An Operator's Manual for Guitar

Okay, here’s the third and final chapter of the Killing Floor lesson. This is about the main rhythm guitar riff that Hubert Sumlin plays throughout.

It uses a trick mostly associated with Steve Cropper (think “Soul Man” by Sam and Dave): sliding sixths. (Though I think Killing Floor pre-dates Soul Man by a few years.)

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Okay, let’s finish off the rest of this classic song. First up is the intro, which uses a pretty cool dom7 voicing on the top four strings.

As before, I’m documenting the song in the key of G (though it’s played in A on the record).

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This post is about a blues classic: the song “Killing Floor” by Howlin' Wolf, with Hubert Sumlin on guitar. You simply cannot listen to this song too many times: The song has been covered by pretty much everyone, including Jimi Hendrix. Led Zeppelin was obviously influenced by the song when they created The Lemon Song. They even paid Howlin’ Wolf $45K after they were sued, but nobody knows how much Arc Music (owners of the rights) nor the lawyers made. [Read More]

Now that I have sooooo many posts on this blog about soloing and scales, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that you’ll spend most of your time playing rhythm using chords. It’s also true that you can’t really put together a coherent solo unless you can instantly and effortlessly find the chord tones of the underlying harmony. Put simply: rhythm and chords are even more important than scales and solos. [Read More]

When soloing or playing with a band, it’s often helpful to avoid the lowest two strings. Those lower registers are where the bass player and the rest of the band (or at least the left hand of the keyboardist) tend to hang out. The blues uses dominant seventh chords (with extensions and alterations) almost exclusively. Just as with triads, it’s useful to spend a lot of time with seventh chords that only use the top four strings. [Read More]

This is a follow-on to my last post about connecting pentatonic shapes, and part of my never ending quest to really learn how to solo. As always, the goal is to play music (sounds) not memorize shapes or terminology. Specifically, we want to be able to play the five notes of the pentatonic scale, instantly and effortlessly. It’s all too easy to get so wrapped up in theory and names and the analytical, verbal, mentally straining aspects of music that you lose sight of the goal (believe me, I have this problem in spades). [Read More]

Chords and scales are intimately connected. Consider these three (inter-connected) shapes of the Am pentatonic scale, for example:

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Arpeggios are just “broken up” chords, chords played one note at a time rather than all together. There are arpeggios for every chord type: major, minor, dominant, extended and altered.

I think it’s most useful to learn the dom7 arpeggios first before starting on other chord types, especially if you like the blues. (At least I hope so, since those are the only ones I really KNOW myself so far!)

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Here is a 29 minute exercise and tracking system to learn, REALLY learn, the pentatonic scale everywhere on the neck as quickly as possible.

Sorry for the clickbait headline, but you probably won’t be able to complete the entire exercise the first time you try it. It will likely take you at least a few days, but the tracking system ensures you will continue to make progress. After several days or weeks practicing this one exercise, you’ll be able to complete the exercise in 29 minutes for real. More importantly, you’ll be able to effortlessly find the closest pentatonic scale shape anywhere on the neck.

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A tritone is an interval of three tones, or three whole steps. It can also be considered a diminished (or flat) fifth (the blue note). Because it splits an octave evenly in half, it has some really cool characteristics and applications (though on its own it will sound pretty discordant and unstable). The interval between G and D♭ is a tritone, for example, but so is the interval between D♭ and G! [Read More]