Chords for How To Play Guitar In The Style Of Jimi Hendrix - Basics

Greetings!
I'm Chapas.
How you doing?
Today I thought I'd talk a little bit about the style of
Jimi Hendrix and Jimi Hendrix's music because it's really become, you know, he gave birth to this
whole style that loads of people from John Mayer, Philip Sais, all these guys have sort of taken and
made their own thing from and he just had a unique and interesting way of absorbing the blues around
him _ _ from some very well-known guitar players and turning it into a sort of almost like a style.
So
I thought I'd do like a style file on Jimi and give you a [Em] window into the way that he approached
_ writing his tunes and playing some of his chord progressions.
Now you might think this is a bit
of an unusual thing for me to do because I don't play a lot of Jimi stuff, it's absolutely true.
I
love the guy and love his music but I've never really ventured into really playing that style
because when I write what comes out is progressive rock and it's just one of those things, you know.
But I really admire the guy, I think he was a fantastic musician and I have a bit of, I have
enough of an insight to show people that really [Gb] don't know how this [G] is done, kind of the absolute
basic rudiments of what Jimi was doing when he played guitar.
So the first thing though is that
Jimi knew his shit, he knew theory, he knew jazz chords and he played really hard, he knew his stuff,
he wasn't just making up shapes and patterns as he went.
[Eb] But here are a couple of simple tricks
that will get you into the ballpark of playing in the style of Jimi Hendrix.
Okay this is a bit better,
I realised that I just come back from tour, picked up the ghost fret that was tuned down a whole tone
and was about to teach Jimi Hendrix a whole tone down, [Eb] that would have been bad. _
This is [Em] a little
bit better.
So let's start by [G] playing a part of a really simple chord scale using six [Eb] strings.
E major, _ _ _
_ _ [Fm] F sharp minor, _ _ _ _ [Gm] G sharp minor, _ _ _ [Ab] A major, _ _ _ [Bb] B major, _ _ _ [Cm] C sharp minor.
_ _ _ [G] That'll do, really simple.
All we're going to be [Em] doing is what Jimi did, [F] which is you play an appropriate
scale or arpeggio exactly where the chord is and he would [G] be using major or minor blues.
So he's
moving the major or minor blues scale around in relation to the chord to make the magic Jimi sound
happen.
And it's as simple as this, if you've [Eb] got, _ so never forget your pattern major, minor, minor,
major, major, _ _ _ [Cm] and then minor, minor [D] seven flat five etc.
So let's start with the third chord of this progression
and we're just going to climb up chords and play scales where chords are because that's kind of the
secret.
So you've got [Fm] chord one, chord [Gm] two, chord three.
For chord three we're just going to play [G] the minor blues scale where this chord [Gm] is
_ because the chord consists of [G] a root, fifth, [Ab] minor third and [Gb] the octave and [G] so it marries with the
intervals of.
[Bb] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [Gm] _ _ _ [Bb] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Gm] _ _
[Abm] That's all it takes and then let's go up [Ab] a semitone to the next chord. _ _
Now for here _ [F] we're just going to be doing the major blues scale [Ab] on top of this chord.
_ [F] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Db] _ _ [Cm] _ _ [G] _ _ _
[Gm] _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ [Ab] _ _
_ [Db] _ _ [Fm] _ _ [Ab] _ _ _
_ You soon see how it begins to get the flavour of Jimi and just, _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _
_ [Ab] _ _ _ _ _ [Gm] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ you see what I'm doing?
[Ab] _ [G] Every chord in the progression I'm saying is a major or is a minor therefore apply a major _ _ _
_ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ [Ab] _ _ [Eb] or _ _ _ _ _ _ a _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [G] Well I've got to find the nearest major blues scale [Abm] to this one.
I mean I could
_ [Eb] _ _
_ _ [Eb] _ _ _ _ _ _
[D] do that [Eb] because _ of course major blues [G] is just one, two, three [Abm] semitones back from the root.
If you've got position one, if you're familiar [Gb] with _ _ that _ _ _ [E] _ _ [Gb] good old pentatonic blues shape one,
bring it back three steps, it's become a major blues.
[Ab] It's just a trick.
So if you're playing [Eb] up here _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _
_ [Ab] _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Ab] _ _ [G] I hope that gave you an insight.
So every chord [Eb] you take it, you play major or minor blues over
it.
When I went up I used the nearest available [G] scale shape I wanted to use.
I could of course
have used position five.
_ [Eb] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ So in other words you [Gm] could go, _ _
[Bb] _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ [Abm] _ _
_ _ _ [Bb] _ _ [Eb] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Bb] _
_ _ [E] _ [Ab] _ _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ [Gm] _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ [Abm] there you go, apply a scale or an arpeggio
on [G] top of the chord and make sure it marries with the major or minor tonality of the chord.
I hope
that helps in [C] some way.
An interesting insight into what Jimmy did.
[G] Take it easy up in Chappers.
Chappers out.
Oh!
That