Way to “Ladyland”
Transcription
Way to “Ladyland”
All q Hendrix the Way to “Ladyland” ore than two decades after his tunes overtly modeled after clean-toned death, Jimi Hendrix’s remark- Hendrix classics lie “Castles Made Of Sand” able rhythm guitar style still and “One Rainy Wish,” while navigating the grips the souls and fingers of contemporary sultry voicings of “Little Wing” remains a rite players. Steve Vai, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric of passage for aspiring rock players, even Johnson, and others have recorded original those born well after Jimi’s demise. 1 HOW TO PLAY GUITAR / BLUES 63 The Hendrix rhythm style shatters the Ex. 1 ” frozen structures of standard barre chord voicings into a thousand melodic shards. Rhythm and lead become one. By deftly juggling these harmonic fragments, the player can create intricate webs of moving lines that reinforce the underlying chordal skeleton-an indispensable skill for playing in situations where there’s no keyboard or second guitar to hold down the harmonic fort. Hendrix didn’t invent these techniques: like most aspects of his music, their roots lie in African-American blues and R&B traditions. (Jimi owed a particular debt to Curtis Mayfield-just listen to the Impressions’ “People Get Ready.“) But Hendrix introduced more flexible harmonic schemes, new added-note sonorities, and an unprecedented fluidity of execution. He twisted R&B’s somewhat standardized vocal accompaniment techniques into weird new shapes. Chordal ideas that might have generated an entire song were toyed with and abandoned Ex. 3 ,, in seconds as he hopscotched from idea to idea without tangling the musical thread. Hummers and pulls Beforediving into the “(HaveYouEverBeen To) ElectricLadyland”transcription,testthe waters with these rhythm etudes.Ex. 1, derivedfrom the familiarE-type barrechord, demonstratesa key technique:replacinga fixed-position chord with two- and threenotevoicings,freeinga finger or two to play addedmelodicfigures.The examplemoves through different inversionsof the A chord, addinga hammered-onnon-chordtone at eachstage.Youcan’tplay it with a flxed slxnotebarre;instead,barrethe top two strings for the first two beats.Shiftyour 1stfingerto the 6th fret of the third stringfor beat 3, and then barrethe fourth and fifth stringsat the 7th fret for beat 4 beforereturning your 1st fingerto the 5th fret for the final chord.This Ex. 5 ,x islabor-intensivestuff-three positionshifts in one bar. Finger the chord diagramshownabove Ex. 2 by fretting the bassnote with your thumb in true Hendrixfashion.Raisingand loweringyour 3rdfingerintroducesan added note (B, the 9 of A) situatedbelowthe standardbarredA position.Nowtry the example. (Again,you can’tjust hold downthe chordin the diagram:you must continually modify 64 HOW TO PLAY GUITAR / BLUES I Ex. 6 Ex. Ex. 10 your left-hand position.) Compare these added-note voicings to those in Bx. 1 and try scrambling the two exercises. Ex. 3 transports the same idea to another fretboard location. (Slide the chord in the diagram down two frets to open positionyou’ll see that it’s based on a barred version of an open-position G chord.) Like the previous examples, Ex. 3 is based on the A major pentatonic scale. But pentatonic scales are harmonically ambiguous: the first measure of Ex. 3 can imply A major or F# minorcompare the two endings. (If you don’t understand the relationship of these two keys, consult a good theory text or teacher.) We don’t have to restrict ourselves to pentatonic scales, of course. Ex. 4 encompasses every degree of the A major scale. (That G#/A crunch is lovely, ain’t it?) The voicing on the fourth beat of bar 1 is a stretch, but it sounds great. You’ll find it in bar 9 of “Electric Ladyland” and in the intro to the live version of “LittleWing” on TheJimi Hendrix Concerts. Ex. 5 shows the same idea in yet another position, one that corresponds to a C-type barre chord at the 9th fret. Again, the diatonic motion can imply either A major or F# minor. Slip sliding So much for hammer-ons and pull-offswhat about the sliding harmonies that make Jimi’s rhythm work sound so liquid? The sliding fourths in Ex. 6 are as old as blues guitar itself (older, probably-they sound distinctly African). At any rate, they’re an R&B staple. The sliding fourths in Ex. 7 are situated higher on the neck. Ex. 6 and Bx. 7 are 100% pentatonic, so they suit many chord sequences in both A major and F#’ minor. ‘By playing them over these progressions: A-D, A7-D7,A-F#m, F#m-D7, and F#m7-Bm7. The sliding fifths in Ex. 8 sound a bit weirder. Try replicating them in other positions and across three strings (for example, play the first notes of the example at the first string, 12th fret and third string, 14th fret, damping the second string). Jimi often fattened these open fifths with lower notes. Adding a lower third creates the minor 7th chord fragments shown in Ex. 9. The Bm7 and F#m7 are built from the same harmony, but situated on diierent strings. Play the low F# with your thumb. (This voicing appears in bar 7 of “Electric Ladyland.“) I HOW TO PLAY GUITAR / BLUES 65 “Electric Ladyland,” a tune that contains some of Hendrix’s most bizarre extensions of these concepts. Harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic weirdness abounds: The chord progression sidles though several keys via clever enharmonic tricks; the rhythms often imply 3/4 time (though it’s notated in strict 4/4 for simplicity’s sake): and the oddball solo emphasizes the dissonant 7th more than the tonic. The falsetto vocals are a zonked-out tip of the hat to the Impressions, and the twin guitars do-s&do from foreground to background (though most of the techniques we’ve covered are played by the first guitar). It’s notated in A, but Jimi tuned down a half- Now things get curiouser and curiouser. Adding a fifth below the fifth creates a sonorous, but harmonically ambiguous, structure-the first chord in Ex. 10 can imply Gudd9, Em1 1, C13, Amll, and other chords. (A favorite of Andy Summers, this stack-o’-fifths powered many a Police hit.) Hendrix often reinforced the lowest note by fretting it an octave below with his thumb, sometimes adding an open third-string drone, as shown in the second measure. Slide this chord up and down the neckyou’ll be playing the “Castles Made Of Sand” intro before you know it. You’ll find all these techniques in “(Have A Gtr. 1 I Gtr. 2 66 G#W I G#m7) 0 1968 Bella Godiva Music, Inc. This HOW TO PLAY GUITAR ......................”..............*.............*......**. Joe Gore is the Senior Editor of Guitar Player You Ever Been To) Electric By Jimi Hendrix/Transcribed D step to Ab. Chords that are merely implied are indicated in parentheses. The transcription comes from Hal Leonard Publications’ Electric Ladyland transcription book, which, together with their Are You Experienced? and Axis, Bold As Love volumes are the finest Hendrix transcriptions available (despite a shocking number of music typos). Finally, don’t miss the solo guitar version of “Electric Ladyland” on Hal Leonard’s ]imi Hendrix: Rhythm instructional CD. Have at it. l (Bm7) arrangement0 / BLUES I by Jeff Jones (G#mV i‘ I I A BmlE 1990 Bella Godiva Music. Inc. AU rights reserved. Ladyland” International copyright (C#m7) secured. Used by permission G#m7 of Hal Leonard Publishing Corp. G(add9) D (C#m) Bm7 Bm7lE Am7(add4) G(add9) R.H. I HOW TO PLAY GUITAR / BLUES 67 Bm7/E n,nn T In n 7 --- 7_ 7____ 7 - m-l - I - I I - G(add9) palm mute 7 G#m7 (C#m) G(add9) D eJ C#m7 Bm7 C3’U f I I \-I I I B I 68 HOW TO PLAY GUITAR / BLUES I R I I Bm7lE A G#m? G(add9) (G#W B 0 G#m7) Em7 Bm7/E B R Am7(add4) I HOW TO PLAY GUITAR / BLUES 69 B Winter on Waters: 1 Mudslide! 1 B continued from page B 42 9 can’t (El - n-l n ‘I,= < *tc rn x 2 /” I n I ” 70 HOW TO PLAY GUITAR / GLULS I ., --/<XI I x ” I i5 I.4 - . _ . II