How to sound like Hendrix......maybe

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.

I heard he performed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band live the night it was released. :shock:

jwishart77,

I know what you're going through. I've stumbled upon this myself. I don't think listening to Hendrix, and analyzing his songs will help you that much with music theory such as modes and keys, however. Like everyone said so far, he played what he heard. It doesn't necessarily follow any concrete scale or fall into any specific key. Some songs follow the circle of fifths or fourths, some combine chords in related keys, etc. You hit it on the head though with the minor pentatonic scale to matching chord though.

For example, if he is playing the Am chord in the progression, playing the Am pent. scale will sound good. If he is playing a G major, a G major pent. scale will sound good, but go beyond that. Also, a plain G major scale will sound good; that's how he gets some great sounds in Little Wing and Bold as Love.

^^ Try this out. Over a G chord, play the 2nd and 3rd fret of the G and B strings respectively, and hammer on the 4th of the G. The top 3 strings will look like this:

E-------------------------------
B----------3-------------------
G----------2h4------------------

You can do all sorts of crazy things with the normal major scale, go beyond whats above and do stuff like this:

E-----------------------------3h5-------
B----------3------------------3----------
G----------2h4--------------------------
D----------------5---4h5---------------
A----------------------------------------
E-----3----------------------------------

See what I'm saying? Crazy stuff, but sounds good, and once you get it down, it makes Hendrix seem a little "simpler" to understand what he was thinking.

Hope that helps you out bud.

Pat

Thanks Pat - that is the kind of information I am looking for.

Maybe I shouldn't have put Hendrix in the title of this post. I'm only talking about him because little wing is such a great example of what I'm trying to understand. Whether he played it by ear or worked out the theory in his head is completely irrelevant to my question.

Completely ignoring Hendrix, I guess what I was trying to figure out was how to know what scales you can play over any given chord in a progression.

Like if the overall progression is in Em, then I know I can play Em pent over the whole progression, but I wanted to know if I play a G within that progression, will a G scale sound good at that point in time, even though some of the notes will fall outside of Em pent.

From your post and the excellent example you gave I'm thinking that I can. So that means that regardless of a progression, whenever you play a chord (say Am), you can play around with notes from the relevant scale (Am, Am pent) and it should sound like it fits....

Then to make that easier, all you need to do is figure out a few patterns for major and minor barre chords of the E and A shapes, and you will instantly have a very simple way to add colour to any progression you are playing.....

Is it really that easy? I feel like I've missed something....

Use the pentatonic scale of the key the song is in, and use those notes around each chord you play. So learn the scale all over the neck, learn the chords and enjoy.
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...

Bunch of rubbish. You try to write hundreds of tune and not use the golden ratio in some way, it's impossible.

Like if the overall progression is in Em, then I know I can play Em pent over the whole progression, but I wanted to know if I play a G within that progression, will a G scale sound good at that point in time, even though some of the notes will fall outside of Em pent.

Sorry, but that was my point. Does it sound good? Play it and find out. You don't need to follow a set of mathmatical rules. Play it and if it sounds good use it. I'm just saying thats what (cough) you know who did when he wrote the stuff. I highly doubt he was concerned with the scale he was using. Given the fact that he was a blues musician they are likely pentatonic with that extra note thrown in to make them the blues scale and IMO you can use the scale that goes with the chord you are playing at the time and it does sound good. I often do that.

I heard he performed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band live the night it was released. :shock:

Nah. It was relased on friday, Hendrix played the song on sunday.

I heard he performed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band live the night it was released. :shock:

Nah. It was relased on friday, Hendrix played the song on sunday.
Yes.

And supposedly Paul McCartney and John Lennon were at the show the following week, or something like that. I forget exactly. If I ever met Paul, I'd ask.

Hendrix played almost exclusively in the Minor Pentatonic scale. Of course, he would throw in many notes that did not belong to the scale. He was self taught and played by ear, so really and truthfully he played what sounded good to him. I know you don't want to hear that, but that is what he was really doing.

I read an article by Dimebag Darrell recently, he said the only rule he played by is that "there are no rules!" He said he knew very little about theory, only knew about 3 scales well ( I believe he said Minor Pentatonic, Major Pentatonic, and Major scales). He said he simply played what sounded great to him whether it broke theory or not.

That's good and bad. Don't be afraid to break the rules, but don't think that theory is bad either. Theory can be extremely helpful.

To a simple guitar player like me who does not understand theory too well, I've always thought:

Major Pentatonic scale= Country sound
Minor Pentatonic scale= Hard Rock or Blues

That's about it for me, that's my two main sounds. But I like other scales. I know a few exotic Eastern scales that sound really weird. I will often throw them in a solo just because I think these scales are beautiful. And they really get people's attention too. You can see their reaction. It's kind of like watching snowboarding or skateboarding on TV. Everybody is pretty much pulling off the same tricks. But one guy will throw a trick in there that nobody else knows and steal the contest. So make up some special tricks of your own.

Remember,

If it sounds good, it is good

Use the pentatonic scale of the key the song is in, and use those notes around each chord you play. So learn the scale all over the neck, learn the chords and enjoy.
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...

Bunch of rubbish. You try to write hundreds of tune and not use the golden ratio in some way, it's impossible.

well, i don't know. i was just talking about complexity.