Why Guitar Players HATE Jimi Hendrix

let's make one thing really clear if you asked a hundred guitar players the same questions what makes someone the goat you'd probably get a hundred different answers some people would say it's about who has the best vibrato some people would say it's about how fast you can play and some people would say it's about who can make the best melodies if you asked all those people to put a name to that question I would bet a good majority of them would give you the same name real quick we're going to take our Marty McFly time machine we're going to go back to when I first started playing guitar I might have mentioned it once or twice before but when I first started playing guitar my influences were mayor and John fujante and Stevie Ray Vaughan and I didn't know at the time what exactly all these three players had in common I mean I had heard Voodoo Child from a guy on my college dorm who would play it acoustically but that was really the only thing I knew of Hendricks other than that he was this mythical guitar figure you see if you ask a person who doesn't know anything about the NBA to tell you a basketball player they'll tell you about Michael Jordan if you ask someone who doesn't know anything about tennis to tell you a tennis player they might be able to tell you about Serena Williams and I felt the same way about Hendricks but all that changed the moment I heard this riff foreign [Music] I knew without question that I hate Jimi Hendrix now you might be saying Mike hate is such a strong word for some people it's also an acronym having appreciation that's earned now I didn't fully understand this at the time but Hendricks is sort of this Perfect Blend between style and substance you see you have Hendricks the player and he could play whatever he wanted to at the highest level but there was the performer Hendrix you see him playing with his teeth you see him setting his guitar on fire smashing his guitar the Woodstock the everything and the thing about it is there are great guitar players who have great stage presence but hendrix's stage presence and his playing kind of were one thing and I think they fed into each other which is what made him so unique not just as a guitar player but as an artist now back to that little riff I told you about [Music] the thing is when I first listened to it I had had this emotional response to it but I didn't know why or how so I decided to do a little bit of research so I get my computer and I open up this little website called YouTube and I'd be into search about little wing and I find that Stevie Ray Vaughan had done a cover of it and I was like oh I love Stevie Ray Vaughan he's pretty much one of everyone's first Blues influences and he like shreds over it but I'm like Stevie kind of shreds over everything and he's done a lot of covers before so I keep looking into it and I'm like oh Clapton has also done a cover of this and I'm like oh it's a live coverage very good whilst I'm processing this information I'm doing my normal 15 hour day practice routine that would make Steve Vice scared to ever pick up a Guitar again and I start jamming with a couple people on a regular basis and I think what songs are we going to jam to next maybe some 12 Bar Blues I need some other riffs that we can jam to I bring up we should Jam to little wing and it turns out they know little wing do and we don't even need the ultimate guitar app to tell us what to do and that's when I was like okay everyone knows this song I need to break this down and see why [Music] remember that first question I asked you well I kind of want to flip it on its head a little bit if you asked a hundred people who don't play guitar what would make someone the goat of guitar playing [Music] what do you think their answers would be I think you might get a lot of similar answers I think a lot of people would say that it would be about how fast you can play and while Hendricks could shred like faster than I ever could I think there's way more to hendrix's playing than just his speed ability I think Hendricks was a uniquely gifted Rhythm player and when I say Rhythm I think a lot of people would think I'm talking about like this Corey Wong straight 16th straight to the metronome stuff and yes that stuff is cool and while Hendricks does have a great sense of feel for the guitar when I'm talking about his rhythm playing I'm really talking about the harmonic complexity in songs like Little Wing So if we were to break down little wing he starts on this E minor chord [Music] and then he moves up to this G and I think in a lot of modern four chord songs you would have a songwriter probably go from the E minor to the G and then end on this C for two bars Loop that and call it a day and there's nothing wrong with that if you're a really great songwriter but Hendrix does something interesting he goes from the G then hits this a minor and then he goes back to E minor another thing that may be a little more complex songwriter would do is use a secondary dominant chord at least that's what I would think so before going to this E minor I would think someone might find the fifth of the E which is B use a B7 chord as it transition back to that first chord I'll get back to those chords in a second but here's where we really have a chance to break down that legendary lead line I'm sure you've heard it before [Applause] what makes it so melodic for a first note he's bending up from the D to the e [Applause] and E happens to be the root of our first chord this E minor chord so he's targeting the root I've said it before I'll say it again targeting chord tones that's what separates a good soloist from a great and memorable solo is knowing what you're playing over and knowing how to Target those notes in the chord even for the end of that first lick where he ends on this B note which he's playing over the G and B happens to be the third of our first inversion G Triad and he's doing that all throughout the solo which is like I said what makes it so melodic and memorable let's get back to those chords to see what he does because he goes from this E minor to the B minor here's a really great part of the song he could just go to the a minor [Music] and that would sound fine on its own but what Hendrix does is he does this walk down from the B to the B flat to the A and just a tip as a soloist if you can highlight those chord tones just like we were doing before say like you played the fifth of every chord so if you play F sharp over the B minor the F over the B flat minor and the E over the a minor targeting the fifth if you play the correct notes over those passing tones you will get people in the audience screaming now what he does is he goes this very major section and the thing about this song is for the entire song so far you probably would have used mostly E minor pentatonic but since we're going to this more major part of the song we can actually start to get into our G minor pentatonic especially with some of these slides because we slide from this G and we briefly hit the A and then come to this F chord [Music] which you might have noticed is not in our diatonic major scale but an F major chord has three notes an F an A and A C and two of those notes can also be found in our G minor scale which is perfect for this part of the song we have our F and our C and after this is more open F chord he actually goes to the C chord Gita FTC is a pretty common chord progression a lot of like Americana and Country you can see it in like Kenny Wayne Shepherds Blue on Black the next two chords in our progression is this open C where he slides to a d I think the craziest part of this song is that the chord progression repeats over and over again I've seen backing tracks where this song goes on for 10 minutes long and I'm soloing over this song for 10-15 minutes and it never once gets old it plays the same chords over and over again there really is no chorus and I think that's part of the genius of Hendrix and why we need to break this stuff down there are very few people in the history of the world that just change the landscape of a profession and Hendrix is one of those people and in the past I wouldn't have thought it was flashy enough to do something like break down the chord tones in a Hendrix Solo or find out why that lead line works harmonically but I think when you have someone like we said to really change the trajectory of the Guitar World those are the most important things to break down if you want to get better and if I want to get better and see like what made him so good because this Hendrix guy kinda knew what he was doing thank you so much ladies and gentlemen for watching like I said I've had a lot of fun with these longer form videos and thank you for all the love and support shown on the past two they've been so much fun to make and just test my video editing abilities and see where I can push this thing if you enjoy this video make sure to drop a like down below below and make sure to comment what other artists you want to see me break down either here or in the community post that I put up a couple days ago make sure to smash the subscribe button keep playing and most importantly of all have a fantastic day [Music] [Music]

Channel: Mike Cole

Views: 886,156

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Id: 8ts2ePmYEQ4

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 28 2022