Last night I had a few 'breakthroughs' with my guitar teacher, I want to put this down to re-inforce it, but I'm stil not 100% clear on everything so some discussion would be good...I'll try and keep this concise, but I'll probably fail.
After a recent discussion here about Little Wing I re-learned it and also hit Castles Made of Sand (my favourite Hendrix song) which are both quite similar in feel. I was looking at how they work and was thinking about how he is often just basically playing a barre chord (or part thereof) and then hammering on or playing other notes around it. An obvious one is the Am in Little Wing where if you play it as 577555 you can then hammer on and off the 7th to 5th fret on the A D and G strings and it sounds cool (and Hendrix-y). A little further thought reveals you can play any notes from Am pentatonic while more or less barre-ing the 5th fret.
So I started thinking about all the other chords and wondering how exactly you know which notes you can hit and which ones you can't.
OK - i'm think i'm losing myself.......maybe this leads me to the often much feared subject of modes. So if you know what key a song is in (lets say C for simplicity) then can you play the modes over whatever chord your hitting? So if you play a Dm chord you can play D Dorian...which is just C major but starting on D right? And if you play a G, then you can use G Mixolydian?? What about G major pentatonic?
Hmm, when he hits that Am in Little Wing, Am pentatonic goes over it perfectly. What about when he hits the G? That is a major, so can you play a G major pentatonic over that chord?
Actually what key is little wing even in? The chords I can think of off hand are Em G Am Bm D C so that puts in in the key of.........G??? G Am Bm C D Em F#m G?????? But then is it in Em as Em is really the tonic of the song and Em is the relative minor of G.... Plus the solo is Em penatatonic which gives things away a bit...????!!!! :shock:
Right, I'm now confused again, does this post make any sense??? If someone understands what I'm trying to get at, please help!!
I don't think Jimi knew or cared about any of that. I think he just played what sounded good. :wink:
"Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard,
grow big, wear glasses if you need 'em."
-- The Webb Wilder Credo --
I don't think Jimi knew or cared about any of that. I think he just played what sounded good. :wink:
Absolutely. 8)
you've stumbled upon hendrix's technique of following the chord when he's playing. he experamented with it a lot at woodstock and some of his studio songs.
it was a new technique (not really new, but new for him) but he died before he could still master it.
another clear example of this hendrix style is in Bold as Love, where you can hear him outlining every chord.
people like john mayer and eric johnson have aquired this skill pretty well from hendrix
"Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.
anything sounds good in the right context. major, minor, myxolydian, chromatic. just as long as you're using it a way that you make make sense.
you jam on some loud mean blues for a while, you end up kinda chillin out n playing some blue-green stuff.
How to sound like Hendrix......maybe
Impossible.
~~~
But yea, xSka is right. It's too bad Jimi died. He would have gotten so much better, it's crazy. But I guess it was meant to be. What he did in 3 or 4 years is amazing, and I find it to be impossible that anybody will be able to make an impact as big as he did in that short amount of time.
Thank God so many pictures and footage was recorded of him in that time, little did they know that he'd died in September 1970. The funny thing is with Hendrix, most people haven't even heard some of his best stuff. Little Wing is probably his most complicated song, but man, he has so many other masterpieces that people need to hear.
maybe the most chords, but complicated has multiple meanings.
Definitely, I wouldn't consided Little Wing as his most complicated work. And I'm not even going to ask what the actual value of 'complicated' is in music. Anyway, don't worry about modes. Just hit the chords and some pentatonic notes around it. So either learn the boxes all over the neck or learn to play the chords in one box.
theres this mathematical concept i remember reading in school that a straight line is one dimension, a square is 2, and the complexity of a shoreline, for example, would have a dimensionality of 1.3 or something depending on how convoluted it is.
mozart is written about as using the golden ratio in his music, which is related to 5 point stars and the human form. (1+sqrt5)/2=1.618033989...
It looks to me like your starting to learn how to make and enjoy music. I play alot of blues and work primarily around the cords. I blend scales, mix/match whatever, to ad nuance and flavor to my mood through the song. When I first recall hearing Hendrix, a long time ago, I knew then that I loved the way he did what you are talking about and I was forever ruined.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Jimi was self taught and couldn't read music. On the other hand, he was a genius.
http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=2498
Did you know Jimi was of native American as well as African decent?
"Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard,
grow big, wear glasses if you need 'em."
-- The Webb Wilder Credo --
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Jimi was self taught and couldn't read music. On the other hand, he was a genius.
Jimi once said, "people taught me. Experience taught me." So yea, he did teach himself. That was just him being Jimi. He did teach himself how to read music though (or so I hear), as on many songs he covered he used sheet music to learn it. He learned Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Club Hearts Band by era though.
Ok - this is really drifting away from where I intended it to go.
What I want to know is - How do you know what scale to play around with when you are playing a particular chord in a progression. And please don't say 'what sounds good' :? . Yes, I can noodle around and figure out what sounds good, but I am trying to understand why it sounds good.
The reason I am wondering about modes is because I feel like i am actually starting to understand them properly - but not quite....like they are within my grasp but everytime I try to grab them they dodge me, stick their tongues out and laugh mockingly at my clumsy attempts to use them.
I am using little wing as an example because the whole song is played in this style. Lets take the first 3 chords of the verse - Em, G, Am I know I can solo over them all with the Em pentatonic, but it's hard to hold a G barre and hammer on and off notes in that scale considering the third fret on the A D and G strings are off limits (they don't sound good :) )
What scales would work over each of these chords, that you could play around with from the barred position? And how do you figure that out?
Thanks in advance for any tips.
One piece of advice I can give you is to watch Hendrix play. Watch what he does to get an idea of what he's doing.
And watch these guys videos- http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=taipobryan
major
