just a hack playing tabs. And I've been working on that ever since.

So, a quick potted history – now one thing I found slightly disconcerting, Rory was 47 when he died.. As of writing, I'm going to be 47 in about five minutes time. Still, Freddie King was gone by age 42 so I guess we both beat the curve.

Rory Gallagher was born in 1948 in Ballyshannon, but in 1949 the family moved to Derry and then Cork, and with their parents being musical both Rory and younger brother Donal were encouraged to pick up an instrument. Aged 9, Rory received his first guitar and as with many players of his generation, it was the rock & roll of musicians like Elvis who proved to be the gateway drug into the blues. By 12 he was performing live and bought his next guitar with the prize from a local talent contest. Aged 15, he bought the iconic 1961 sunburst Stratocaster that would be forever associated with him for £100 cash.
Meanwhile, his appetite for the blues was growing – as with peers Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton & Jeff Beck, it began with skiffle acts like Lonnie Donegan, before moving into players like Buddy Holly & Eddie Cochrane, before landing on Chicago blues icon Muddy Waters. Along the way he picked up tricks from acoustic bluesmen such as Big Bill Broonzy and Leadbelly – whose “Out On The Western Plains” he covered on the Old Grey Whistle Test show.

Rory's undeniable talent saw him blow through a variety of different cover and showbands, touring Ireland and Spain amongst others, before in 1966 deciding to strike out on his own and form his own trio, Taste – possibly influenced by Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix as both Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience were formed around the same time. Taste would in fact go and support Cream and one of Clapton's subsequent ventures, Blind Faith, and met with some success, releasing two albums and playing the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival – yes, THAT Isle Of Wight which also happened to be Jimi's last gig. Taste would split after that gig, Rory choosing to go solo and hiring bass player Gerry McAvoy and drummer Wilgar Campbell, and would stay on that path until his eventual demise in 1995 from liver failure. Tragically, this had come about from an overuse of paracetamol that he'd been prescribed as a painkiller for severe abdominal pain rather than any self-destructive rock & roll excess, and it's hard not to feel that something like that could and should have easily been avoided.

One interesting side story is that Rory in fact turned down joining the Rolling Stones after Mick Taylor left – feeling that the satisfaction he got from he got from writing and recording his own music was worth far more to him than the immense commercial success he would have had as a Stone. Something to keep in mind.

Right, biography done, let's turn our attention to some licks – as you would expect, Rory's lead work was primarily pentatonic based, but as we'll see he made deft use of the Dorian and Aeolian (aka natural minor scale) modes too, and it's interesting to note the influence that traditional Irish folk music had on some of his phrasing.

This first example is taken from a live version of “Messin' With The Kid”, a straight 12 bar in E, and features a signature Rory take on the E minor pentatonic and our Magic Three Notes in particular! Of particular note here is his use of the 6^th (C#, in this case played on the 14^th fret of the B string), and the sextuplet rhythms he uses to employ this, illustrating some Celtic influences at play in a straight up blues solo.

In this second excerpt, Rory really has pedal to metal and you can see him also making use of the 2^nd (F#) with more absolutely burning sextuplets before resolving to the b3 (G) with some wide and aggressive vibrato to really sell the whole phrase.

Moving on to one of his bigger hits, “Moonchild” (in the key of A minor), Rory milks a 15^th fret bend on the B string before moving laterally down the B string – he was never a player to stay stuck in one position and I think this may have been his exquisite (mostly open A tuned) slide playing rubbing off on his regular playing. Notice the repeated 16^th note motifs and the unusual five note grouping, and again, WIDE vibrato to really make the lick complete.

This final example comes from “A Million Miles Away” which is Rory showing the world just what he could do with a slow minor blues (in this case, C minor). There are an absolute cornucopia of licks to learn on this one, and it's interesting to contrast this with Jimmy Page's solo on “Since I've Been Loving You” as both songs come from a similar place, harmonically. This lick illustrates Rory ripping through a couple of octaves on C minor pentatonic, with a brief appearance from the 2^nd (D) and finishing with a G minor arpeggio. Students of mine may well recognise the diagonal pentatonic techniques at work here – I told you the big boys use these ideas too!

There's so much more to enjoy about Rory's playing - we haven't touched on his brilliance with a slide, or his devastating fingerstyle playing, so I would urge the reader to go and investigate as much as you can to understand exactly why none other than Jimi Hendrix called him the greatest rock guitarist in the world - RIP Rory.

Tune in next month as God himself makes another appearance – yep, we're back to see what Eric Clapton got up to after leaving Cream...